Some Hope During Registerfly's Meltdown

hookmeister writes "If you registered your domain at Registerfly.com, then you should know it may be locked, and you are at the moment unable to access it through Registerfly's website (video). You may even be unable to renew your domain because it has expired into a status known as 'redemption' through no fault of your own. By all accounts there are just under 2 million domains at risk here. Enom dumped them as a reseller; their SSL cert has expired; it's a mess. Fortunately the principals in this are trying to restore order. The external website registerflies.com, originally crafted as a gripe-zone and forum for Registerfly users, has gotten inside the ranks of the post-shakup Registerfly management, made some friends and connections, and is creating a back-door problem-reporting form that goes directly to those who can correct a domain problem. The official Registerfly support ticketing system remains clogged with thousands of unanswered complaints."

Comments

Registerfly?

[zaydana]

Excuse my ignorance, but what actually happened in the first place? I'm kinda confused as to what has happened to registerfly? I'm presuming its a registrar, but that doesn't actually tell me all that much...

Re:Registerfly?

[EvanED]

Well, judging by the headline, its coolant failed and it went all Chernobyl.

Re:Registerfly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Registerfly used to be an eNom reseller, but recently became an independent registrar. In the process they left a large number of accounts as orphans with eNom. Those account holders, who I happen to be one of, received notices from both eNom and Registerfly several days after the accounts had been orphaned. Both companies were kind enough to offer to transfer the domain for a fee. Seems like it should be free since they decided to split their business not me. I may have to split after this treatment.

Re:Registerfly?

[hookmeister]

Yes Registerfly is Domain name regisration company. like Network Solutions, and GoDaddy.com ... when the post was written, registerfly's site was still up , so i assumed it would be self eveident to anyone not already aware but curious about it. -- Now www.regsiterfly.com is down because the 2 guys from inside the company that can fix it, are fixing it, right at the datacenter. ( they had to lock out one of the partners first, that guy was the one causing all the trouble) its a long story.

best read for the moment can be found here http://registerflies.com/welcome-to-the-registerfl y-gripe-site-6.html

A lot of people have been burned by the circumstances leading up to this.

Re:Registerfly?

[Talez]

To do a transfer between registrars you need to add a year to the registration term and charge another year of rego:

From the Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars:

8. Effect on Term of Registration

The completion by Registry Operator of a holder-authorized transfer under this Part A shall result in a one-year extension of the existing registration, provided that in no event shall the total unexpired term of a registration exceed ten (10) years.

eNorm shouldn't be charging for transfers though since the Registrar of Record should remain unchanged.

Re:Registerfly?

[AlHunt]

Both companies were kind enough to offer to transfer the domain for a fee.

Actually, at some point enom was offering to allow registerfly customers to become enom.com customers at no cost:
scroll down about 2/3 of the way and see the section "OPTION 1".

Re:Registerfly?

[cmacb]

I remember getting burned a few years ago by a hosting company. I had every reason to believe from their website that they were a good sized outfit that was a subsidiary to one of the local phone companies in Florida. All the photos of their "datacenter" were so convincing, and in fact for a couple of years the services was quite OK. But then screwy things started happening that should have shouted out to me: "This company is operating on a shoestring budget in some kids parent's basement!".

Actually it turned out to be a small warehouse office space with a few servers and high school drop-outs for staff. The tie-in with the phone company was total BS and some sleuthing revealed that the other family business was closer to being a fertilizer business (no really!) than anything else. I got off that system just in time. I lost some things, but not much, people who waited a bit longer lost everything including access to their domains etc.

When I looked for a replacement I was much more careful to look for telltale signs that it was the same kind of, for lack of a better term "soft-fraud" operation. I think I got pretty good at it, but what scared me was the percentage of fairly well known companies that were using the same boilerplate text and generic graphics of their facilities. One thing I especially looked for was if no actual peoples names appeared on the web site. Big companies have "Chairmen" and "CEOs" who love to get their pictures on the corporate web site. These fly-by-night outfits on the other hand just have support contact numbers that go to an answering machine and not indication that anyone associated with the company wants their actual name to show up anywhere. You have to wonder why. Or maybe you don't.

I'm almost positive that Registerfly (and I think they had a hosting come-on too) was one of these fairly obvious scam operations. I'm SOOOO glad I stayed away.

My hope is that in the not too distant future Google and some other big names will get into the free-to-low-cost hosting and registration business and put these low-life vermin out of our misery.

I was one of those people

[Anonymous Coward]

Enom sent out a rather vague email that sounded a bit like spam when I first read it. They told me how I needed to transfer my domain... blah blah blah. Then a day or so later, I received a notice from registerfly that this previous email spoke truth. Registerfly also wants me to spend money on domains that I have already "paid up" on so to speak. I'm not making a move on this until I see what is coming of it. I may go to someone else entirely. I just keep wondering - why did they make a change effective Feb. 1, 2007, yet take until Feb. 6, 2007 to notify me of something they had been planning for a year or longer?

Re:I was one of those people

[Rakishi]

To prevent you from having as many options and thus being as likely to switch to another registrar as soon as you heard what was coming?

Re:I was one of those people

[cheater512]

Just so you know, Currently Enom has your domains. You dont need to pay them a thing by doing what their email says.

You *have* to do what the email says to transfer elsewhere I think anyway.
Until you do so the domains arent associated with any account.

Simply awesome

[jyoull]

They ripped me off for the price of two transfers-in that never happened ($15) then when I disputed the charges on the credit card (the money was charged but never refunded), RegisterFly "seized" a dozen totally diffent paid-up domains of mine and marked them "fraudulent," taking them offline with no notice.

These domains were completely unrelated to the two that were never transferred in but for which I was billed. RegisterFly staff called me names on the phone, and finally handed them back in exchange for my payment of a $75 ransom over their threats that if I didn't pay up, they'd sell them, as was their "right" under their unconscionable contract terms.

I hope everyone affiliated with running the scam known as Registerfly burns in hell.. and my friends who didn't listen to my advice to get out of their while they still could: sorry suckers, but i tried to warn you.

Re:Simply awesome

[mike2R]

Just curious, but there seem to be a number of posts about these guys playing fast and loose with peoples credit cards; has anyone tried to complain to whoever provides their card services (or Visa/MasterCard directly)? What parent describes is a blatant violation of the contract they will have signed to allow them to accept card payments, and the card companies and merchant services providers have very little patience for small businesses doing this sort of thing.

Any recommended registrars out there?

[Anonymous Coward]

After the GoDaddy debacle, I tried to transfer my domains to Domainsite.com but they appear to be drunk at the moment (they cancelled my transfers and then sent me a notice that my refund failed - I've been calling and emailing for weeks now with no response).

What is a reasonable registrar, these days?

Re:Any recommended registrars out there?

[daeg]

Read: http://nodaddy.com/

In short: Some guy was hosting automated archives of mailing lists. Someone sent a list of MySpace usernames and passwords through the list, which were automatically archived. MySpace threw a hissy fit. Instead of filing any legal paperwork, or even bothering to contact the owner, they went straight to GoDaddy and said "This site is hosting illegal content. Pull it down." GoDaddy complied, no questions asked. GoDaddy didn't contact the owner, either.

Note: the site wasn't even hosted with GoDaddy. GoDaddy was merely the registrar.

Well

[sulli]

Should have stuck with Network Solutions, then! I always say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Well

[Apple Acolyte]

I hope this post was a joke, but if it wasn't everyone who is currently with Network Solutions should know what kind of company it is. You can read all about it on various sites, or you can read my personal horror story with NetSol. NetSol stinks.

What Happened?

[Mysteerie]

From what I heard Kevin Medina was fired (one of the partners) of Register Fly. Obviously, disgruntled about bieng forced out, decided to mess with the backend systems of registerfly. Thus thier own support department wasn't able to access thier systems to correct any issues, etc...

Explanation:-

[gigne]

In case anyone has no idea what this is all about, I summarised the points:

* Joint Director Kevin Medina was removed from the company for embezzlement of funds due to Registerfly's inability to pay it's upsream registrars.

source http://registerflies.com/docman/cat_view.html

complaints Filed in new Jersey:- Claims
1) Wiring 3x $9000 to personal accounts
2) $10000 to pay rent on apartment on a monthly basis
3) Paying large personal credit card bills
4) $6000 for liposuction
5) tens of thousands on "personal spending"

* they terminated Kevin Medina
http://registerflies.com/docman/doc_download-5.htm l

* Kevin Medina caused other untold system problems *not verified from any source, just speculation on registerflies

* Registerfly seem to be concentrating on fixing this.

Pretty confusing though.

Re:Explanation:-

[multimed]

When I see the comment about liposuction, I start to wonder...It just feels like a smear campaign. That said, if all or some of that stuff is true, it's still no excuse for the crap they've pulled. I don't care what backend damage he did, I waited for 2 hours to talk to a tech support person. When I did, the connection was so awful, static was fading in and out and oh by the way, I could hear parts of other people's conversations! And after all of this, of course anyone who's called them will know the answer - try again later. This former CEO may have done whatever sabotage/fraud whatever. But whoever else was running things chose to treat the customers like garbage too.

Your register fly is down

[revolu7ion]

So they're flying low?
XYZ?
Their hanger door is open?
They've got Windows in their laptop
We can see their Gun of Navarone?

I have more...

Long Time Coming

[NilObject]

I've seen this coming for a long time. I chronicled my trials and tribulations of trying to get my domain names back on my blog, which some people may find interesting:

http://fallingbullets.com/blog/2006/dec/10/registe rfly-scam/

Thankfully, I managed to get all my domains back.

Demand that ICANN invoke para. 3.2.3

[Animats]

It's time for ICANN to invoke paragraph 3.2.3 of the Registrar Agreement. The Registrar then has ten days to provide a data dump of all their registrations, allowing bulk transfer of a failing registrar's data to another registrar.

personal experience at IYD.com

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of phishy goings on in the registrar business. I'm not a squatter myself so I don't transfer domains in and out of registrars on a daily basis. I just have one domain. ItsYourDomain is where I'm at now. Haven't been screwed yet. Slightly more expensive than GoDaddy, but it seems to be run by real people. I'm sure there are some other good, maybe even better ones. Sort of like I'm not convinced bash is the best shell, but its good enough that Its not worth my time to research anything else. Unless some one were to reply to my post...

Can enom be trusted?

[Futurepower(R)]

Can enom, and therefore enom resellers, be trusted? Did enom do anything incompetent or abusive? You seem to imply they did.

See this recent Slashdot story with recommended domain name registrars.