They also charge to transfer domains away to another reseller, which is something which was always a free service with my old reseller. I can still access the domain control panel at OpenSRS, but this company seems to have locked the .com domains to prevent them being transferred. As for the .me.uk domains, they refuse to perform the tag change to allow me to transfer them to another reseller unless I pay them a fee.

sounds pretty sketchy to me. can you provide the name of your new host so i can check em out?

sounds pretty sketchy to me. can you provide the name of your new host so i can check em out?

I don't want to post a direct link to the company, but suffice to say my old reseller went by the name of Firevision. That should help you in any investigations you want to do...

after reading this Link i have a better idea of what's going on.

if nominet is the uk's primary registrar--or at least the registrar that licensed firevision--i guess they feel they're acting in your best interest. in either case, it would seem as if they screwed up by selecting firevision as a marketing partner and you shouldn't be liable for their mistake...or for such an outrageous fee to transfer your domain account to another, hopefully more responsible, host.

if it happened here, i'm guessing someone would already be in court but since yall are less litigious, perhaps theres someone in the government to whom you can appeal for relief?

as far as the personal data transfer goes, i'm guessing that's a necessity if this guy is totally incommunicado.

i hadda client for whom i'd set up a fairly extensive 'store' (at their request) thru a free site provider. a little more than 2 years into the project--just as the site was beginning to pay off for my client--the operators had some sorta serious financial problems and they pulled the plug. fortunately, i'd recently finished updating prices following the publication of their annual print catalog and i'd made a point of downloading the entire thing so it wasn't quite as bad as it mighta been. unfortunately, the site went offline the day after thanksgiving which is the first day of the holiday buying season.

six months later, they'd reorganized and contacted us to see if we wanted to join their new portal. i just said no thanks...but no thanks.

Personal information...aka customer database is a commercial comodity which 'might' be protected from being on-sold to an external entity....eg advertising, etc ... but a corporate merger/takeover....that's a whole different thing.

I doubt you are 'excluded' from that potential information transfer...

And my reply...

Mr Ells, Perhaps it would have been prudent to remove your staff member's comment from your reply prior to sending it. Apparently he considers this situation 'funny' and my valid concerns to be 'whinging'. It rather flies in the face of your comments about good customer service does it not? I understand the overhead that your company has incurred as a result of this situation, but I don't think either of us are really naïve enough to believe that your actions were for anything other than profit at the end of the day. You are running a business after all, so you wouldn't have taken on Firevision's customer base without first being sure that the deal would be a lucrative one. The sheer number of domain renewals you will undoubtedly sell as a result of this should guarantee you a tidy profit at the end of the day. Which makes it all the more jarring that you are charging so far over the odds for the service in comparison to just about every other domain reseller I have investigated. I'll have to take your word for it that other domain owners have been thankful of your actions, but I have not felt that same sense of relief. I also fail to see how your apparent expertise at web site design relates in any way to this issue. The most important thing that your company failed to do was manage customer expectations by contacting the owners of the domains before the changes went ahead. Until your email came through telling me you were in control of my domains, I had not been aware of any problems with Firevision. So I'm sure you can appreciate my confusion and scepticism upon receiving that email. It wouldn't be the first time that I've had a company approach me to offer their 'services' in safekeeping my domains. While you may have moved heaven and earth to contact those customers who were about to lose their domains, you made no effort to contact Firevision's long-term customers who were unaware of the situation. My comments thus far have been out of nothing more than frustration. I had previously had three emails ignored by your support team, and when I finally did receive a reply it seemed to be of the 'cut-and-paste' variety rather than addressing my actual questions and concerns. I therefore feel my comments about poor customer service were fair. As for your claim that the transfer fees you wish to charge are reasonable, perhaps you could explain to me how charging £25 for a service which would ordinarily cost at most £15 represents value for money? Even then you are charging this for each and every domain you transfer, whereas Nominet charge at most £30 for a batch of transfer requests. Something that also struck me about your email was that you offered to change the IPS tag for my domains back to FIREVISION if I was unhappy. Would you charge me for this? If not, perhaps it would be easier for all concerned if you simply follow my wishes and change the tags to WEBCONSULTANCY. Then this whole sorry incident would come to a close and you could return to exchanging flippant comments about your customers with your support staff. Regards, Kevin Purcell grayhaze.com

The company email 'appeared' all well and lovely....but unfortunately the in-house comment was pretty damning [one wonders whether its inclusion was accidental or not]...

There remains, however an 'expectation' of privacy/confidentiality with person to person emails, the same as with telephone conversations...and both are 'protected' under the same 'Act'.

It's probably not an 'ideal' situation to publish such emails on a public forum....

There remains, however an 'expectation' of privacy/confidentiality with person to person emails, the same as with telephone conversations...and both are 'protected' under the same 'Act'. It's probably not an 'ideal' situation to publish such emails on a public forum....

That's pretty much why I removed his e-mail address from his reply. I just thought it might be of interest to anyone who's in a similar situation to see an 'official' quote from the man in charge.

Mainly though I just posted it to point out the stupidity of certain high-level execs when it comes to emails.

The new company does not sound trustworthy or like they would exist in their current

form for long at all, that is right. This post is extremely interesting for a newbie

like me wondering which country to set up my first somewhat independent site in,

whether to have it locked, how much to pay for it, etc..



Germany where I reside and know some companies my friends + I think I could trust

seems less attractive because a federal law ruins the looks of the 1st page

of any business site by forcing u to stick an ugly taxation number in the middle

of it, even if you are trying to attract skinners! Yoicks!



In the States, and I don´t know anything about the U. K., so I looked around first

checking free or cheap offers by companies TESTED somewhere (which may not be a

good method either), finding reasonably priced locking and transfer offers not to

be free, the companies a bit small, each of them showing off with some features

the others really did not have and vice versa.



You probably already used the right WHO IS like tools, and I did not read all of your

links yet.



Still, imagine this:



2 or 3 years ago, when hijacking was a bit less severe, you open up some sites,

even lock some, u think, forget about exact details as to how much redirected

locked sites could cost you even if only redirected once or twice.



Only by trying to hijack them yourself, which may result in your being prosecuted,

you would know whether they are really locked, even if you pay for that feature.



Then a real hijacker pretending to be the new owner of the server only hijacks

all of your supposedly locked and unlocked sites and the old server.



Each time you try to find out whether the old company exists, instead you get a

page schemed by the hijacker looking as if the old company legally turned every

thing over to them.



Or they just go broke, the old company? German proverb, you can´t pull anything

out of a naked man´s pockets, even in court, most times.



Or while drinking beer, the old company really did agree on shoving everything

over to the new company, toasting to themselves in a pub. Or both companies

always belonged to the same jerks and are always reformed. The first company´s

only purpose is to shanghai you to their more expensive next company.



Who says the new company really owns you instead of having hijacked you. A THIRD

company could be the new owner, not the hijacker, even if the OLD one REALLY

closed down at all.



If I could afford it, I would test my stuff unlocked, locked, plus always backup

anything I update on my own computer, and may even have 1 or 2 other companies

with similar locked and unlocked looks.



Which is all time and dough consuming. Guess I will be asking more experienced

US domain or subdomain runners what they recommend. Which is not always what

they use themselves, if they are good, especially if not commissioned by their tip.



Wonder which tests are more neutral and acknowledged. Hope you are not hijacked

and keep good records of future terms you agree on. Free redirecting might be

getting a bit more scarce even in good offers. I wonder. Thanks for your

experiences!

Sorry for the double posting.