Moniker Deactivated My Domain 26 Days Before The Expiration Date

http://peterc.org/blog/2010/345-moniker-deactivation.html

by petercooper • 16 years ago

101 37 16 years ago

peterc.org

dreyfiz• 16 years ago

Yikes. I use Moniker too, and this hasn't ever happened to me. I thought they were better than that.

ra3• 16 years ago

I've had some very bad experiences with Moniker in the past.

I would even go so far as to say they are untrustworthy.

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

Can you be more specific ? I've been a moniker customer for many years now and have a fairly large number of domains under my control, between myself and related companies about 50,000 of them or so, not a single complaint to date except for two minor technical issues which were dealt with quite fast.

ra3• 16 years ago

Once Moniker were a good registrar, but not anymore.

My complaints about Moniker include not answering support emails, refusing domain transfers for no reason (domains I had sold - which naturally upset the counterparty), support staff putting me on hold and never coming back. I could go on.

I used to have over 250 domains with them, but after their third or so screw up (without a hint of an apology or indication that they even cared about my business) I moved all of my stash to nearlyfreespeech.

Couldn't be happier with nearlyfreespeech.

drats2• 16 years ago

Your definition of untrustworthy and shady may be a bit lower than that of ra if you are in the type of business that holds 50k domains. I mean seriously, what's your business model with 50k domains? Or are you like one of the hosting companies that offers a free domain with an online service?

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

hey Peter,

Mail this guy: monte@corp.moniker.com

His full name is Monte Cahn, he's only going to be there for another 3 weeks or so so move while you can. (he started Moniker.com).

That should get your stuff sorted out in no time flat, Monte is very serious about preserving the reputation of the company he built, and has been even after selling to oversee.net.

If that does not get you sorted out fast enough to your liking let me know (j@ww.com).

petercooper5• 16 years ago

Thanks, Jacques. Moniker's Twitter agent has told me they have escalated this case but it can't hurt to just give him a heads up!

(Luckily, I'm not baying for blood, I just want them to clear this up so both I and others won't get caught out by this undocumented policy again.)

petercooper5• 16 years ago

Just a little update. I got a reply from Monte. He's traveling at a ICANN event but his reply was irrelevant to the complaint:

  Yes Peter because these are special ccTLD's with
  these rules.  I suggest you renew prior to this
  expiration date that the registry has in place for these
  domains.

I have a screenshot of the .io registry's own WHOIS saying the expiration date is December 31, 2010. I'll sort of let Monte off because he's traveling and time might be in short supply but it's still a silly response.

patio11• 16 years ago

Sorry you had to go through that nuisance. Can I make one suggestion with regards to business processes? You currently appear to have domain renewals done shortly in advance of need, with manual scheduling. This is a source of risk. There are a lot of failure modes there, including "my registrar fubars the renewal", and many of them have unpleasant consequences.

Domain names are cheap and abandonment is infrequent and unlikely to save much money, for most people on HN. So renew them early, for long terms. For your business or blog or other domain which will be a going concern for the foreseeable future, go renew it for ten years. If your business gets sold to Amazon tomorrow, oh well, that cost you only $60 ~ $80 or so.

I own a small stable of domains (a few dozen) and keep most of them on rolling two year registrations, with my main ones (product sites, my blog, etc) on rolling five year registrations. I renew all of them yearly. This way, screwups by myself, my bank, Paypal, or GoDaddy probably won't deprive me of use of my property.

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

Auto-renew and put two credit cards in the system, that should be enough to keep your stuff safe. Moniker is actually very good at making sure you do not lose your domains, that's their main claim to fame.

taphangum• 16 years ago

Good advice. The problem is though, with .io domains yearly prices are at about $70 (if i remember correctly). Renewing for 10 or so years is a pretty significant amount ($700+). Especially if your not sure about the potential of it or just don't have that kind of cash at hand.

petercooper5• 16 years ago

This is good advice. But.

I agree with the gist of your point. I follow this process with some important domains because most TLDs are cheap. At ~$75-$99 per year (depending on registrar), .io is not cheap and it made no sense to cashflow at the time to throw years on it, especially as I hadn't made my mind up whether to jump to the .com I own before launch (seriously considering this now). That's my lame excuse ;-)

That aside, I'm fastidious with my calendar and delegated my responsibility by marking to renew the domain in late December prior to the expiry date. This is close to the line but still reasonably before it and this issue is something Moniker needs to clear up in its TOS or similar (Moniker even sent frequent e-mails telling me when it expired with no warning of this deactivation date.) Since I've not actually "launched" yet, I'm not baying for blood - just an improvement in their service.

dustingetz• 16 years ago

this and other failure modes are now in your control. monkier may be irresponsible, but their service looks sufficient for your needs.

pw• 16 years ago

Is GoDaddy still your go-to registrar? I remember you having some security concerns about them in the past.

And, as always, thanks for the excellent advice. I just came from upping the registration lengths on all my domains ;-)

benatkin3• 16 years ago

I think this should be the normal way of doing things. I cringe when I hear about people renewing domain names after they expired. I think the records should be changed prior to the domains expiring so they could hard-expire X years after being registered and people would know exactly when they really need to renew them.

But, of course, since it's not in their TOS, and isn't either the normal way of doing things or stated very loud and clear during the registering process, it's unacceptable.

Terretta• 16 years ago

You think deleting the registration before it expires should be normal?

benatkin3• 16 years ago

No, I think changing the DNS before it expires should be normal. Changing the DNS to a tacky parked page is often the only thing that gets peoples' attention, including highly competent people. I think if DNS changed 30 days before N years after the registration date, it would get people to extend the registration before the official expiry date. The date that DNS changes would be a date that the domain owner would get warned about.

Having a window after the official expiration date that few people know isn't elegant to me. Also in the vast majority of cases, if it's valuable to keep a domain 11 months after registering it, it's valuable to keep it longer.

MEHColeman• 16 years ago

This is kind of what happens anyway. If you let a domain expire, there is still a 'grace period' where you can renew it before it becomes available for someone else to buy. So, in those terms, the expiry date is a soft limit, and the end of the grace period marks a hard limit.

quellhorst• 16 years ago

I wonder if they want to check how much traffic a domain gets before it expires so they can snatch up the good ones.

jacquesm8• 16 years ago

Oversee (monikers parent company) is not godaddy or enom. At least, not yet...

calloc• 16 years ago

I have over 3000 domains on GoDaddy and I've never had an issue with them taking a domain and putting ads on it before it expired.

biot• 16 years ago

Can they not do that after the domain expires while it's still in the pending delete phase?

mbreese• 16 years ago

This seems to me to be a problem with TLD based names. They all have different policies for this stuff. I once had to recover a .SE name due to a situation just like this. I had planned to re-register a name, but fell within a strange situation where my domain was still mine, but outside of a 60 day window when I could actually renew the domain. This was all in advance of the actual expiration date. Because of this, the domain lapsed and I had to have the registrar recover the domain manually.

geedee77• 16 years ago

Why are people so quick to blog about problems before trying to get them solved? The article clearly states that it was only after posting the original that the Moniker agent was contacted, isn't that the first port-of-call?

I had a similar situation recently where I cancelled my auto-renewal 6 months before the renewal date and my site was pulled (even though I'd paid for the year). I could've blogged about it and tried to encourage everyone not to use the provider, but I just contacted them direct and got a quick resolution. Maybe if I'd had no response I'd have tried to make it public but there was no need as it was a simple mistake.

It seems to me that these days people want to shout out their problems far too quickly rather than try and get them fixed. This is a strange way of getting things resolved.

wccrawford• 16 years ago

When you've got a problem that is destroying your business, -any- time that you're forced to wait for them to contact you back is costing you money.

I don't blame him for reaching out to every available outlet while he waits.

In this case, he's already got at least 1 post that gives him someone else to contact in the company and get noticed.

And there's probably someone that works there that reads HN, so that's another thing in his favor.

petercooper5• 16 years ago

I have done this a few times over the past 10 years in the most egregious cases. You make a good point and it has been raised to me before.

I did try at least, but Moniker's support site is hideous. It's one of these "read the knowledge base 1001" nonsense sites that try to impede you getting in touch. I did some basic searches for things like "expired" and "pending deletion" with no results from their search engine. And you have to sign up for a whole new account just to use their separate support site..

Separate to that, this does not appear to be a one-off mistake, but a policy. Even if I had the ear of their CEO, I doubt they'd do anything beyond placate me, but this policy could burn a lot of other customers. The more people know about and whine about the policy, the more likely they are to resolve it.

I will concede, however, that I am keen on using my social media skills and connections to highlight things I consider bad. I believe it's the responsibility of the connected few to drive fear of the customer into the hearts of companies in order that they give solid service and that they do not violate their own TOS/contractual obligations. If Moniker had merely double billed me or been rude to me on chat, I wouldn't have written it up. When they take a site down and replace it with spam while I still legally own it against their TOS, that's time to get pissy.

Moniker Deactivated My Domain 26 Days Before The Expiration Date

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