I’ve been a webmaster for about eight years now. In that time I’ve owned well over 200 domain names, purchased through a variety of registrars, including godaddy.com, 000domains.com and a few others. For the most part I’ve had good experiences with all of these services… All except one!
Registerfly is by far the worst registrar I’ve ever dealt with! I made the mistake of purchasing some .info domains from them about a year and a half ago, at the time they were running a special, the .info domains were under a dollar each – so I bought a batch of about one hundred for one year, as an investment. Well the first transaction went fine, I purchased the domains and started getting emails from them advertising their specials. Some weeks they were offering very cheap transfers (a domain transfer is when you move a domain from one registrar to another), these specials were much cheaper then my normal renewal fee, so I bit. I started moving more domains over to Registerfly, several at a time, each time they offered a decent transfer rate. Big Mistake!
Well, everything seemed to be going fine until it came time to renew the first batch of transfers (around September 2006). I put my request in, entered my credit card information, hit submit and everything seemed okay. I exited the system and went about my business. A little while later, I noticed an email from RegisterFly saying my renewal failed – no reason was given, just that the renewal didn’t work. I immediately submitted a support ticket and waited… and waited… and waited…
Well after about a week, my ticket still had not been responded to, so I got nervous, I don’t want to lose any of my domains, so I called their support. After being on hold for a lengthy amount of time, I finally talked to a rep. The rep was helpful and told me everything would be taken care of. Well, a day or so later, I received confirmation that the domains were renewed. All was okay!
Well, in late November, I received a notice that my next batch of transfers was about to expire. I immediately logged on and requested and paid for the renewal, everything seemed to work okay; I logged off and once again went about my business. Well, I check my email and sure enough there’s another email, saying my renewals were declined. I entered another support ticket and waited…. Eight days later the domains were about to expire –again no response to my ticket, I call tech support, this time I’m on hold for over an HOUR – listening to elevator music before finally getting a rep. I explain my plight and am told it will be taken care of. I hang up and wait… and wait… and wait…
Well, this time the expiration date comes, I check my status and no change, the domains are now in limbo somewhere…
Today I called back AGAIN, this time I’m on hold for about 15 minutes (better then an hour anyway) before I get a rep on the line. I’m angry now, I go through the whole story about the unanswered support tickets, the hour on hold and the promise that it would be taken care of…
The rep explains that their renewal system “broke” and they had to get another one. He then assured me that my domains were still in the queue to be processed and he expected that to take place over the next few days. He also assured me that the domains were on hold and that no one else can buy them. So now I’m waiting, hoping that I don’t lose these domains…
In conclusion, as small business owners, we have enough to worry about without having to sit on hold for hours just to do something that should happen with a few mouse clicks. My recommendation, buy your domain names from godaddy.com, you’ll pay a little more, but you’ll have a lot less stress!
Posted by David Olsen - Owner/Editor
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I’ve hit the same problem with them. They silently failed when processing my renewal order for six domains… after I talked with them about it, they managed to get three of them renewed, but three others (in .biz) have now been off the air for over two weeks. They no longer respond to trouble tickets. When I finally go through to them on the phone, I got the same story as you did. The rep I dealt with just kept reading the same script to me. She promises that the renewals will be processed on Monday (Christmas day), which I somehow doubt.
My advice - transfer your working domains away from them ASAP. As soon as you can get your other domains renewed, transfer those away. Make sure they don’t have any control over your names before you try to take any action against them.
Then call your credit card company and have them reverse the charges from Registerfly.
Then write a letter of complaint to ICANN, which oversees DNS registrars.
After that, I think a class action suit would probably be appropriate.
Registerfly are criminals.
If you take a look in the Internet, there a lot of forums that write about the frauds that they do to their customers.
They send fake spamm e-mails to attack customers.
They charge more in their customers’ visa card when they renew or register domains.
They don’t change DNS of the domains names.
They don’t Unlock the Lock flag on the domains and they don’t give the Authorization codes for the domains names in order to be transferred.
They don’t answer the emails, tickets and when they answer they lie
and they talk with sarcasm.
All these things make a lot of trouble to many companies, and to many of my customers and give a very bad image about USA and American rules.
These moves make people want to crash with aeroplanes to your offices and also make the foreigners to hate Americans so much that force them to do bad things to them. DON’T YOU SEE THAT?
WHY DO YOU LET THESE KIND OF COMPANIES TO STAY IN BUSINESS FOR SO LONG?
PLEASE MAKE A SEARCH ABOUT REGISTERFLY IN INTERNET FORUMS TO SEE THAT THEY SAY EXACTLY THE THINGS THAT I WRITE YOU.
We have problems with Registerfly.
They don’t send the author code in order to transfer to another registar.
Can you help receive the author code and can you unlock our domains to move them to another registar?
They don’t answer to our daily tickets and e-mails.
They don’t unlock any domain at all.
THEY DISABLE THE UNLOCK FUNCTION FROM THEIR FORM.!!!
THE FUNCTION IS THERE BUT IT DOESN’T WORK AT ALL.
This is monopoly, and is forbidden by the USA law. You cover them because you know all this and you don’t do anything. You are responsible because you give them permission to use in every contact the word “ICANN Accredited Registrar”.!!!
This things are making aeroplanes crash your offices, don’t you see that?
This company take hostages thousands companies all over the world, and all this saw an bad image to USA and to your laws, don’t you see that?
Their purpose is to steal the domain names of their customers in order to put ads of the companies that guide them, don’t you see that?
The trick of the supposed problems of the registerfly is to steak our domain names, and ICANN.ORG knows it but they don’t do something.
It is possibly that enom.com is also in this trick, and other companies for example advertising companies etc. They see the big success of google (adsense), yahoo, etc and they try to enter in the advertising in order to steal our domain names and taking advantage of our visitors, they take money from the advertisements.
The trick is very simple
They send fake spam email with extremely low prices for transfer and register domain names. After that they grab the customers who transfer the domains to them (the prices are lie because they charge much higher than they said).
They supposed to have technical problems, economical problems (but all this is a lie because they don’t have staff, everything are automated and they huge profits). The names that are expiring they don’t renew them, so the domain name is expired and it is theirs and in a short time your domain name advertises their collaborators.
ICANN.org has a huge responsibity because in every email and in their site they alwayw write “ICANN Accredited Registrar”. ICANN.org knows everything about what is happening but they don’t do anything
This trick works for many years and no one does anything.
ICANN.ORG says that they aren’t responsible, they know everything or they should know because if someone searches he would find that Internet is full of complaints for registerfly.com and I haven’t seen all their frauds that they have done.
If someone wants to see which is the purpose, I write that:
For almost 10 days I send messages to registerfly.com for problems that I have. My domain names are expiring and they don’t renew them, I can’t change DNS to my domain, they don’t send me authorization code and don’t let me unlock them in order to transfer them to other registrar.
AND WHEN I SEND A MESSAGE TO DELETE ONE OF MY DOMAIN NAMES FROM MY ACCOUNT, THEY DID IT AND THEY ANSWERED IMMEDIATELY
It was the only e-mail that they answered and after that they disappeared again. Since them I thought that it wasn’t anyone there, and that no one have seen my messages but when they deleted my domain name (of course, they use it for them) they answered immediately, and with this they saw that the watch all the tickets (messages) and they watch and apparently laugh with the despaired web masters who want desperately to renew their domains, but they answer only in messages that will give them more domain names.
About the claims of registerfly.com that the low prices drives the company to this condition is clear that this is jus a stupid claim.
The prices that charge their customers are much higher than other companies, which with lower prices and fewer costumers survive and have a profit.
In domain names business, the things are better when you have a lot of costumers like registerfly.com has.
The prices are not extremely low, for example $9.90 for a new domain and $7.99 for renewal action.(Without considering the thousands of frauds that they had done to the domain owners, in which they took large amounts of money all this years).
Those kind of business are having much better position when they have so many customers. Their expenses are staying extremely low because of the automatic function which drive everything well. And when the directors want it everything go badly.
For example a domain company who has a bad financial season, they only have to upgrade the prices by only one dollar. So one dollar is enough by 1 million customers to gives you 1 million dollar extra income every year. Domains owners are not willing to change registrar for 1 dollar upgrade of the prices because any way is much cheaper the prices if a domain owner wants to change registrar every year. (Transfer action is cost 6.99 to many registrars)
Icann.org is the main responsible of registerfly.com fraud (and enom.com and any others which are hiding behind of this big scandal which disparage the reliability και the reputation of USA).
Registerfly.com would not have tried to do all those well-planed frauds if they hadn’t the support of icann.org
They knew that icann.org would not take off the permission despite the accusations that are coming everyday to them, in which they don’t do anything and they don’t protect the thousands domain owners who are trapped by registerfly.com
So, they sent fraud emails all the time which are telling for low prices and like that they gather domain names in their account and they don’t let them leave (they don’t unlock the domains and they don’t give author code to transfer them domains to a legal registrar) Also they hi charge credit cards, they charge credit cards without any reason, they let domains to expire without renew them and they keep them for them or they transfer them to enom.com. They sell domains, which belong to their customers, and they keep the money without giving them to the domain owners. I see my domains to be “for sale” in the Internet but I never gave them any authorization to sell my domains.
They are criminals but icann.org is responsible for all this because they knew everything and they didn’t do anything.
Thousand desperate domain owners from all over the world are trapped in registerfly.com and icaqnn.org continue to promote registerfly.com (and enom.com) as a good and authorized registrar for the domains owners!!!
Icann.org must stop immediately the registerfly.com frauds and allow to the domain owners to be transferred in other registrar as soon as possible!!!
Icann.org must go together with registerfly.com to the curt room!!!
Registerfly continue their fraud
All time they do the trick of the repairing of the site, they pretend that they solve their internal problems (financial management etc). However, that’s never come through, so they never sent us author code but they continue to tell us lies about the supposed repairing of the site in order to continue with their fraud.
The Problems in my domains continue although as they say Medina left. I had renewed some of my domains but they made them to expire and they took for them. Also, they still don’t let me to renew my domains. They don’t send me the Author Code and they don’t unlock my domains in order to be transferred in other registrar. They continue to attack their costumers by sending fraud spam emails by fake prices. (TheFlyPaper.com)
We login everyday and we send them tickets for our problems but they don’t answer them. Also we sent email to ICANN but they don’t answer and they cover them. They pretend the problems in order to continue their frauds. Thousands domain owners are hostage in registerfly and steal our job our time , our money. Our names goes to enom.com and are managed my advertisers which are connected with them (enom.com is hiding behind registerfly)
DO SOMETHING NOW. PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!
REGISTERFLY PROBLEMS WILL NEVER EXPIRE, BUT OUR DOMAINS EXPIRE EVERYDAY.
We mustn’t believe them about the repairing until they solve all our problems.
WE WILL NEVER SOLVE THE PROBLEMS, ICANN COVER THEM. ALL THOSE ARE PART OF THIS BIG FRAUD.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!!
In 2007-03-30 I opened in Registerfly a Support Ticket in which I said:
“We want to unlock all our domain and sent author codes in order to move to other registrar.”
The answer that they gave was
“Try to do it yourself and the ones that you are not able to do send them to me on a list. You have too many domains and I’m not going to check them one by one.”
Well I checked my domains and saw that I couldn’t unlock them so I went to support ticket and I send them the below message in 2007-04-04:
“I tried to unlock my domains but I cannot unlock them.
I go to each domain and press the Domain Status button in order to change them into unclok but they still remain locked.
So I want all of my domains to be unlocked and to take the Authorization codes in order to transfer them to another registrar.”
Even Today (2007-04-18), 2 weeks after my last message, I haven’t got any answer. I still cannot unlock my domains and they don’t help me. They continue to fool me all their customers. They are not willing to unlock my domains and give authorization code in order to leave from them. They keep me and other customers hostages and noone is willing to help us. ICANN IS ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THIS BECAUSE THEY COVER THEIR FRAUD AND THEY DON’T HELP US LEAVE FROM REGISTERFLY.