Can you imagine the articles and the feedback if Escrow.com did what DN.com is doing right now? DN.com, a Chinese escrow agent, went down Thursday. Not into maintenance mode. No lander page. A blank page. Nothing resolves at all. There was no warning ahead of time. No message to people to tell them don’t start a transaction because in three days we are going off line. They let everyone start transactions and then went offline merely telling them to email if they are in the middle of a transaction. Here is their only information. An unusual letter looking like it was written in Google Translate
That’s it. A few people on QQ say they have received some responses. Many others have gotten nothing. I know several people that are sitting in the middle of a transaction wondering what is going on. Undoubtedly much of this is a cultural and language thing. All of it is bad communication. Those that can’t speak Chinese don’t feel like they have the ability to find out what is going out. Dn.com and 4.cn are notorious for taking a while to get back to emails. It’s the reason I couldn’t work with 4.cn any more. I found myself the communication director for the company because they never got back to English speaking customers. Communication was just not good enough to have a partnership. We in the US face the same barrier, but in general our businesses have a much better history of explaining what is going on. Ironically its why DN.com was formed. To give the Chinese marketplace a safe and secure way to purchase domains in their own currency and language. But professionalism is world wide. Timely communication has no language barriers. It is based on time not language. Back to the title of this article. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if Escrow.com had done this? It would be at the title of every blog and all over the domain forums. It would be a PR nightmare and have a huge impact on business. The fact they haven’t is the reason why they are THE domain escrow. It also shows the reach of each of the Escrow companies. It shows that DN.com really doesn’t have much impact in North America at this point.
I know things will get back up soon. 4.cn and DN.com are good companies. They merely lack a good English speaking communications director. It can’t be finances. They both are very successful companies and undoubtedly make enough money to support the role. In my option what they lack at this point is desire. A desire to be more informative and communicative. And for that Escrow.com says thank you.
Shane,
I’m in the middle of a $67,500 deal right now on DN.com. The seller would not do the transaction with Escrow.com so I had two choices pass on the deal or DN.com. I have two things working against me… I got the deal because the seller needed money right away (this might change) and if the market price of these names goes up (they will soon) before the deal is completed we both know the chances are good that the seller is going to back out. You couldn’t run a summertime lemonade stand like this and stay in business.
Cheers
Ken,
That truly sucks. Hopefully Escrow.com can build some inroads into China and help prevent things like this.
Hi Ken & Shane,
Escrow.com is glad to offer Chinese language support on our website and on the phone, with a dedicated Chinese language support team.
I hope your transaction is okay and you do get your funds, and I look forward to handling transactions for you in the future.
Best regards,
Jackson Elsegood
Shane,
Escrow.com is working on that and I just like you prefer to use them. I have had successful transactions with DN.com but this type of action is not going to help their business.
Hi Ken,
The website DN.com will remain closed for several days more. Please keep informed that admin.dn.com is available to you with all functions. If you have other questions, please feel free to contact [email protected] and we shall serve you timely.
Echo,
The seller has already backed out and mean while my money with DN.com is not usable.
Lesson learned…
Has the site been shut down by the government to prevent capital flows out of china?
Any Chinese insights from anyone.
Roger S,
Nice try. 🙂
Hi Shane,
First of all, I’d like to apologize for any trouble caused by the DN.com website being down recently. As we have said, DN.com is pending entity changing at the moment. Per the regulations of the Chinese government, the website needs to be down for a few days. When the whole process is completed, the website will be up again. At the meantime, users can still visit admin.dn.com, which we will also inform all DN.com users about.
Secondly, I’d like to apologize for not making a notice in advance. We could find excuses for that, but after all it is an internal mistake. We’re still responsible for it.
Thirdly, I’d like to apologize for the poor English skills shown in the email. Since we didn’t have much time to write the announcement and to proofread, several obvious mistakes were made in the email. It was very unprofessional, we will work on our English skills. We hope to provide better service in the future.
Thank you very much for your concerns about DN.com!
Echo
DN.com
I am chinese.dn.com is just 备案ing.
Bingo, all Chinese domainers understand what we’re going through. However, it takes some time for our foreign friends to accept it. 备案 is registering the website and the company with the government’s office of the Internet, which also means that we have been and will continue to be a legit business.