Lesson learned

Once upon a time, I had a terrific hosting service. They were reliable, inexpensive and had great customer support... until they went out of business without any prior warning. Unfortunately, I had several domains registered through them. I managed to track down the registrar who requires users to have a funded account with them to pay for registrations. I thought that was odd so I put off creating an account, assuming that they'd notify me when domains needed to be renewed. Well, we all know what happens when we assume anything. :censored:

Over the weekend, I discovered that one of my domains expires on 1/3. I emailed them immediately asking for help/advice. No answer. I was upset, but I realize that it was a holiday and I shouldn't expect much of a response. As soon as I got to work today, I opened the account (needed access to a fax machine) and funded it.

:censored: :censored:

I still don't have access to my domains. I'm in the process of jumping through various hoops trying to get the domains put under my account. I've tried emailing and faxing these folks. I wanted to try their live help, but those are all off-line.

Need I say that once I get control of the domains, I'm transferring them to another registrar? Need I say that several organizations are going to hear from me about this registrar once I get my domains away from them? Need I say I won't be registering domains through my hosting ever again?

:censored:

Whichever registrar you choose, dont ever use 1and1, that's my lesson learned.
Another lesson learned, tho unrelated: never buy from DELL, cheap stuffs, poor quality, bad customer service.

Yikes! Glad to hear you were able to recover your domains. As painful as this was, it could have been worse - some hosting outfits register domains "on your behalf" as a lock-in method; they own them and will not let you leave.

I think a separation between registrar and hosting company is a good thing - but if you do host with your registrar, you should be careful to be sure you (not they!) own the domains, and watch the expiration dates. And when renewing a domain that you're serious about, renew more for a year; less danger of accidentally losing it, and plus it gives it more weight with Google, which looks at registration length.

yellow1912:

Whichever registrar you choose, dont ever use 1and1, that's my lesson learned.
Another lesson learned, tho unrelated: never buy from DELL, cheap stuffs, poor quality, bad customer service.

I'm using a Dell at this moment and have gotten nothing but great service from them. When my hard drive died, they sent me a replacement immediately and only wanted the old one back once I got the data off of it, so don't bother telling me that Dell isn't a good product. I'll tell you never buy Compaq. Dell is a better product with better support. I got ripped off by Compaq's "authorized service" for a laptop that's now a better paperweight than computer. I'll take a Dell any day. Compaq and HP didn't even bother to respond to my emails.

swguy:

Yikes! Glad to hear you were able to recover your domains. As painful as this was, it could have been worse - some hosting outfits register domains "on your behalf" as a lock-in method; they own them and will not let you leave.

I think a separation between registrar and hosting company is a good thing - but if you do host with your registrar, you should be careful to be sure you (not they!) own the domains, and watch the expiration dates. And when renewing a domain that you're serious about, renew more for a year; less danger of accidentally losing it, and plus it gives it more weight with Google, which looks at registration length.

The domains were always in my name. I paid the hosting service for the registration and they paid the registrar. I'm currently trying to get the registrar to give me access to my own domains since the hosting company is gone. As soon as I can get access and transfer the domains, they're going to another registrar. In the meantime, I think I'll monitor the names from the other registrar, in hopes of grabbing the domains back if the idiots I'm dealing with don't give me control in time.

Well, each has his own experience. My 1 year old laptop is broken everywhere and they refuse to replace any part without me paying big bucks. To hell with that _. I had 2 laptops with DELL and both had the same problem, sigh.

Please take this however you choose but an an Ex-Employee of Dell,
I can tell you that I would use their crap as a paperweight onthe front porch.

they have over a 50% DOA rate,
their in house tech support are atm repair staff, basically its just ror, ( remove or replace )
their warranty that they sell for the most part is so full of holes,

And yes I chose to leave,

Kinda tired of hearing about how Dells are made in America ( even stamped on the box ) and they are shipped air freight daily from outsourced countries.

Ok enough Del Rant,

afo:

In the meantime, I think I'll monitor the names from the other registrar, in hopes of grabbing the domains back if the idiots I'm dealing with don't give me control in time.

Remember that even after expiry there should be a 30-90 day redemption period where you can still get them back (it just costs a little more). You should be ok. Be sure to keep a log of all your actions in case there's a dispute (hopefully not).

Good luck,
Scott

Gulp. We're heavy users of Dell here at Kuroi. I'm typing this on one of the five that are within one metre of one or other of my body parts. And we've got several others dotted around the place.

I've been using them since the mid-80s when I was building a PC based network and having to swap failed components in and out of cheap machines whose suppliers didn't know whose components they had supplied with each PC. I persuaded my then boss to let me spend a bit more, and was blown away when I opened the casing on a Dell and saw, for the first time, an interior that had been designed! If I'd needed to change components it would have been a breeze, but I never did.

Over the years I've had occasional problems with the hardware, most of which have been resolved satisfactorily, but it's often a struggle to achieve that result and it's difficult to remember a positive service experience. And since their service centre was moved to India, they've become even more difficult to deal with. Primarily because the staff do not appear to have been given any level of empowerment and are obliged to follow diagnostic scripts that are often inappropriate, insulting to technically literate customers and sometimes end with an instruction to call the component's manufacturer (even when this breaches their statutory obligation to deal with faulty equipment that they have sold).

I'd recommend being careful about that need to return faulty drives in exchange for new ones. I understand Dell's desire to ensure that they are not being ripped off, and possibly to investigate the cause of the failure, but this may cause European-based customers to unwittingly breach Data Protection laws concerning cross-border transfer of data. It may also leave your data exposed. We were forced to refuse an offer to replace a faulty drive as we knew that it contained a copy of a client's customer database that we were working on, but we couldn't access it to shred the data, and nobody at Dell to whom we could talk, knew what would happen to the drive once the engineer returned it to his base.

How did we get onto Dell? Sorry Afo, for hijacking your thread!

Hey, no problem Kuroi (or Merlin). I was concerned about sending back the hard drive myself, but it was so dead that I had to take it to a local computer place to have them attempt to recover the data. They were able to recover SOME of it, so I figure Dell won't be able to get to anything either since I couldn't boot the machine at all.

I must have been lucky. I got a chatty, apparently knowledgeable tech who asked all the right questions and dispatched a replacement drive to me while we were on the phone. I could have kept my old drive and paid Dell $160 for the replacement, but since it cost me nearly that much to recover the data, I figured it was a wash. I don't know where the tech was that I spoke to, but his English was perfect. He was of Asian ancestory and could have been first or second generation American based on his accent OR he could have learned English in school. I may have notes at home from that experience. It was a positive one for me, so I don't have a problem considering another Dell.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand... these folks managed to "lose" my payment to them to fund the account. Fortunately, I funded the account from PayPal. Say anything negative about them you want, but I have a definite paper trail and will ask PayPal to refund my money if the fools at the registrar can't get their act together.

BTW, PayPal is just one place I'm going to report these people to once I get control of the domains and move them to another registrar.

Lesson for them: don't mess with me. :cool:

Mary Ellen,

Sorry for your experience. I'm lucky that when I built my first website 7 years ago I went through GoDaddy and all mine are registered in my name. I no longer have hosting through GoDaddy for a variety of reasons, and use a smaller host that has been absolutely fantastic, but my domain names are still through there.

As for Dells, have no experience with them. I have a Toshiba laptop that's been excellent, nearly 2 years old. At the same time I bought a Compaq for my husband that's been great as well, no problems.

I think it's a crapshoot. No matter who you talk to about something, you'll find lovers and haters. I refinanced out of Washington Mutual for my mortgage because of a lot of horrible reasons (including they tried to foreclose on me for their screw-ups) and went with Countrywide. Have nothing but good to say about Countrywide, yet I hear horror stories about them from some people.

Ditto cars.

At least TM doesn't sell mortgages or laptops. :cool:

Happy to recommend godsweb - very reliable, great support. We use them all the time when we can. :smile:

Hope it gets sorted for you. We had similar problems initially before we found godsweb.

Lots and lots of things are in the eye of the beholder. :wink2:

The domains are in my name. My old hosting service is still listed as the technical contact. I'm hoping to get this straightened out ASAP. If this registrar was a little quicker on the trigger, I'd consider staying with them, but since they "can't find" the PayPal payment from yesterday that had been credited to me but then disappeared, I'd rather move the domains once I get control. I have two that expire shortly, so I'll be stuck with them for about 3 months. I want to move everything at once.

pb4:

Happy to recommend godsweb - very reliable, great support. We use them all the time when we can. :smile:

Hope it gets sorted for you. We had similar problems initially before we found godsweb.

Thanks for the recommendation. I have great (Zen certified) hosting and a registrar I can deal with, so I should be set if I can get this straightened out.

Thanks for letting me vent, everyone. I've really needed it. I couldn't sleep last night wondering how a PayPal payment with yards of paper trail got "lost" and how long it would take me to get control of the domains.

I could scare you with a similar tale of domain hijacking - or so it appeared at the time. I think the host, who had, as in your case, registered my domains for me, was simply a nut-case who wanted everything his way, and if you disagreed he'd clam up and blacklist your email so you couldn't get to him.

It took me almost 6 months to get the domains back under my control and I was only successful because he was totally incommunicado, so the domain authorities could only agree with my side of the case. But it involved faxed ID to prove who I was, notarized documents, copies of emails and a pile of time and sweat and fear.

Never again!

I now register my domains myself through a large registrar (domainexplorer.com if you need one), double-checking to make sure that the proper info is entered for owner, admin contact and tech contact, and renewing well in advance to avoid problems.

Domains are your life-blood. Handle them with care!

Rob

Hope it's sorted out for you soon, Mary Ellen! No fun to be left in limbo. :no:

My registrar is very good about emailing several times a year (quarterly, I think)
with my account info, expiration dates, etc. Even got a email with holiday wishes.

Good luck on it!

Well, the money has magically reappeared in my account with them. Now if they'd just give me control of the domains, I'd be happy... well, not exactly happy, but less unhappy. :yuck: :frusty:

:clap::clap:

UPDATE!

Five of the domains have been successfully transferred to my new account and renewed - including the one that was set to expire today. There's two remaining that have to be moved.

These people are temporarily in my good graces. I have to wait 60 days to transfer the domains to another registrar. That give me time to think about whether I want to do that or not. I think I will.

:clap:

That's wonderful news, Mary Ellen! Yay! :bigups: