Desperately need help in saving our domain name!

[lacantina]

Ciao all,

I am posting on this forum as we have come across a horrible domain name situation and don't know what to do...

I renewed our domain name for another year on the 2nd of February, the domain expiry date was the 9th of March.

I did this through Bravenet, our web host.

5 days later they get back to me and say that because their registrar (Directi) has had legal problems, they're transfering all their domain names on to another registrar (Dodora). All we had to do was approve the transfer.

I approved the transfer and was told there would be no downtime, no extra fees and no problems.

Today Bravenet emails me and tells me that our domain has "expired" and so it can't be transferred on to another registrar and has thus gone into a redemption period.
So to get the domain name out of redemption from the previous registrar (Directi) is going to cost us 175 USD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe there is no other way out of this. I've replied to Bravenet and begged them to help us out, we've been promotiong the domain for an entire year and can't afford to lose it now.

So I am asking you guys, is there ANYTHING else we can do? Or do we have to put up with paying 175 dollars to have our domain name back?

Your help is much much much appreciated...!

lacantina :-(

[MarcieZoob]

Don't pay anything just yet!

Take a look at the WHOIS record for your domain by clicking on the link below. It does not expire until March 9, 2005. It shows Dodora as the ICANN Registrar; there is a link to their site on the WHOIS record.

http://www.whois.sc/lacantinaproductions.com

[lacantina]

That's what I thought as well, how can Bravenet say it's expired when the expiry date is the 9th of March?

But here is their email:

"Unfortunately as this domain name had expired 2005-03-09, it cannot be transferred to another registrar and has expired.

The expired domains currently go into a redemption period, the cost from our previous registrar to bring this out of the redemption period would be $175 USD."

I also got the registrar names confused, they're moving from Dodora to Directi, not vice versa...so our domain name is still in the hands of their old registrar who is basically asking for 175 dollars to release it...

What can I do??

la cantina :-(

[MarcieZoob]

2005-03-09

It hasn't expired yet, the date they gave you is 3 weeks away.

According to your WHOIS record, your ICANN Registrar is Dodora. Click on the link I provided you and then click on the link in the WHOIS information to Dodora.

[lacantina]

I did.

Problem is that Bravenet manages our domain "on our behalf" with Dodora.

Hence I don't have an account with Dodora that I can manage.

Bravenet never told us they did this, I always thought Bravenet was the registrar and no one else was involved.

Is there any way out?

lacantina :-(

[MarcieZoob]

Here's the contact info on your domain name, as viewed on the WHOIS record:

Registrant Name : Jerry Spina (3253619572)
Admin Name : Jerry Spina
Tech Name : Jerry Spina

Are you Jerry Spina? Is your email address lcp-business@yahoo.net? If so, this is your domain and you are the contact/registrar/owner.

Stop contacting BraveNet and, as I stated in my two posts above, GO TO DODORA'S WEB SITE.

[lacantina]

Ok, I might be misunderstanding this, but:

I went to the Dodora website but there is no way for me to renew the domain through them as I have no user name or password to log in with. I was never given one!

I can't even contact their customer support unless I have a username and password.

When I got the webhosting deal with bravenet, a year's domain registration was included. Bravenet has registered the domain for us with Dodora. We had nothing to do with it.

Make a bit more sense?

What I should maybe ask is, can I obtain the username and password from Bravenet?

lacantina :-(

[chiron]

I am jumping into this with no research (like your WHOIS, etc) but I have some really simple advice:

Call the Dodo people, and RAISE H3LL.

There are also some other options I have used in the past when I was frightened of losing my domain(s) here or there, and one that works all right (though you might need to be prepared to be "down" for 24-72 hours during a DNS/registrar transfer) is to go to a big-name site like register.com or etc, renew there for $20 or whatever, and they will usually pull the domain for you, too, in terms of yanking the "ownership" and control away from these other morons.

[pswms]

1. It is not even expired, unless March 9, 2005 happens differently there than it does here on Maui.
2. Go try to register the name with godaddy or bluedomino or even verio. If it is expired, its yours. If it is in the redemption period, which seems to be the registrars' new gimmick for making lots of money by scaring everyone -- let it expire, wait and renew it when it is released. Nobody is waiting to pounce on these things anymore. There are just too many great names available and so many TLD's. . ...

[lacantina]

Thanks for all your replies!

Bravenet got back to us a few days ago saying "we greatly apologize, but your domain name CAN be transfered to our new registrar with no problems, the transfer has been initiated"

They never said why, and it was such a relief for me that I didn't even ask them. But now that I think about it, they either confused February with March, or tried to squeeze 175 USD from us!

My question now is, how long are these transfers meant to take? I'm not going to feel safe until I get confirmation the transfer was successful. It's already been 5 working days and nothing's happened.

And second, how do I get out of the situation we're in? We renew our domain thru Bravenet as it is part of our web hosting plan. They deal with the registrars "on our behalf". So problem is, although on WHOIS the domain is under my name, Bravenet manages it! So how do I get the capability to manage the domain myself back from Bravenet??
Simply coz I wouldn't want these problems happening ever again...

Thanks!

lacantina

[frjim]

Dear Lacantina,

Maybe this will work:

1. Call the new registrar (not Braveheart) on the phone, and ask what your status is.

2. If there's a problem, tell them your situation
and ask them to solve it.

3. Tell them you want to deal directly with them,
and not with Braveheart; you want the entire matter
out of Braveheart's hands.

4. After your problem is solved, change hosts.
Do not discuss this with Braveheart (you appear to
have had enough discussion with them to last a while). Just do it.

Hope this helps--

Fr. Jim <><

[JKomp]

I think the problem was your early renewal, unwittingly during a time when some major chnages were going on with bravent, leading to confusion over expiry dates.

[lacantina]

Thanks for your replies again!

But things seem to have got worse...

The first transfer didn't go through for unknown reasons.

Bravenet re-initiated the transfer, I clicked on all the confirmation emails sent to our domain admin email and was told everything would be ok this time.

It's been 10 days and nothing's happened again. I've asked Bravenet what's going on and they still haven't replied to my support request. Tried calling and can't get through. The domain expires on the 9th of March.

I've pretty much lost hope in saving our domain by now.

So what are my options? We renewed the domain more than a month before the expiry date and because of these companies messing about we've lost it. Can I make an official complaint somewhere? Is there any organisation out there who can protect our rights as customers? We've lost the USD 14.95 for the domain renewal and our domain name. I feel ripped off.

Any help is much appreciated!

lacantina

[davestarr]

haven't seen a post from lacantina since 7th Mar, so maybe this is solved. A valuable object lessin, no matter what the outcome is, though.

Do not allow any web hosting company, web designer or any thrid-party to deal with your domains .. if they are in any way important to you.

Register your domain with a reputable registrar with yourself as the administative contact. (by the way, $14.95 is well overpriced in today's market) www.godaddy.com works well for me,

Use an email address in the administrative contact that is _not_ an address in the domain in question (so you won't be out of contact if the domain is not 'live'.

'lock' the domain. If your registrar doen't offer locking, you need a different registrar.

Set the domain to auto renew, again, a good registrar will offer this service.

Design, devlop, propsper