It shouldn’t be hard for someone making these claims to show whois data before and after. Maybe the whois before requires some foresight, but the whois after does not. I will note that despite putting “Confirmed” in the title of their Reddit post and saying they did a whois search that showed Namecheap had bought the domain, the user has not provided that whois data, nor the domain name so that others can independently confirm.
The price of a domain registration going up in real time as you’re trying to buy it is obviously a frustrating experience. Domain name frontrunning is a legitimate concern, shady registrars have done it in the past (e.g. NetworkSolutions), and there are many other entities besides registrars that might do it as well.
Trying to register a domain name is notably not a hygienic process at the best of times, the information that someone might be willing to pay money for a particular domain name could leak and be exploited at many different stages of a typical search process. Unfortunately, the user only finds out they’ve been exploited when they try to pay on the registrar’s site. Registrars concerned about being unfairly accused might find that providing some transparency into the process can assuage this reaction - perhaps a “why did this price go up?” button/link that shows excerpts from your log history of whois calls for that domain name, or if the problem is the gTLD provider changing their prices on the fly, maybe a log of that information over time.
(Exhaustive potential conflict of interest disclaimer: I hold ~$40/year worth of registrations through Namecheap and another ~$30/year worth of registrations through Gandi. Besides these two aforementioned purchases, I do not and have never been employed by, held an investment position in, or maintained any other kind of financial relationship with any domain registrar [lookup service, TLD provider, etc.] in any form.)
The price of a domain registration going up in real time as you’re trying to buy it is obviously a frustrating experience. Domain name frontrunning is a legitimate concern, shady registrars have done it in the past (e.g. NetworkSolutions), and there are many other entities besides registrars that might do it as well.
Trying to register a domain name is notably not a hygienic process at the best of times, the information that someone might be willing to pay money for a particular domain name could leak and be exploited at many different stages of a typical search process. Unfortunately, the user only finds out they’ve been exploited when they try to pay on the registrar’s site. Registrars concerned about being unfairly accused might find that providing some transparency into the process can assuage this reaction - perhaps a “why did this price go up?” button/link that shows excerpts from your log history of whois calls for that domain name, or if the problem is the gTLD provider changing their prices on the fly, maybe a log of that information over time.
(Exhaustive potential conflict of interest disclaimer: I hold ~$40/year worth of registrations through Namecheap and another ~$30/year worth of registrations through Gandi. Besides these two aforementioned purchases, I do not and have never been employed by, held an investment position in, or maintained any other kind of financial relationship with any domain registrar [lookup service, TLD provider, etc.] in any form.)