HOW TO SPOT A NAUGHTY REGISTRAR
January 26th, 2008 Posted in Bad Registrars
Many of us domainers take registrars for granted most of the time. That’s very strange, because it’s like putting our life in the hands of a brain surgeon who has to remove a small benign tumor. The tumor won’t kill us, but the surgeon and his team could. That’s a registrar.
Registrars are the most important link between a domainer’s success and his destruction. A registrar can make you lose a domain, charge you more for a domain, make you spend hours trying to manage your domains that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes (your time is money, so this sucks), and basically trick you into forfeiting your domain so they can resell it at an expiring domain auction service. Scary, huh!
There are at least five trustworthy registrars I would recommend here. I wish I could get a piece of that action, but I doubt I will. However, first I’ll tell you what to look out for if you’re signing up for a registrar. So here is my “SPOTTING NAUGHTY REGISTRARS LIST”.
I’d say any registrar that does the following could possibly be a “bad” or “needing some upgrades fast” registrar if they:
1. Charge you more than $12 a year for domain registration in the top three TLD’s. (.com, .net, .org). A better price for those domainers who buy more than 100 domains should be in the $7 - $9 range. If you’re in the thousands of purchases, definitely do NOT pay more than $7.50 per domain. If you want to get connected to a great registrar at this price level, contact me.
2. Don’t return your email support request within 24 hours, nor calls you back, nor answers their phones. Domainers need instant help. Avoid registrars with weak customer service.
3. Have a website that looks like it was created in 2001 and hasn’t been upgraded since. No matter what sucker low price they try to pull you in at, their customer service when you really need it will be non-existent, and their website will be like a drunken sailor trying to find his way back to a USS Destroyer through a Newport Beach Yacht Sales Yard.
4. Try to get you to buy in for really, really cheap. You know, they put an “asterisk” (*) by the price they list of the domain. Remember, the word “asterisk” kinda sounds like “your ass is kicked”. Any registrar charging less than $7.00 US for a .com is questionable unless they know you have purchased hundreds or thousands of domains through them at wholesale. Beware of the cheap sale. It isn’t cheap later on when you need to manage that domain.
5. Says “powered by >>>>>” or that seems to be a reseller. This isn’t always the case, but it’s something to be on the lookout for. Some of the worst cases of domain name abuse for the owner comes from resellers.
6. If it’s not Moniker.com, Rebel.com, Fabulous.com, Godaddy.com (ehhh… I got issues with them but they have serious customer service), Enom.com, and several others, then they could be suspect. You can get a good idea of registrars that are growing fast and other info at http://webhosting.info/. However, fast growth doesn’t always mean “great registrar”.
7. If the registrar shows ANY HINT, and I mean ANY HINT of trying to prevent you from transferring your domain away to another registrar, then RUN! Transfer out all your domains to another registrar! Complain if they hold you up. If you got the domain from an auction site such as Snapnames or Pool or Namejet, complain to their customer service also. A “hint” can mean emails from the registrar to question your decision to transfer, or more than three page loads to find the auth code or unlock feature, or using a secondary “protection service” with an additional password that the registrar set in place as a DEFAULT when you registered the domain (and they didn’t send you the password). I’d also complain or be nervous if the default domain renewal settings had the renewal length set to “2 years”. I know that Moniker, normally a good registrar, and Godaddy, both do this. This is cheap trickery that these fine registrars don’t need to resort to. Real domainers recognize this, so why these registrars continue to try these seemingly desperate measures, I don’t know. Default to 1 year, that way there aren’t any mistakes or angry customers.
8. Any registrar that forces you through their product upsell pages in order to purchase the domain is always suspect in my mind, even if I know the registrar normally is a good company. I don’t want to be forced to see other products and services to buy if I just want a domain. It’s a hassle and inconvenience. However, this has been presented several times to the registrars who do this, but they feel the profits gained from the “forced marketing” are worth making real domainers cringe having to go through the buying and renewing process. To avoid this, use registrars like Fabulous.com, Rebel.com, and even Enom.com.
Registrars need to instill confidence in their customers, and I’m sure that all registrars understand that domainers are their biggest customers, (all registrars except for those naughty ones.)
