The RegisterFly Saga
This domain, the one you are visiting, is registered with a domain registrar known as RegisterFly. This domain was set to expire on the 11th of January. So, on the 11th of January I went and paid to renew the domain name. And so the saga begins.
They must like my traffic because they attempted to steal it…
You may have noticed that, when you attempted to view this site on the 12th of January that it was not here - that it had been replaced with a page that served ads.
Click the image thumbnails.
Here is the first order:
If you note the image you will see that there is a second order - this was done the following day after spending 4 to 6 hours in chat and getting no response and 4 hours on the phone, which entailed a hangup and the vast majority of the time was spent on hold waiting to talk to people who’s accents were so thick that I could barely understand them. I don’t care where their support it, it should be in a language that I can comprehend however. I don’t want perfection, just satisfactory.
So, I fired off a support request. I was fairly polite and used reasonably good grammar.
Now I don’t know who this person is but, I do know that I didn’t want a refund. I wanted the domain name renewed and that was fairly clear. But, well, here’s the response:
Now, renew, refund… Those are the same right? Umm… No. In fact the 11th is now over and this person has decided that they want to own my domain name. “Not so,” Says I…
I go back in and use the refund to do:
So I processed that and, wouldn’t you know it. They stole the domain name. All of a sudden not only is this domain not working but all of our clients who are using it as a nameserver are also not working. So countless hours go into this and getting them all fixed up one by one.
I tried their support chat… For 4 to 6 hours. No one came.
I tried their phone support, I waited two hours. The first guy hung up on me.
I tried their phone support. I waited two hours. They gave me back my domain name.
Now http://kgiii.info gets 10’s of thousands of page views per day. All of a sudden they are getting this traffic with curious people clicking their links. I am sure that their stealing my domain name was profitable for them. Not us, countless hours lost.
During this crisis I sent them this…
Needless to say they didn’t respond. I also sent some after the issue was “resolved” I suppose.
At this point “resolving” the problem isn’t enough. They have cost me a great deal of time and money. I offered them a chance to resolve it and waited until I felt it was a reasonable time to disclose their practices. Here is the last of my contact with them until after I have finished publishing this:
I want to avoid them attempting to complain so I will say this clearly;
This is in my opinion tantamount to theft and a horrific display of ethics and an abysmal excuse for “support.” In my opinion I am owed a great deal of money. I would have happily settled for an apology, perhaps a free year or two added to my renewal, or simply having had it renewed the first time. Personally I have never witnessed more blatant theft or incompetence with anything I have encountered and, trust me, I don’t lead a sheltered life.
The domain will be moved to NameCheap as soon as it is allowed to be transferred.
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January 15th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
The official complaint report:
The problem is “fixed” but that isn’t acceptable to me. There is nothing you can do to force them to make reparations so that is not within the scope of this contact. This contact is to inform you of the shady practices in use by RegisterFly.com and their either gross negligence or intentional theft. (It can only be one or the other.) At this point the domain name has been renewed though there were some really bothersome business/ethical choices made on their part in the process.
Rather than type it all out here and re-link I’ll just link you all:
The RegisterFly Saga:
http://blog.kgiii.info/2007/01/15/the-registerfly-sage/
Anyhow, thanks for looking into it.
January 15th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Why did you wait until the day your domain expired to renew it? I usually renew mine weeks, if not monnths beforehand. At the risk of sounding like a tool: if the name is so valuable to you, act like it and don’t wait until the last minute to pay your bargain basement registrar.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Ah - good question Jim. The reason is that gmail, in their wisdom, ate my emails from RegisterFly as SPAM and I don’t /normally/ have problems with them and false positives.
Normally I give a 45 day leeway and thus haven’t had any issues. And while I agree that it is a great question and a great point the fact remains that I shouldn’t have to and that I renewed in plenty of time for it to not have expired.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Just a question concerning typical domain name registrar practices:
Isn’t a common practice among domain name registrars to provide a grace period beyond renewal due date?
January 15th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Yes and it is also common for them to put ad serving pages on your site as soon as it expires. That is common - just, in this case, it had already been paid to be renewed and thus there was no justification for them having done so.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
hmmm - so if you please, help me understand clearly > so during the renewal grace period typically they substitute their companies pages for your site
January 15th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Yes that is typical. Once it expires it is no longer owned by you but they have a grace period where they hold onto it before dumping it back into the pool or, more commonly, selling it at inflated prices. While it is in the grace period they typically alter the nameservers to their own and then lock the domain to prevent transfer or changes to the settings. They then make an effort to make money by serving ads on your traffic.
January 15th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Don’t register with RegisterFly. I have heard bad things about them myself.
Register with Namecheap (I do), Moniker or GoDaddy.
I’m very sorry to hear that happen to you.
January 15th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I register with NameCheap normally but, this one had the nameservers of our customers used for it. Now they’ve been pulled off and so we can just go ahead and transfer it to NameCheap and away from RegisterFly.
It is sad really. It is either complete and total inability to do the job they’re accredited to do or an actual effort to steal the domain name or at least to profit off their own in-action. Absolutely pathetic.
January 15th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Regardless of whether or not you waited til the last minute to register, your domain name should have NOT been back in the pool that quickly. It was probably first gross negligence, and then total theft.
They saw an opening and took it. I’m just glad you got it back. Will definitely remember to not use RegisterFly and will steer anyone else away from them.
Man… your commentSPAM protection *would* have to be math, wouldn’t it?
*gets out calculator*
January 15th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
even IF you SOMEHOW you were mistaken > somehow — the support you are descibing is utterly UGLY!! And for such a bizzness such strikes me as completely disgusting…
January 15th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Thank you for your support and kind words. Yeah, it is simple math though.
It shouldn’t have gone anywhere - it was paid to be renewed in plenty of time. They simply didn’t renew it after being paid and the order processed. I’d hate to claim that it was intentional theft without proof but there are all sorts of reasonable conclusions one can draw from the evidence on their own if they’d like.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Alright. Here’s a response…
I did take out the private material. Let us be careful to NOT provide them with justification to request a take-down notice nor make threats. If we keep it informational, factual, and present opinions as opinions as opposed to fact (libel vs. freedom) then we’re all set.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Some more fun links:
http://www.stopunifiednames.com/
They really didn’t think I was just going to let this go did they?
January 17th, 2007 at 4:29 am
Hi,
This is all too painful
I have domains expiring as we speak, probably spent over $300 trying to renew them, which has never been returned. They are not with enom & keep failing , Can an expert tell me what I can/should do ?
I cant transfer them out now, what is the best thing to do to get them back ???
January 17th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
About the only thing you probably can do is to wait on hold, get hung up on, call back until you do get them (each time waiting on hold for a couple of hours) to fix it. You can try leaving support requests and try to chat but those don’t seem too effective.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I had the same problems as everyone else. Funniest part?? THEY TELL EVERYONE “Wow, I haven’t heard that from anyone else….” MORONS. Anyway, I got a helpful gentlemen at Enom. If you are having problems with *Garbage*Fly, email customercare@enom.com and request in writing your authorization codes. Explain your problems, list the domains you want auth codes for, and they’ll send them to you. As soon as you’re able: GET YOUR PRECIOUS DOMAINS THE HELL OUT OF THERE!
January 19th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
RegistrFly tried to rip me off on an SSL cert. I never could generate the certificate on their bug ridden website and could not get anyone to help me for 3 days. I couldn’t even get in touch with anyone for a refund so I had to call AMEX and charge back and then they lied to AMEX saying that I received the certificate. AMEX saw it my way.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I too have been taken by registerfly.com My problem is a little more disturbing.
in 2005, I renewed my name for two (2) years, which would set me to expire on 12-15-2007. You will never guess what happened. On 12-15-2006, I lost my domain name. It is now in extended redemption status and I will most likely be forced to pay the $160 extortion that enom, inc. (registerfly.com was a reseller for them) wants to charge to get my domain back. This is flat out ridiculous, and I know I am not the only one going through this.
June 25th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
things were much simpler when netso ran everything. never had a complaint with them.