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Registerfly's Accreditation Terminated by ICANN
Punker22 writes "Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly.com's accreditation. Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously. 'Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers,' Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today."
a little backstory wouldn't hurt
I've been trying to transfer my fiancee's small business domain from them over to DynDNS for about a month with no success. I tried initiating the transfer through GoDaddy's management tools (which seem to be really geared towards domain squatting, btw) and found nothing useful. It's a real rat's nest in there. Initiating the transfer from DynDNS got us nowhere. No transfer request notification is ever sent by GoDaddy, and everything silently fails a week or so later.
She's so frustrated with it that at this point, she'd rather wait for the domain to expire and just re-register with someone else. Understanding how easy it is for someone to snatch up a freshly expired domain, I'm thinking that's a bad idea.
Has anyone else had a similar problem (or success?) trying to transfer away from GoDaddy? We are running out of ideas.
Great we know the outcome... bur how about a link to the REASON as well. "Management Issues" doesn't seem like something to yank a certification over.
Now, if they would only follow suit with Tucows.
I have a domain at with of their resellers which can not be contacted. (In fact their site certificate expired last October.) Unfortunately, Tucows offers absolutely no recourse, and the phone number listed in the whois will let you sit on hold forever, and eventually (after an hour or so) spit you into a voicemail box, which goes unanswered. Likewise, the email contact forms simply forward to the resellers. Very useful.
The reseller is domainsnare.net, which is also related to mailsnare.net. Not recommended...
Just goes to show you how strange the Internet is, i say there should only be one person that does the registration of domains, and not all these half-baked companies
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
With Registerfly. Glad to see they finally get what they deserve.
(The problem was around December last year and was fixed without the help of Registerfly. Fuck 'em.)
I wank in the shower.
I like the link thingies better. :)
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Your dislike of GoDaddy for political reasons may be valid, but functionally, they aren't bad at all.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Previous Slashdot article
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
From the first linked article above:
:-)
RegisterFly.com, which according to ICANN has its offices at 4th Floor, 404 Main Street, Boonton, NJ
With that address, what did people expect?
FWIW the Registerfly main page still displays the ICANN logo, and based on a little experimentation a short while ago it seems that I could still register a domain there if I was so foolish to want to give them my money.
They seem to be taking that letter very seriously.
The grandparent post does not mention any political reasons... why did the parent get modded +5.
While OpenSRS's interface is clunky, at least you have this option.
Really all I want to know is what happened to th $6000 chihuahua and if someone will manage to pick up Michael Jackson's website because the news is always exactly 758.34% more entertaining when Whacko Jacko and chihuahuas are involved.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
No worries M. Coward. I hope you enjoy your day as well. Actually, talking about bullshit, I don't have a bull. But can I interest you in some of my shit? If yes, I'll take some photos and upload them for you. Fine matured shit.
I wank in the shower.
True, but it is spelt correctly in my URL link that is under my name. And that is good enough for me. :)
I wank in the shower.
Go to http://godaddy.com/registerfly and get a special rate and they'll petition ICANN directly for you.
[ check out my ruby book @ http://ww
See where you can find your EPP auth codes in the RegisterFly control panel
I had heard very good things about Namecheap for sometime so I transferred all my RegisterFly domains there this morning and everything went smoothly. For those interested in Namecheap, use coupon code "marchmadness" to get $7.99 transfers instead of $8.88. This coupon code isn't associated with me in anyway.
I feel terrible for those people whose records are actually lost; keeping their domains will be next to impossible. It seems like, with that many contracts in play and the willful destruction of data, that Kevin Medina ought to be liable for at least money, if not jail time...
StoneCypher is Full of BS
ANUS pwns RL.
It's amazing. Several years ago I had about 20 domains with them. I transferred there from another eNom reseller because I fancied their WHOIS Protection service (I believe they were one of the first to offer it. GoDaddy had it at the time, but it was $9/year. RegFly had it for 99 cents on sale).
:)
Anyway, I was happy with their features and price for quite a long time. Their control panel always had some issues, but I still thought it was a good deal. Then, about a year or so ago, they really started sucking. I was experiencing MASSIVE control panel issues, where features were getting turned on-and-off at will, and I couldn't get changes to stick. Eventually, I just got sick of it all and went to a new register.
Looks like I missed out on when things REALLY got fun
Now I usually just switch between NameCheap.com (for domains I care about) and 1and1.com (for throwaway, testing, and speculative domains). (PS, I wouldn't recommend 1and1 unless you're a cheap bastard who doesn't mind a little frustration with their strange control panel and customer service).
Well, duh. That's what happens when you make domain registration an open market. Registration is not a complicated product, so the only way vendors can compete is price. The natural result is a service like GoDaddy which charges a few bucks for a single registration, and provides a corresponding level of service. And why is it news that they facilitate domain squatting? They (and a lot of other registrars) have been advertising cheap bulk registrations for years. And why shouldn't they? If we say, "Compete any way you can", this is the natural result.
If it were up to me, we'd go back to one having one registrar that charges $35/year for every second-level domain. No, better yet, raise it to $100 a year. Allow the registrar a reasonable profit, and put the rest of the money into something useful: research, or bridging the digital divide.
Shazam! No more domain squatting. It's not longer profitable. And that single registrar has every incentive to provide good service: if they don't, they lose their cash cow.
"No way! Why should I have to pay that much for my personal domain name??!!" Hey, if a vanity web site is that important to you, you should shell out. If not, get a third-level domain. When a web site contains nothing but family photos and rants about gun control, nobody cares whether its on JoeBlow.com or JoeBlow.CheapISP.com.
But of course that's never going to happen: ICANN couldn't possibly stand up to all the whinning that would result. So we're stuck with the current situation, and there's no use complaining about companies like GoDaddy. So you're just going to have to live with domain squatting. And remember that when it comes to registering your domain, you get what you pay for.
You like their control panel?? I hate that slow,clunky thing with all my heart.I liked their previous one much better.
And coupled with all the Godaddy horror stories Ive been hearing lately, its making my decision to transfer my 50+ domains to namecheap and moniker (never keep all your eggs in one basket).
ICANN had already invoked the "provide backup copy of registrar data" provision of the Registrar agreement, which requires that, on demand, any registrar provide ICANN with a backup copy of the registrar's data in a standard format. RegisterFly didn't comply.
That data isn't lost, though. There's a source of backup WHOIS data. Try DomainTools, which maintains copies of all WHOIS and DNS data. So if you need to prove domain ownership after RegisterFly shuts down, there's a way.
I just saw on their site a pop-up.. RegisterFly refugees can use the promo code "FLYAWAY" to get a year of their L1 hosting (like 200GB of storage, 2TB of transfer/month, free registration) for free from now until the end of the month..
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other registrar/hosts do things like this to "help out" what's left of their customer base!
If I may put in a plug for my registrar - Namesdirect, a/k/a Mydomain.com. I've been with them for eight years, smooth and stable operation. Recently had a problem transferring a domain name from 1&1internet to Mydomain, but after an email and phone call, they straightened it out.
While I have no experience with the registrars mentioned here, I think the problems described are bound to happen when a business tries to sell its product or service too cheap. This is why I won't deal with Godaddy. Their Superbowl ads might be interesting, but those come with a huge cost, and I think that money would be better spent on the business infrastructure, rather than flashy "cool" advertising. I just think back to all the dot coms that advertised on the Superbowl in 1999 - almost every one disappeared by 2001.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
The co- owner's were gay lovers and after there personal relationship soured things went south. One of the partners wanted to buy into RF for 500,000 and the transaction went all the way to having the stock shares printed and than the jilted lover did not cough up the 500,000 and that was when he made the allegations of lipo and prostitutes and fancey cars as he stole the company right out from under the owner Kevin. Kevin took him to court and the the court rightly ruled that Kevin's partner's stock was null and void and that Kevin was the rightful owner. This was a week ago and yesterday ICANN stripped RF. Here are the court documents : http://www.registerflies.com/docman/cat_view-11.ht ml/
Two heads, who happened to be ex-lovers got into a fight. One (John) in conjunction with a board member fired the other (Kevin). This went to court just last week I believe. Kevin holds majority owner ship of the company and was awarded control once again.
Meanwhile ICANN was had issued several notices to correct these issues are lose accreditation. This week ICANN made good on its threat. A lot of people lost domains due to problems RegisterFly started having long before the news picked this up.
Mike Zupke from ICANN has stepped in and has been helping RegisterFly customers obtain authorization codes on locked accounts (with a good deal of luck). Likewise eNom, whom RegisterFly was originally a reseller, has been helping customers who were unaware of the shift (eNom terminated its agreement with RegisterFly effective I believe at that start of this month) retrieve domains RegisterFly had hold of (ProtectFly, RegisterFly's whois/privacy service made some of this more difficult).
Renewals for clients that were eNom registered (though the reseller program) probably didn't even realize RegisterFly wasn't in fact their registrar (RegisterFly communicated the eNom's whois through a backend API, so you could manage domains seemlessly without realizing it).
Auth code can be difficult to get, but no matter what now that ICANN finally has stepped in a little patience and you will get your domain.
The best single source for real information is RegisterFlies who apparently intend to stay on after the end of this debacle and become a source for information and help with other domain registry issues. They have a big help and there are a lot of people there going through the same thing.
Quack, quack.
You must have either a short memory or you missed out on all the fun. NamesDirect suffered a massive meltdown of its DNS servers a few years back, leaving hundreds of thousands of domains in the dark for a week or more. They did not have sufficient capacity or redundancy in their servers and did not communicate with their customers for days. Perhaps it's better now, but as soon as I could, I transferred my domains out of there and would never return.
The registrar I've had the best luck with is eNom, though I left them for Registerfly a coup[le of years back (mainly because of pricing.) 10 of my 11 domains are out of Registerfly now (to a mixture of eNom and 1&1.)
I do use Dreamhost for hosting most of my sites and they've been good to me.
Not bad. I have all mine at GKG, and have never had a problem with them.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
This is interesting:
In the article, there's this quote:
Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly's right to use the ICANN Accredited Registrar logo on its website.
(snip)
"Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers," Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today.
However, over at registerfly.com, we see:
http://registerfly.com/info/benefits.php
"Quick Facts
Founded in 2000
ICANN Accredited
100% Debt Free
( and etc, etc)"
Wow, it sure is good to see Registerfly just toeing the line there.
I wonder what ICANN will do next? Send an angry email?
-- thanks, Dave
I guess I did miss out! I've never used their DNS, opting to use the servers my employer uses.
That's a most unfortunate event but I hope Namesdirect has learned their lesson, and that others have learned from it too. Technology can fail, but the failure to address an issue with one's customer is inexcusable.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.