In Whom Do We Trust?

Well, I knew it was bound to happen eventually...


I've been gone for a while now, working on other projects. One of these was the nightmare of trying to renew domain names, and eventually transfer them to another registrar. Let's start from the beginning, shall we? :)


Over the last few years, I've registered several domain names for our online ministry. Most of these have been transferred to other registrars, with the exception of two of them. Those two have been held at registerfly.com up until about a week ago.


If you haven't heard already, Registerfly is the Enron of the domain registration world. If you've ever dealt with these people, you'll understand what I've been going through. Difficulty in getting support and inability to change preferences in my account at registerfly was just the beginning. I've experienced these problems for years, and it was just a matter of time before this all caught up with me (and the other millions who registered domains through this company).


About three weeks ago, I decided to go ahead and renew these domains with Registerfly rather than transfer them to another registrar. After I paid for the renewals, I went back into my account and noticed that the expiration dates on these did not reflect the additional year for which I had just paid. I didn't think much of it at the time because this problem had happened with them a few years ago, and I had to contact customer support about correcting it.


Little did I know that this was about to become a major nightmare. I did an online search for Registerfly. I've done this before and noticed some complaints that people had posted across various forums, but I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Multitudes of websites detailing how Registerfly was in this huge scandal. Not only was the customer service bad (we all knew that), but now it was much worse. For example: reports of company owners using company funds for personal use, domain names not being renewed that people had previously paid for, owners locking customers out of their accounts because of customer complaints, inability to transfer domains away from Registerfly to other registrars, and many other problems. The worse part: domain names that people had previously renewed with Registerfly were never renewed, and wound up expiring. Not just a few of them.....lots of them. Millions of domain names began disappearing off the internet.


Fortunately, I had moved most of these out of Registerfly except two of them. I tried contacting Registerfly about correcting my account so these domains would show the correct expiration date. To make the long story short, as the saying goes, this didn't work. I wound up having to contact paypal (who the payment was made through) and request a refund. Fortunately, I did get my money back. Some customers paid hundreds of dollars, never got their domains renewed, lost them, and never received their money back.


I did find this one website which grew out of one former (and disgruntled) Registerfly customer, and he/she is not happy, and you can tell from the others on that website they're not happy campers, either. For me, it wouldn't be a total loss if those domains did "expire", since both of them are really backups for our main site. However, you can understand the anger, frustration, and apprehension these Registerfly customers are going through. For some of these people, those domain names are connected with their businesses, and without them, their businesses will be vastly affected, if not completely obliterated. For them, it's more than a loss of a domain name. Their livelihood was at stake. How would they be able to take care of their families? Their employees? Their creditors? There were reports too of one person who was so distraught of losing his domain name (and business) that he was considering suicide. I don't know if that's true or not, but it just shows how important those domain names are to some of those people who make their living off of them. I started thinking about that...it was sort of like how it was in 1929, how people panicked when the stock market crashed, and some of those people were so worried about it, they commited suicide. It's sad, but true...


One of those posting on the forums posed the question that in light of the circumstances, what registrar would they be able to trust? After all, Registerfly was one of the biggest registrars in the world (and I do mean "was" because after this mess, I believe the past tense would be correct usage). If they couldn't trust Registerfly, who could they trust?


Obviously, it would behoove us all to do a little more research into these companies to ensure they're on the "up and up" before we start throwing money their way. That goes for domain registration or anything else we purchase, online or otherwise. We ultimately have to put our final trust in God, though. We cannot put our complete trust in anyone, because there's always going to be someone who's going to let us down. Man is unfaithful, but God is faithful. Whatever we go through life, He will be there for us, good or bad. If we lose all our money, then He'll still be there for us. If we lose all our possessions, He's with us. If we lose everything, He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).


If you want to know God and have a personal relationship with Him, come visit our site. He loves you very much, and wants you to place all your cares on Him. (1 Peter 5:7).


If you've registered domain names (or are interested in doing so), I highly recommend Namecheap. Just about all of our other domain names are registered with them, and I have never experienced any kinds of problems with them. They have good customer support, too. They'll respond back to you in a timely and professional manner. Just thought I'd pass that along... :)


Also, if you'd like to read more on this rather fascinating story about Reigsterfly, click HERE. I heard someone is going to make a movie about it, but who knows... :)



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God's Love in One Word...
Jesus.
www.PassTheWord.net.