Transferring Domains from Uncooperative Registrar? 90
An anonymous reader asks: "What do you do when your registrar hangs you out to dry? I have a domain that was registered with a registrar that no longer exists. The original registrar was bought out by another, who is a reseller for a third registrar. After the buyout they never got my domain to work properly with their billing system, with the result that I cannot transfer the domain (they say they cannot release registrar-lock) and cannot renew it via their online system, meaning that I have to call them on the phone. Several weeks ago, my registrar took my renewal payment for two years, and charged my credit card, but never renewed the domain. They expired it and redirected the web accesses to their parking page, which consists of spam links. I've emailed and called them several times since, with the result that they no longer answer my email or phone calls. I can't find any clear documentation at ICANN about this, as it all seems to be geared toward transfers from uncooperative web hosts or copyright holders. Do I have any recourse in this case, or am I simply screwed?"
contact ICANN (Score:5, Informative)
Screw ICANN, call your credit card company (Score:5, Informative)
At the very least you should be able to get your renewal fee back.
Moddy mod mod (Score:2)
MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:1, Informative)
tmegapscm
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If the customer agreed to a particular forum (court for X county, Y state) by agreeing to the terms of the deal, then that is that.
However, the potential litigant suing a fly-by-night registrar can probably get away with this. Settlement is cheaper than hiring a lawyer to file a motion to dismiss.
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I speculate that it is highly unlikely that MasterCard or Visa will blacklist the merchant. As long as they can grab the amount in dispute and their $20-$40 non-refundable "dispute fee," they are happy.
I'd like to not speculate and actually cite something. Unf
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What do you mean, exactly? How could you define one universal set of rules that would predict the chargeback decision in every case?
It seems to me that even Visa and MasterCard probably don't have an exact, defined set of rules anywhere, but rather have people that evaluate each case individually on the legal, customer, merchant, and internal axes, all seperate from each other, and render a dec
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It's not much money - be sure it'll help (Score:2)
Small claims court is more likely to get your domain back, but that may also depend on the contract you've got with the registrar.
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1. Mark the card as fraudulent.
2. Place a hold on the domain and/or cancel it.
I'd imagine many other registrars have the same policy.
Now, you probably don't know this but domains have about 90 days from the day they expire until someone can actually buy them again. So if this poor guy wants to lose the usefulness of his domain for 90 days (potentially more, up to 2 years) then he should indeed do a chargeback. Hell, if he
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ICANN FAQs. Also contact name server (Score:4, Informative)
ICANN FAQ on Domain Registrar Problems [icann.org].
ICANN Transfer Policies [icann.org]
ICANN Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy. [icann.org]
You may end up having to pay the miscreants a transfer fee. They do have to release registrar locks in a reasonable time with some reasonable process, though they can also hold the domain for 60 days after registration.
Contact registrar and get auth code (Score:1)
Good idea. Hopefully your domain is not on the registrar's nameservers.
You will not pay the losing registrar anything. You only have to pay the new registrar who is gaining the domain.
Cor
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Who (Score:3)
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Hell, I just got the annual "Update your records!" email from a half-dozen registrars at ICANN, and I can't help but find the irony in a registrar having inaccurate Whois records.
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Sucks for the rest of us who would be warned away from whatever scummy registrar this is, though.
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In otherwords, I can't call you a thief, rapist, child molester unless you actually WERE all of those things. If you were, then I could freely go about telling everyone about it.
In this case, he's within his rights to say that the registrar of his domain is incompetent, and has taken his money w
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He can say they're incompetent anyway, that's an opinion and thus cannot be libel.
As for not rendering services paid for, if he paid by credit card he's got a pretty good record that he did pay, and thus I say go for it, name names.
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That's not the way I learned it, and Wikipedia agrees. In the US, a true statement is not defamatory.
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Screwed, I should think (Score:2)
Try to get the credit charge reversed. And go fight for it!
Best of luck.
Ratboy
Get a lawyer (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think ICANN will offer you much recourse, and you may need to take legal action. Hence I say, hire a real lawyer to advise you properly.
In my estimation, you will probably be needing to contact them by sending a letter through certified mail, include a notice of their breach of the agreement, and demand they cooperate with your transfer of registration to alternative registrar, include the details.
Put them on official notice ASAP, spell out the details of how they are breaking your agreement to renew the domain, and what you demand of them immediately, and in the future, so they cannot claim ignorance, or that they "never received the message".
And be prepared to sue the registrar, if they won't make you whole. Bottom line: by expiring your domain, they fail to honor an agreement. By interfering with the proper transfer of your domain, they are injuring you.
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Then you can just pick it up via a decent registrar instead, and get your $$ back via your credit card company.
Take them to small claims. (Score:2)
If you have a site with a higher value, you may exceed the maximum damages limit. At that point you'd need a real lawyer and a full le
Your first step (Score:2)
Re:Your first step (Score:5, Informative)
The certified letter or lawyer are the best approach
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Snipe it (Score:4, Interesting)
http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefiniti
There is a probability that it won't work, but there's not much else to do without a team of lawyers.
Good luck.
-m
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Actually.. I think disputing the charges should be done as a last resort, if you decide it is futile, and you will just surrender the domain (allow them to expire it).
Once you succeed with a dispute, you will no longer have paid for the very domain you didn't want expired; you might have a heck of a time convincing a judge that you should get to keep both the domain and the money.
It may be more beneficial even to do research and prepare the paperwork + evidence gathering yourself, to petition for
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You only have 60 days from the transaction date to dispute the charge. If you must wait, wait till close to that date then file with the credit card company in writing. Yout have to get this started.
The credit card company traditionally asks the company if what you say is true and takes their word for it... and denies you in round one. But
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The cardholder first contacts his or her issuer (the cardholder's processor) to dispute the charge. Then, the issuer initiates a retrieval request on the transaction. The acquirer (the merchant's processor), receives the retrieval request and contacts the merchant for information on the transaction (The
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>>let your domain expire and snipe your own domain back
So your solution is to let him wait TWO YEARS? That's an awfully long time for internet visitors to remember.
Unless you want to get a lawyer, you're screwed. (Score:4, Informative)
So he's waiting for the domain to expire so he can pick it up under his real name. The registar (godaddy) refuses to help at all and he feels a lawyer is a waste of money. So for now he's stuck waiting because godaddy puts all expired domains up for auction for a period of days (registars should NOT be allowed to auction expired domains, conflict of interest - especially when they're causing the expiration).
I suspect many of the people out there who are currently parking domains and putting them up for auction are probably the registars, because it doesn't appear that they have to pay to register open domains, so why not speculate if it's free?
I'm not so sure that the new system is cheaper or easier than the old one. Back in the old days at least a phone call always could clear up any problems.
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I am sure the procedure varies from state to state, but in Texas, all you have to do is go to the county clerk's office and file an Assumed Name Certificate, which indicates that John Doe (that's you) is Doing Business As (DBA) Jane Smith. A certified copy of the filed certificate is official ID proving you are Jane Smith. It also helps to include a reference to this on business documents and financial t
Re:Unless you want to get a lawyer, you're screwed (Score:2)
File a "doing business as" or incorporate. The first is pretty cheap in most places; the other may cost a few bucks depending on local law. That will make it legal to business in that name, and GoDaddy will hopefully respect that.
No Offense intended but.... (Score:2)
I lost mine this way. (Score:2)
Post Registrar Recommendations Here (Score:2)
Schwab
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Personally I dig Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] for most of my domain stuff. They're a web hosting company and exceedingly nice people to work with, and they offer their own domain services as part of the web hosting package.
If you're not going for hosting alongside your domain, I'd suggest Yahoo [yahoo.com] oddly enough. They're basically just a reseller for Melbourne IT, but they're cheap, and I've had no troubles with them before. They can't handle full-out domain transfers as per my understanding, but have all the standard redirectio
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I can do one better with Godaddy (Score:1)
First time I've ever gotten a call from a Registrar, other than that one that called me saying I urgently needed to renew. (Was some other one trying to snipe registrations, like the "Domain
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Anyway, they've never given me any trouble
MelbourneIT are good. (Score:1)
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Best advice I can give you is (Score:4, Funny)
Just replace keys with your domain name.
E-Mail Them (Score:4, Interesting)
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It took me 7 years to get my email address updated so I could move a domain of to another registrar. I filed changes starting with the text form we all used to use 3 times, used the web forms 4 times and called and faxed letterhead 3 times. I finally got it released by transfering it to a friend in the UK.
I have no domains on NSI now but I must admint the web interface now, finally works. I am pretty sure it would not be usable without the competition of the cut rate registrars.
Anyone who
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Domain parking (Score:3, Interesting)
Now with that being said, as long as your contact info is still in whois for the domain you can work with the receiving registrar to get it transfered, I would suggest paying for Verisign or similar as a cut rate registrar isn't gong to spend the time to make 50 cents and you can transfer to a cut rate company after that. If your name isn't on the whois but the object creation date is still when your bought it then it has been stolen check the change logs to see when your name was removed.
My worst nightmare (Score:1, Informative)
A recent experience has made me rethink my move away from NetSol though...
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here are my thoughts... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to add my answers in the hopes of providing an explanation. Some of you don't have to agree with what I'm about to say, but I assure you this is based on how it works having been on both sides of the fence.
First, this is a reality each and every one of us has to expect: your provider can be bought out by another. Any business is negotiable, especially if the price is right.
We've got a lot of Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) going on for the past 2 years. Last I checked one registrar bought about 2-3.
One problem with these M&As is that things can go haywire when they finally start trying to make domain names with registrar (or reseller) A work with the systems of registrar (or reseller) B. No one knows if extensive testing was done, but this is definitely a requirement to ensure problems are kept to a minimum if not completely eliminated (the latter's better, of course).
As that reader complained (whoever s/he was), they never got the domain name to work with their systems (especially billing). So the reader couldn't unlock it nor renew or whatever.
I have an idea who this company is. And their circumstances is rather...unique.
The reader can complain to ICANN. Although ICANN doesn't get involved in individual customer complaints with registrars, similar to the FTC they monitor registrars' "trends" for any consistent patterns they detect and take it up with them.
To those who suggested disputing the credit card charges: I hate to say this but that should be a LAST resort. Domain registrars treat credit card disputes and chargebacks VERY seriously (especially fraud cases).
The moment they receive notice of such, they'll immediately lock up/suspend any domain name account/s whose first and last name matches that of the disputed credit card. I know it's unfair for many of you, but you have to realize that domain registrars, like any other business, have to protect themselves as much as possible.
Tell you what: if you've got the reader's contact details (or know the reader), ask him/her to contact me via email at DaveZan AT DaveZan DOT com (just change AT to @ and DOT to
If the registrar's who I think it is, I might even know one of their people. But again, I need specifics.
Thanks.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
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In some cases that's reasonable. But not always for domain matters.
We're so far assuming fraud from what the OP has stated. But unless
more specifics from all parties concerned are provided, no one can
100% accurately say such indeed occurred in that "case".
Unfortunately that's not always easy if one party isn't cooperative.
But if they're willing to shed light, then maybe we can figur
Why, just sue them! (Score:1)
Been there, done that. (Score:2)
ICANN Power (Score:1)
ICANN is directly responsible to the registrars and not to the third-party resellers of domain names. That being said there is definitely a need for ICANN to check up on the down-the-chain members of the domain name game to make sure the system is functional and honest. Somebody needs to get in gear and stop these many troubles, and ICANN is that organization!
ICANN should be the "rock" that anchors the whole kit and caboodle of Internet domain names firmly to reality. As the main source of authority conc
Network Solution is holding my domain hostage (Score:2)
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I don't know why you're having that problem. But I'll suggest the following:
1. Make sure your domain name is eligible for transfer. (e.g. it's paid, email address on record is valid, unlocked, got correct auth code.)
2. Start and fully confirm the request with the gaining registrar (Joker). Depending on how they