ItsYourDomain, but ItsNotMyDomain
In response to my myriad problems with ItsYourDomain and DomainsNext, and my complaints posted here on RR…, I actually received an email from ItsYourDomain last Sunday:
Hello Richard, this is Nick from ItsYourDomain.com. I have been directed to your richards ramblings link on your website through a customer (Sarah Kollar). I have been reading your site off and on since then, and just noticed your last post regarding DomainsNext. We were absolutely stunned when we read the post regarding him contacting you. We apologize, and feel like this email is necessary to help address your issues, and especially to mention that we are in no way, shape, or form associated with Domainsnext other than them being a domain name reseller of ours.
I see and understand that you have had some issues with us in the past, and I would like to do my best to assist you in any way. ItsYourDomain has recently had many changes to our upper management team and is making an honest effort to professionally help any past or current customers with any outstanding issues. I read that you have a domain left in our registry, and that you are having trouble transferring it because of no email correspondence. If you would send me the domain name, I would be happy to take a look. I read in your main complaint that you believe we were/are not sending you emails for renewals and transfer requests. This is absolutely untrue as we start emailing our customers starting 60 days before domain expiration (6 times total) and also when a transfer request comes in from the registry. I would like to trace through our mail server’s log files to confirm what email address and remote mail server we are sending these messages to.
I also would like to comment regarding your initial complaint. The Redemption Period status was implemented by the Verisign Central Registry. All ICANN accredited registrars are forced to utilize this system in which a domain will automatically go into Redemption status when a domain gets deleted. Doing a web search for something similar to ‘domain redemption’ will help you find that this is not a program we ‘invented’ to try and get more revenue. The Verisign registry charges US $89 when we run the restore command, and most registrars charge a much greated fee than than we do to restore a domain. I just wanted to take a second to clarify that fact that all domain registrars must pay a stiff fee to the registry to restore a domain that has been deleted. I believe our biggest failure in your case was the customer support/correspondence. (or lack thereof) Inferring that we did not send renewal notice emails so we could charge you the large restoration fee could not be further from the truth, however. In my opinion, our greatest fault was that we did not work with you when the issue was originally raised. I am shocked that we did not help you understand the redemption program, or more importantly; find out how or why you did not receive those renewal notices. I also was shocked to see how unprofessional our email correspondence was. The main problem we have had with our customers not receiving email from us was because the messages got SPAM filtered. Our email messages many times have been filtered as SPAM simply because our company name is ItsYourDomain — a lot of spam utilities such as SpamAssassin have words like ‘domain’ and ‘your domain’ blacklisted as SPAM. We have since purchased iyd.com to help rid this issue, but it does not always work, as the email from name is still obviously us. It may be very possible that your SPAM filters are very strict. I will definitely find out the problem if you send me over the domain you are still having an issue with.
Again, I seriously apologize for the lack professional customer support you have received in the past, and would like to do my best to make it right. Let me know if there is anything I can do. Thanks.
I have a lot of issues with this response.
The first paragraph from Nick states “I have been reading your site off and on…” Then ItsYourDomain was obviously aware of my problems in unsuccessfully attempting to transfer my zoho.org domain over to GoDaddy. Why did it have to get to the point that an unrelated and previously unknown domain reseller harassed and threatened me at my home before I was contacted by ItsYourDomain? Shouldn’t they have contacted me the second they found out that I had a problem? This is a glaring example of the lack of professional customer support that ItsYourDomain provides… doesn’t provide… whatever…
The lies continue, despite “changes to upper management”. Nick claims that ItsYourDomain emails customers “60 days before domain expiration (6 times total) and also when a transfer request comes in from the registry.” That is just not true.
Nick attempted to back up that claim in a second email that stated “I can confirm that we sent out the emails in question… Jun 30 11:26:53 qmail: 1088612813.411494 starting delivery 513619: msg 146031 delivery 513619: success: 207.159.131.170 accepted_message. Remote_host_said: 250_2.0.0_i5UGQxt85927 Message_accepted_for_delivery AND Jun 30 11:27:25 qmail: 1088612845.234857 starting delivery 513622: msg 146031 delivery 513622: success: 207.159.131.170 accepted_message. Remote_host_said: 250_2.0.0_i5UGRPt85975 Message_accepted_for_delivery.” Then he proved that the IP addresses mentioned belonged to my mail server. He continued, “As you can see above, they were successfully accepted by the remote mailserver 207.159.131.170… Again, there is no question that we are, and always have been sending renewal/transfer emails to you, and all of our customers. I do apologize that you did not seem to receieve them, but I would contact your host to find out where those messages went if you are interested.”
I have a copy of both emails he mentioned, and I do not dispute that I received them. The problem is that they have nothing to do with renewal notifications. The first email he mentioned was sent from “webmaster@domainstuffetc.com”, one of ItsYourDomain’s resellers, and it states “The transfer out of ZOHO.ORG has been approved, but the transfer has not yet been completed. The domain was NOT Pending Transfer at the time of approval. In order to continue and complete the transfer process, you must resubmit the transfer request at the Gaining Registrar. Once the transfer request has been resubmitted, the domain will be transferred without any other interaction. You will be notified of the completion status at that time.” The second email was sent from “support@iyd.com” and states exactly the same, substituting in “REDTANGO.COM” instead of “ZOHO.ORG”. Neither of those emails were renewal notices or confirmation of transfer requests. They are the result of IYD waiting for more than a week in order for the transfer to automatically fail at the requesting registrar, then notifying me of the failure to transfer. I resubmitted both transfers per their instructions and STILL was unable to transfer zoho.org. The redtango.com domain did finally transfer.
Moving on, the redemption period isn’t necessarily the problem, and it’s pointless to discuss its origins. The problem is ItsYourDomain’s policy to forgo the 30-day grace period before putting the domain into deleted status. Worse is the policies quoted directly from IYD’s terms of service “5 days prior to expiration, your domain will be placed on hold status, in preparation for release. This will result in websites and email not resolving for those 5 days” and “You understand and agree that ItsYourDomain.com shall deny all initial requests to transfer a domain name registration to another Registrar.” This is a company that looks out for the bottom line by forcing its existing customers to stay with them. A responsible, respectable, professional company would not have in place such policies.
Spam filtering. Yeah, right. Not an excuse. In January 2004, in an email to Ted Cucci, Executive VP Operations for ItsYourDomain.com, I clearly stated “my original email address is obviously still active, and I do not have spam filtering installed on my mail server.” That is still true today. While I NOW have spam software that flags (not filters) email as potentially being spam, I still receive every email message and I review every single email before it is deleted. I also categorize and save many of the emails I receive. For example: I have copies of emails from GoDaddy.com (the other registrar I use) from July 1 (”90-Day Certified GoDaddy.com Renewal Notice” for one domain), July 6 (”90-Day Certified GoDaddy.com Renewal Notice” for a second domain), July 31 (”60-Day Certified GoDaddy.com Renewal Notice” for the first domain again), August 5 (”60-Day Certified GoDaddy.com Renewal Notice” for the second domain again), and August 30 (”30-Day Certified GoDaddy.com Renewal Notice” for the first domain yet again). I expect I will receive another 30-Day Certified GoDaddy.com Renewal Notice in a next few days for the second domain. I am in possession of thirty automated emails from GoDaddy that I received during the past three months, and none from ItsYourDomain. You do the math. Oh, and none of the emails from godaddy.com are flagged as spam, despite the fact that they contain keywords such as “domain”, “your domain”, “domain transfer”, “transfer request”, “this domain”, “the domain”, and many more. Blacklisting is not the problem.
After rapidly firing emails back and forth between me and IYD, on Monday I received the following email from Nick Starai: “Ok, all set, your domain has been transferred. Let me know if you need anything else. Thanks.”
Four days later, the status of the zoho.org domain remains as “Pending Current Registrar Approval”.
Zoho.org is StillNotMyDomain…
