I think I am getting an ulcer from my domain registrar.

I started registering domains way back in the early 90’s with my first domain: computerqna.com which I still have to this day. At least the last time I checked I still owned it.  Domains back then were $39 per year!
Last Friday it all began. I got an email telling me three of my domains were expired and that I needed to do something with them. I logged in to my Registerfly account and paid the renewal fees and looked at my account to see if the renewal actually happened. They did not appear to be renewed, so I opened up a support ticket to tell them that the renewal did not go through. I am used to opening support tickets at registerfly, since they are a bunch of incompetent morons. While I was opening up a new ticket, I saw a ticket that I had opened three weeks ago was still sitting in my account unanswered.

Three weeks and they had not even looked at my ticket! I was livid. I tried to call them. I spent 3 hours on their automated phone answering system (a toll call) and finally gave up for the day. So they had my money and my domain. Later on Friday, my client calls me to tell me that his domain is not coming up, when he types it into his browser. I explain to him that I am trying to get that problem taken care of, since his domain is one of the domains that I am trying to get renewed.

I gave Registerfly all weekend to get the situation resolved. I tried calling but got a busy signal all day. Tuesday, I spent most of the day trying to get through to support. Finally I reach someone who tells me my domain was no longer registered through Registerfly, that enom had taken it away from them during some power struggle that I had known nothing about. So now I had to deal with enom. I called enom, and they told me my domain was in one of their resellers’ accounts and that I needed to contact their reseller.

I called the reseller in question, but they were at lunch (they were in Oregon and I was in Florida) so I left a message. I waited 3 hours (long West Coast lunch), and finally decided to take a shower while I was waiting. I returned from my shower only to see a message from the reseller to call him back. An hour later, I was still playing phone tag with this guy. At some point we finally connected only to find out that my domain was not part of this reseller’s account. I would have to call enom again.

Back on the phone with enom. They tell me that I needed to send them a screen shot of my domains inside the Registerfly website to prove that I owned the domain. I also needed to email them a scanned copy of my driver’s license to prove to them I was who I was. The bile in my gut was really starting to eat away at my organs by then. I asked politely if they needed a blood sample, but they said that they only needed the screen shot and the license.

I sent them the requested screenshot and the license. I waited. Actually, I slept, since I was supposed to go back to work tonight (I am finally off the evil medications that kept me home for the last 4 nights). When I awoke, I still had not heard from the folks at enom. I began to wonder if that feeling in my stomach was supposed to be there. Maybe it was normal to feel like you were digesting your liver. I called enom. They told me I would have to wait until they got to my email, they were backed up. I must have sounded somewhat panicked when I responded to them, because they put me on hold and said they would see if they couldn’t dig up my email.

The connection was severed while they were looking for my email, I think the tech was scared I would find a way to crawl through the phone line if he left it open for too long, because I eventually heard a dial tone… I called back and was put through to a nice lady who said she could help me push the domain into my newly created empty account. I got excited by that kind of talk. I was trying to do everything she told me to do and I saw the domain appear in my account like it was supposed to do! I was ecstatic! I finally had closure for one domain. But then I realized that I had started out with three domains. I asked this fine lady if she knew what happened to the other two domains. She said that I would have to send another screen shot and license. I ran from the room screaming.