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Some Hope During Registerfly's Meltdown

Posted by kdawson on Mon Feb 19, 2007 09:41 PM
from the back-doors dept.
The Internet Businesses
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."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] ICANN May Act Against RegisterFly 63 comments
1sockchuck writes "ICANN says it will terminate RegisterFly's accreditation as a domain registrar if the company can't fix its problems within 15 days. The edict comes with RegisterFly in chaos and current management blaming a departed executive for its woes. The situation is complicated by the fact that RegisterFly sold some of its domains through a reseller agreement with eNom, and others using its own accreditation."
[+] Registerfly's Accreditation Terminated by ICANN 111 comments
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."
[+] ICANN Set To Review Accreditation Policy 31 comments
tinkertim writes "ICANN is re-evaluating the scope and purpose of its accreditations, apparently sparked by the recent collapse of garage domain name registrar Registerfly. In a press release dated March 21, 2007, President and CEO of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey is quoted as saying : 'What has happened to registrants with RegisterFly.com has made it clear there must be comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process and the content of the RAA.' Dr. Twomey is blaming (in part) 'weaknesses in the RAA' for severe and undue hardships that many registrants encountered when trying to transfer names away from the failing registrar, Registerfly. Many new points to be discussed include allowing registrants to view the performance of registrars in an 'independent comparative way', as well as new language to allow ICANN to forcibly intercede in the face of wide spread, persistent and consistent complaints. 10 good points for discussion are listed by Dr. Twomey in the release, who invites all ICANN stakeholders to participate in re-evaluating the RAA. Registerfly, the catalyst for this re-write does not officially lose their accredited status until March 31, 2007, and continues to display the ICANN seal on their web site."
[+] 850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy 120 comments
miller60 writes "The long-suffering customers of RegisterFly should soon be able to manage their names again after ICANN arranged for the transfer of its 850,000 domains to GoDaddy.com. ICANN terminated RegisterFly's accreditation back in March but it took a court order to pry the domains loose so they could be transferred to another registrar. For those just joining the story (see earlier discussions on Slashdot), RegisterFly is the New Jersey domain registrar that collapsed amid management chaos in February, leaving most customers unable to manage, renew, or transfer their domains. ICANN, which was widely criticized for its inability to do more for RegisterFly customers, expressed relief at the saga's apparent conclusion."
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  • Registerfly? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zaydana (729943) on Monday February 19 2007, @09:53PM (#18076698)
    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? (Score:5, Funny)

      by EvanED (569694) <<evaned> <at> <gmail.com>> on Monday February 19 2007, @10:01PM (#18076764)
      Well, judging by the headline, its coolant failed and it went all Chernobyl.

    • Re:Registerfly? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2007, @10:06PM (#18076824)
      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: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Talez (468021)
        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 [icann.org]:

        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
      • 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...

      • Re:Registerfly? (Score:5, Informative)

        by AlHunt (982887) on Monday February 19 2007, @11:10PM (#18077416) Homepage Journal

        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 [enom.com] about 2/3 of the way and see the section "OPTION 1".

    • Re:Registerfly? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hookmeister (585456) on Monday February 19 2007, @10:11PM (#18076878) Homepage
      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 [registerflies.com]

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

      • Re:Registerfly? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by cmacb (547347) on Tuesday February 20 2007, @01:33AM (#18078466) Homepage Journal
        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 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2007, @09:59PM (#18076746)
    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?
  • big domains hosted there that this will cause to expire? I could use a couple hundred-thou extra spending money.

  • Simply awesome (Score:5, Informative)

    by jyoull (512280) <jim@media.mi t . edu> on Monday February 19 2007, @10:11PM (#18076874)
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mike2R (721965)
      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? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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?
    • What GoDaddy debacle? I'm curious as I have domains registered with them.

      • Re:Any recommended registrars out there? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by daeg (828071) on Monday February 19 2007, @10:49PM (#18077232)
        Read: http://nodaddy.com/ [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.
    • > What is a reasonable registrar, these days?

      I use DynDNS [dyndns.com]. I haven't had any problems with their domain registration (or hosting) services. Their refund policy is pretty good; pro-rated, no questions asked.

    • Any recommended registrars out there?

      We had an AskSlashdot about this [slashdot.org] recently. Personally, I use and recommend NameCheap [namecheap.com] which is another eNom reseller. This is mainly because of their clean control panel and low prices.
    • Try dreamhost.com

      Excellent support, even through all the various hardware related issues they had 6 months or so. They definitely have a small company feel (meaning things do go wrong at times), but they fix issues _very_ quickly, they will refund your money if you are unhappy, and their support is just excellent cross the board.

      Give them a try. I know lots of people have been upset with them because of their hosting issues, but as far as I'm concerned, although they are not perfect, they put a lot of effor
    • Joker [joker.com]

  • Well (Score:3, Informative)

    by sulli (195030) * on Monday February 19 2007, @10:20PM (#18076942) Journal
    Should have stuck with Network Solutions [archive.org], then! I always say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
  • 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...
  • They'll apparently take anyone as a reseller. I had this same exact problem with another reseller of there's, only they also changed the legal registrant without notifying (though they claimed they did), and the domain was lost.

  • Explanation:- (Score:5, Informative)

    by gigne (990887) on Monday February 19 2007, @10:43PM (#18077162) Homepage Journal
    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 [registerflies.com]

    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 [registerflies.com]

    * 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.
    • 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 a

  • Long Time Coming (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NilObject (522433) on Monday February 19 2007, @10:56PM (#18077296) Homepage
    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/ [fallingbullets.com]

    Thankfully, I managed to get all my domains back.

  • Demand that ICANN invoke para. 3.2.3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats (122034) on Monday February 19 2007, @11:27PM (#18077566) Homepage

    It's time for ICANN to invoke paragraph 3.2.3 of the Registrar Agreement [icann.org]. 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 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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. U
    • Yeah, but so what? I've got like 8 domains w/ RegisterFly, and honestly i hadn't had a single problem with them ever (well there was a payment oddity, but that's cause the "country" drop down on their payment page wants the country you are submitting the form from, not the country the credit card you're using is from). I was extremely surprised to get the eNom letter notifying me that i had to transfer to them or my domains would be orphaned. I thought it was a phishing attempt at first.

      Now that it see
  • Should have been obvious really - give a dog a bad name.
  • I registered a .CA domain with them and they were abolutely clueless about it. I didn't receive my inital CIRA e-mail necessary to activate the domain until I filed a support ticket for it. When I tried to renew it a year later, the renewal failed repeatedly. And instead of the support people trying to fix it, they would refund my money and tell me to try again. In several cases they charged me twice. I gave up and transfered away a couple months ago. I still had some money left in their broken 'quick check
  • Registerfly is one the few registrars that has earned a
    blacklist-on-sight policy for any domain registered with
    it. Their complete failure to take any action against any
    domain -- for spamming, spyware, phishing, and worse --
    indicates to me that the registrar is run by incompetent amateurs.

    I won't recommend another registrar because I don't want
    it to seem like I'm shillling for them; but I'll recommend also
    avoiding GoDaddy, Bulkregister, GKG, Nameking and Domains at Cost
    simply to avoid sending someone from f

  • I've worked with Network Solutions, 1&1, GoDaddy, Register.com, and others... honestly I have been dissatisfied with all of them. Back in the day, Netsol was the only game in town, but that's not true anymore. But in the full range, either the service or system sucks (e.g. 1&1), it's too expensive (e.g. Netsol, Enom), or I really detest their advertising (e.g. GoDaddy).

    So now I use CheapCheap.biz [cheapcheap.biz] for a few reasons: the prices are decent, the DNS controls are actually intelligent and usable (unli

      • Hmm... I'll have to ask. I remember them mentioning a couple reseller names and they definitely didn't include GoDaddy.
  • you can't trust anyone with "fly" in their name.

    ...oh, wait.
  • Suddenly registerflies.com and www.registerflies.com are unresolved - or is it just me? Anyone have their IP address?
      • And what's with all the totally unnecessary swearing?
        • What the fuck are you talking about? There is no such thing as unnecessary swearing.
        • I swear as I like, and no, I have nothing better to do. I'm in a hospital right now, waiting, essentially, for my wife or my child to need me to do something. They're both asleep, and I'm making sure they can both stay that way as long as they like. Oer forty hours of labor has earned them that. This leaves me with down time.

          Furthermore, if anyone involved with this article -- not that there is one, except a shitty video -- would have spent the literal five minutes I spent to clean it up, it wouldn't h
          • Maddox, is that you?
          • No, I just think you think swearing every other word somehow, to you, legitimizes everything you say, somehow. I don't care who's sleeping where (what does that have to do with this?). I just think that ridiculous amounts of swearing makes anything you have to say lose legitimacy.

            And no I don't have to justify anything I say to you, either. But I do think you need to grow up.
            • There's no such thing as a "logical fallacy." A thing is either logical or fallacious, regardless of what you posted to Wikipedia. Do you really think I'm going to take style advice from someone who leads a sentence with an ellipsis? You're not sure how you'd repair it? That was made obvious when you used an en-dash in the last sentence. Good work, champ!
    • iirc on a transfer you have to buy an extra year but that gets added to your domains existing expiry date not to the date you made the transfer so you don't really lose anything other than a negligable ammount of interest on the money by transfering sooner rather than later.

      i've learnt the hard way that with troublesome registrars a transfer just before expiry is a bad idea for both your sanity and your chances of keeping the domain, make the transfers while you still have plenty of time left to deal with s

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