Domain Back Up… FINALLY!
- April 28, 2004
- 5 comments
Holy #%*(! I just had one major nightmare of a time trying to get my domain transfered from eNom to Network Solutions. I’m still in the process though, so the site may go down again for a little bit here and there.
Here’s what happened. A few years back, I registered this domain with a company called BurstNine. They were highly recommended and had a very professional looking site. I registered my domain for two years and went on about my business.
Well sometime in the last two years, BurstNine went out of business. Instead of them sending out an email letting people know they were dying and notifying them who would be their new registrar, they just died without even a whimper. Also, your registrar usually lets you know in advance your domain is going to expire in a few months. BurstNine didn’t do this either.
Fast forward to about 10 days ago. I decided I wanted to move as many of the domains I manage to Network Solutions as I could so renewal and such would be easier. That’s when I noticed that my domain was going to expire in less than 24 hours! Son of a...! So I initiated a transfer request through Network Solutions, naively thinking it would be a quick, painless process. I paid for two more years on the domain as well as the transfer. They told me an email had been sent to my administrative contact in the whois database. When I checked that out, it was an old, dead BurstNine address.
Soon after this, my domain expired and I could no longer view this site, show clients work I was doing or send/receive email, so I used my old Yahoo email account. I contacted Network Solutions and told them the whois info was old and out of date, so their emails would go nowhere. They came back with some canned response about how the transfer was in progress and would take so many days.
A few days later, nothing. I email them again, telling them the whois info is out of date and I need to change it so they can send the transfer authorization email to a valid address. They respond telling me there’s a registrar lock on my domain which will need to be removed before the transfer can happen. Only my registrar can remove the lock. So I do some digging and finally figure out my new registrar is a company called eNom. I contact them and ask them to change the whois info, but they can’t do it because I don’t have an account with them. I quickly register and they change the whois info.
The only problem was the email address they put in was my chrisruzin.net address, which had expired and was bouncing mail back. I figured out where I could change the info myself and altered it to show my Yahoo account. I remove the registrar lock and wait some more.
The only problem was that the registrar-lock would never disappear in the whois database! I tried changing several times, and my eNom control panel showed it was off, but the whois database showed otherwise. I contacted eNom again requesting they remove the lock, but never heard from them.
By this time, I’m completely confused as to where the transfer process is. I don’t know if Network Solutions needs to restart the process or what. I ask them, and get the same vague response of the transfer is in progress. So I wait again.
A few days later, STILL nothing has happened. I write NetSol again, and they tell me again the authorization emails were sent to the BurstNine address and my dead chrisruzin.net address, so please be patient. This really ticked me off and I told them as bluntly as I could that the two addresses were dead and they wouldn’t be receiving confirmations because no one would be reading the freakin’ emails!
Now, this morning I get two emails from NetSol. One telling me to cancel the transfer and another one telling me to confirm the transfer! What the?! This time I called them and they told me to ignore the cancellation email and follow the instructions on the confirmation email. It was simply a matter of clicking on a secure link and the process was underway. Now if they would only have listened to me immediately then this process would be a lot further ahead and there would’ve been less emailing and frayed nerves.
I will never again register a domain with some small-time company… never. Because of BurstNine’s lameness, what should’ve been a simple, painless transfer request was turned into a nightmare that crippled my business for a week.
I don’t sell things directly through my Web site, as you do, but all my current work for clients is stored under the domain. So I couldn’t show clients what work I had done. This is particularly bad right now, because of approaching bills and key points in two big projects. So instead of possibly being done and getting paid with one of them by now, I am just now able to get started on final approval of the design!
I’ll write more for you to read soon. 
Russ
April 28, 2004
I just read through what I wrote earlier, and I apologize for making it sound like there was a difference between what my business website does, and what your’s does. I was referring to personal websites in general, and I was referring to “anyone depending on their website for their source of income” as you and I.
Then again, maybe you didn’t take it that way at all, but it sure didn’t look right to me when I reread what I wrote. It’s 89 degrees here right now, and I don’t always think too clearly in the heat. 
Man, that’s a heck of an ordeal, Chris! Sorry to hear about all the trouble, but I’m glad you got it all straightened out.
I’m afraid I have some bad news to go along with it, though: I would have steered clear of Network Solutions (aka “Verisign”) like the plague. Go over to my site and do a search for “verisign” and you’ll see some of my thoughts (and reasons) on them…
The registrar I use and recommend these days is DirectNIC.
At first I thought you bailed out on us and went into hiding. Then I checked your whois info, and I noticed the date of April 18th as the anniversary of your domain name. My first guess was that your host pulled the plug on you because you didn’t pay the server bill for one reason or another. I have heard of people who had out of date credit cards on file, and the host couldn’t reach them in time, so the plug was pulled. Not so tramatic for a simple personal website, but an awful experience for anyone depending on their website for their source of income.
Anyway, glad to see you back. So start writing stuff again so I have something to read.