In my previous post, I discussed how dotDB's PayPal account was canceled and the funds were frozen. Initially, PayPal did not provide any explanation for the cancellation. However, after dotDB regained access to its account, it was revealed that there were numerous chargeback requests.



This decision by PayPal left me baffled because while many chargebacks can certainly lead to an account suspension, it is reasonable to first give a warning to the merchant so that they can improve their rates. Stripe offers an add-on service to assist with excessive chargebacks. It would not have harmed PayPal to inform dotDB of the reason for the account termination.

dotDB has taken steps to prevent excessive refund requests. One such step is discontinuing the seven-day free trial that converted to a paid plan if people did not cancel. According to the company, a lot of people would sign up for this offer intending to cancel but would forget.

Additionally, dotDB is implementing measures to avoid data scraping by restricting the number of lookups on free accounts. People have been extracting data to use for their own products or services, which has caused technical issues. For those who want to build tools on top of the data, there are already plans available with API access.

If you haven't used dotDB before, it provides information on the number of TLDs a domain is taken in as well as variations of the domain. If you opt for the Expert level, you can also see how the domains are used. This feature is incredibly helpful because a domain registered in ten extensions that are all parked is less valuable than one where some extensions are used as websites.