Another Voice Against Registerfly.com
I wanted to take a moment and pass along this warning against an allegedly ICANN-accredited registrar called Registerfly.com. Sad to say that although they seemed to operate well in the past and their services were at a reasonable price, that is no longer the case. In fact, participants at a forum called registerflies.com (caution: adult language) allege unethical business practices, poor performance, contractual terms that border upon the unconscionable, and even outright fraud and theft of domain names. As for myself, I can only allege spectacular incompetance and non-existant customer service. Here is my experience in a nutshell, as I posted it on another blog--1) I was a customer of Registerfly since 2000 or 2001. Back in those days, they were not a registrar in their own right, but only a reseller of eNom.com's registry services. No serious problems...
2) ...until last October (2006). At that point, one of my domains was set to expire on 10/18. But there was a descrepancy between my control panel and my whois information, one of which showed 10/1 (rather than 10/18). In consequence, it appeared that my domain prematurely expired on 10/1.
3) I discover the issue when I was unable to transfer my domain because it had prematurely expired. (At this point, the transfer attempt was only periperally related to Registerfly--I liked GoDaddy.com better and was consolidating all my domains there). I don't recall if it took multiple calls to do this, but when I contacted Registerfly, it took several days to fix the error. But, just then, the domain was set to expire for real, so I was forced to renew the domain with Registerfly first. BUT: To renew the domain, it had to be transferred away from eNom (this was back when registerfly was a reseller). After numerous failed transfer attempts and phone calls, the domain renewed and transferred successfully. Of course, I paid them twice based on some bad guidance I received at one point, but I made sure the domain renewed for two years, which they seemed to have done. If we ended the story right here, I would conclude that they're mediocre at best.
4) But then something bizarre happens: a) Ever since November 2, I started receiving nightly "transfer failed" notices in my email, even though I *know* that the domain transferred successfully (and I've verified this against several independent whois and dns lookups). b) The sum of $8.99 (that's the renewal fee) gets "refunded" into my so-called "Quick Pay" account, even though I didn't pay Registerfly.com any more money. (Registerfly's policy is never to refund for failed services...they instead merely establish a credit balance in your favor, called "Quick Pay," but that balance can only be used against future Registerfly orders.)
5) As if things couldn't possibly get more bizarre, they do. You know what I did? I'm trying to be honest--even with people who aren't very nice-- so I open up a trouble ticket to point out the technical glitch that was working *against* them. You know what they do in response? THEY IGNORED THE TICKET! In fact, except for two instances where they debited nominal sums against the Quick Pay account, they've taken no action...in fact, they will even close out or delete the complaint! On one ticket alone, Registerfly tried to close it out no less than four times without resolving the issue. I finally advised them that I was not going to babysit their billing department any longer.
6) Oh, and did I mention that at one point, I sat in their hold queue for over 30-40 minutes prior to being dumped into voice mail? At long distance rates, no less!!
I'm not going to do anything with the Quick Pay account, as tempting as that might seem. I'm just going to take the high road as to that. But I'll be curious to see how far the balance rises before they finally quit playing games (if at all). Meanwhile, I only have two domains left with r'fly. I will let one expire outright (because it's no longer needed), and the other will be transferred out as quickly as I am able to do so. Thankfully, I safely transferred out two domains already.
In all this, I can't say I've been ripped off as yet (knock on wood). But it is clear that r'fly treats their customers as adversaries. You almost wonder if they actually go out of their way to make people upset.
To those who have reported good experiences all along, all I can say is, be thankful. But I would submit to you that you haven't had any reason to call customer service or open a trouble ticket, either. When you do--and sooner or later, you will--you will rue the day you even considered use of this company.
***
Just as a postscript to the above: Registerfly finally stopped posting credits to my account as of yesterday (January 3). How did this happen? I finally was able to reinitiate the transfer of the domain over to GoDaddy.com. Once the transfer began in earnest, and the domain was updated to a "Transfer Pending" status, that seemed to kick me out of Registerfly's broken transfer process.
Labels: Bad Faith, Dishonorable Mentions, Fraud, Registerfly
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home