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Tuesday, 17th October 2006
I used to use RegisterFly a lot but not anymore. I like their cheap prices but their system sucks. I wonder why they could not create a better system. Their programmers must be mediocre!
In this blog entry, I will go through some dos and don’ts when using RegisterFly. Should you fail to apply some of these tips I mentioned, be prepared to spend a lot of your precious time fixing them. Time is money, if you do what I say, I guarantee you will spend less time getting their system to work.
1. Do not submit replies to your support tickets if RegisterFly has not replied
I learnt this the hard way. RegisterFly puts you in a queue when you submit your support request. Should you reply to your support request, you will put to a lower position in the queue. I don’t really understand how this works exactly but I think it is very stupid. Other support systems have an urgency criteria for you to select from something like critical to not so important issues. RegisterFly uses a “first come first served” queue system. They push you back to the back of the queue if you reply to your own support ticket too many times.
I highly recommend you pick up the telephone and call their support team directly if your issue has not been resoved in a reasonable amount of time. They seem to get things done faster this way. Please try to be polite to their staff, it is not their fault. It is the fault of the people who created such an inept system.
2. Do not use their “whois protection” service
One of the things that attracted me to RegisterFly was their free “whois protection” service. Don’t use it! Why? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. I remember I had to enable ProtectFly for my domains one by one because the mass update form doesn’t work!
Simply enter RegisterFly’s contact information and address in your domain’s profiles to get a “fake ProtectFly” profile. Alternatively, enter some “dummy data” and save it. Whenever you need to update your domains’ information, load it up and mass update all your domains at once. Sometimes their mass update tool does not work and you will have to update them one by one. You have been warned!
3. Create multiple RegisterFly accounts to organize your domains
I highly recommend you create multiple RegisterFly accounts to organize your domains. I use multiple accounts for the different groups of web sites I own. It is so much easier to mass update information and get support for my domains this way. You may “push” your domain to another RegisterFly account quickly and easily. This is one feature that I am very proud of RegisterFly because I have not experienced any screw ups here.
4. Always fund your account before purchasing domains
It is not a wise move to enter your credit card at the end of the domain checkout process. RegisterFly is famous for charging you for error purchases. What that means is you pay money even when the order did not go through. If you do not wish to go through lengthy chargeback and refund procedures, simply plan how many domains you wish to purchase and deposit the exact cost of those domains to your account.
One more thing… Do not use PayPal as a checkout option. I thought using PayPal during checkout means that my PayPal money will go into RegisterFly’s PayPal. My PayPal money went into my RegisterFly account instead and I had to do another order to complete my initial order. It is like paying for an item with an ATM card and having the cashier withdraw cash from your ATM card via their cash drawer and you return that cash to them. Does that make sense to you? What a waste of time!
5. Call them up if you are using a totally new DNS
If you wish to create your own DNS for your web sites, don’t use RegisterFly. Get another domain registrar to do this work. You cannot trust RegisterFly for something as important as your DNS domains.
Sometimes your web host might assign you with DNS RegisterFly has not seen before. When this happens, RegisterFly will give you an error when you try to link that DNS to your domains. I find the support staff too slow on these issues. Simply call them up and tell them to add your DNS to their “registry”. This will allow RegisterFly to let you to use this DNS for your domains. Strange I know… but this is how they work.
Conclusion
I might have more issues to bring up but this is all I can recall at the moment. I rank RegisterFly as my second worst online experience after some other major issues with some other lousy merchants. I do not recommend RegisterFly as your domain registrar of choice because the wasted time you spend fixing your issues will cost you more time and time equals to money, therefore you are wasting your precious time and money on them when you could get better deals for your domains elsewhere. If you must use RegisterFly to save money, I recommend following some of all of the tips I mentioned in this blog entry.
Tagged As: dns, domain+name, domain+registrar, domains, registerfly
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On 21st October 2006 1:54 PM, Dave Zan
said:
I’m not surprised to read you’re having problems with Registerfly as well. I’ve seen numerous posts on various domain forums of people with similar issues.
To think I was writing a post about this and scheduling it for next week. I think I’ll use yours instead if you don’t mind. 
Thanks for writing your detailed experiences! This can help other users.
On 4th November 2006 9:26 PM, RMIGHTY1
said:
Same experience at iPower.com Seems that are proprietary in their software and systems. This being the case, they have just been unable to think outside the box. I spoke with a tech support person who was familiar with their way of doing things but had no clue as to how the rest of the mainstream world works. After much back and forth email and telephone calls, finally I was able to have them incorporate my DNS servers into their system.
And you are very right about getting angry. I got a bit sarcastic (justifiably so) in an email request for tech support and never heard from them again. I assume the ticket was closed. Sheeeesh!!!
On 8th November 2006 11:58 PM, Mike
said:
I used to use RegisterFly and have had the experience when they send me an email and it contains an email that I could reply to: well when I replied to that email - it never got to the destination! It would just bounce back. I like their cheap prices though, so I’d give them that.
On 22nd November 2006 12:00 AM, William White
said:
I won! I won!
I’ve had all the same problems others have had with Registerfly. I was so mad last night I didn’t sleep the entire night! I wanted some type of way to “get back” at them. Thought of a DoS attack…thought of spamming their exec’s email addresses…but I came to the conclusion that those methods were really bordering on the grey area of legality…so, I ended up submitting a support ticket with all my problems and complaints, concluding it by asking them to renew (or at the very least to TRANSFER) my domains to another registrar (or for them to at least give me the authorization code to transfer).
Yep, I submittied a support ticket. But we all know how kindly and effectively they answer those tickets, right?
So…I setup FireFox with the “ReloadEvery” extension. After I submitted the first support ticket, I setup firefox to reload the page after I clicked the “submit” button. What that does is also resend the POST data with the ticket submission. I set the reload to the mininum of 5 seconds. So every 5 seconds I’m generating a new trouble ticket in their system. After 90 minutes it genereated about 1600 tickets!
Well, that seemed to get their attention, and they have now given me an authorization code, and the domain is in the process of transfer. If anyone needs help with this, let me know!
On 22nd November 2006 12:33 AM, Vincent Rich
said:
That was interesting William. I may have to resort to something like that if they still do not respond to me. It has been over 11 days and I still cannot get my EPP codes.
I do not wish to call them up and waste my money on IDD calls and listen to their “on hold” music for over half an hour again. Last time I called, I waited and waited and the line went dead. I had to call one more time to fix my problem. I say no more! My time is valuable.
I am in the process of moving 5 domains out of RegisterFly. One of my domains has expired because of their “dilly-dally” behaviour so I cannot move it out unless I renew it at RegisterFly first.
On 25th November 2006 2:16 AM, Ady
said:
Hi Vincent,
Very nice of you to share this information here. I’ve been a user with registerfly since 2004, and so far has regretted much. Their price is indeed very low compared to other registrars but I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort.
One thing is their system is slow and buggy. I’ve just failed to RENEW my domains especially the .name domains. I’ve sent tickets since 2 days ago but so far no respond yet.
A month ago I did have a problem to REGISTER a new domain which in fact means more money for them. After a few days my ticket was responded with “your domain xxx.com was registered”. And they never fixed the system!
Another registrar to avoid is Yahoo! small business. Their system lack the features to command your domains, and surprisingly the helpdesk is not helpful as well. Not what I expected from a big company. And they resell domains so even themselves have to delegate issues to the actual domain registrars.
One help I would ask from you guys is point me to a better registrar. I’ve Googled for the best registrar but too many marketing campaigns came up. If you rather not put the registrar you guys are transferring to or prefer, kindly consider emailing me at least a line stating the registrar.
Kind regards.
On 11th December 2006 3:24 PM, Sander J. Rabinowitz
said:
I managed to pull most of my domains out of R’Fly prison, but one remains. As to that remaining domain, I made the mistake of waiting until the domain was near expiry date to take action. Long story, but at least I got the domain to at least renew, but I was forced to keep it with them.
Here’s what I wanted to say, though, about your point 1: If R’Fly doesn’t respond, that’s one thing. But they’ve had a nasty habit as of late of tersely responding to a ticket, and then closing it automatically at the end of the day. In such situations, you’re forced to respond to the ticket–and quickly–simply to keep it open!
I had one ticket that R’Fly tried to close no less than 4 times. I managed to keep it open for nearly a month. They finally got tired of me and DELETED the ticket out of my account. Mind you, it’s now over a month and the issue remains outstanding.
Thus, I conclude it doesn’t matter if or how you respond to a ticket. Either way, you lose. –SJR
On 26th February 2007 11:46 PM, kriaras
said:
Registerfly is stealing our domains
They don’t renew the domains in time
They don’t give as the auth code and they don’t unlock our domains to transfer them to another registrar so our domains are expiring and they use them.
(in the past they stole my domains http://www.cyprusltd.com and http://www.cyprus-ltd.com and now they Stole greek-tour.net, Your-Travel-Guide.net which expired and they didn’t renew them)
Perhaps registerfy.com and enom.com are the same company because registerfly.com stole my domains http://www.cyprusltd.com and http://www.cyprus-ltd.com and now I see that are hosted to enom.com and play ads for enom.com
They connect with advertising companies or they have their one advertising company and they take advantage of the being registars and they are stealing domains from their customers which they use them to show advertising links for them.!!!
Internet is full of complaints about registerfly, it is a fraud company.
How do you let them be in business for so long.
Please someone HELP ME in order to leave from these crops.
On 26th February 2007 11:47 PM, kriaras said:
Registerfly are criminals.
If you take a look in the Internet, there a lot of forums that write about the frauds that they do to their customers.
They send fake spamm e-mails to attack customers.
They charge more in their customers’ visa card when they renew or register domains.
They don’t change DNS of the domains names.
They don’t Unlock the Lock flag on the domains and they don’t give the Authorization codes for the domains names in order to be transferred.
They don’t answer the emails, tickets and when they answer they lie
and they talk with sarcasm.
All these things make a lot of trouble to many companies, and to many of my customers and give a very bad image about USA and American rules.
These moves make people want to crash with aeroplanes to your offices and also make the foreigners to hate Americans so much that force them to do bad things to them. DON’T YOU SEE THAT?
WHY DO YOU LET THESE KIND OF COMPANIES TO STAY IN BUSINESS FOR SO LONG?
PLEASE MAKE A SEARCH ABOUT REGISTERFLY IN INTERNET FORUMS TO SEE THAT THEY SAY EXACTLY THE THINGS THAT I WRITE YOU
On 26th February 2007 11:47 PM, kriaras said:
We have problems with Registerfly.
They don’t send the author code in order to transfer to another registar.
Can you help receive the author code and can you unlock our domains to move them to another registar?
They don’t answer to our daily tickets and e-mails.
They don’t unlock any domain at all.
THEY DISABLE THE UNLOCK FUNCTION FROM THEIR FORM.!!!
THE FUNCTION IS THERE BUT IT DOESN’T WORK AT ALL.
This is monopoly, and is forbidden by the USA law. You cover them because you know all this and you don’t do anything. You are responsible because you give them permission to use in every contact the word “ICANN Accredited Registrar”.!!!
This things are making aeroplanes crash your offices, don’t you see that?
This company take hostages thousands companies all over the world, and all this saw an bad image to USA and to your laws, don’t you see that?
Their purpose is to steal the domain names of their customers in order to put ads of the companies that guide them, don’t you see that?
On 26th February 2007 11:47 PM, kriaras said:
The trick of the supposed problems of the registerfly is to steak our domain names, and ICANN.ORG knows it but they don’t do something.
It is possibly that enom.com is also in this trick, and other companies for example advertising companies etc. They see the big success of google (adsense), yahoo, etc and they try to enter in the advertising in order to steal our domain names and taking advantage of our visitors, they take money from the advertisements.
The trick is very simple
They send fake spam email with extremely low prices for transfer and register domain names. After that they grab the customers who transfer the domains to them (the prices are lie because they charge much higher than they said).
They supposed to have technical problems, economical problems (but all this is a lie because they don’t have staff, everything are automated and they huge profits). The names that are expiring they don’t renew them, so the domain name is expired and it is theirs and in a short time your domain name advertises their collaborators.
ICANN.org has a huge responsibity because in every email and in their site they alwayw write “ICANN Accredited Registrar”. ICANN.org knows everything about what is happening but they don’t do anything
This trick works for many years and no one does anything.
ICANN.ORG says that they aren’t responsible, they know everything or they should know because if someone searches he would find that Internet is full of complaints for registerfly.com and I haven’t seen all their frauds that they have done.
If someone wants to see which is the purpose, I write that:
For almost 10 days I send messages to registerfly.com for problems that I have. My domain names are expiring and they don’t renew them, I can’t change DNS to my domain, they don’t send me authorization code and don’t let me unlock them in order to transfer them to other registrar.
AND WHEN I SEND A MESSAGE TO DELETE ONE OF MY DOMAIN NAMES FROM MY ACCOUNT, THEY DID IT AND THEY ANSWERED IMMEDIATELY
It was the only e-mail that they answered and after that they disappeared again. Since them I thought that it wasn’t anyone there, and that no one have seen my messages but when they deleted my domain name (of course, they use it for them) they answered immediately, and with this they saw that the watch all the tickets (messages) and they watch and apparently laugh with the despaired web masters who want desperately to renew their domains, but they answer only in messages that will give them more domain names.
On 28th February 2007 8:41 PM, kriaras said:
Registerfly has hostages million of domain names which belongs to companies and web master all over the world, hiding behind of ICANN and ICCANN don’t do anything.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!!
Up to two million domain names, including many with associated Web sites, are at risk over the apparent failure of ICANN-accredited domain registrar, RegisterFly.com.
The company in recent weeks is reportedly almost dysfunctional as customers scramble to register, renew or transfer names. RegisterFly.com’s support systems appear to be down, or completely overwhelmed.
It appears all domain names with the registrar are locked, preventing clients transferring, or even updating them. Attempts to change the status of domains are being overridden by the registrar.
Registrars are required to provide owners with authorization codes which are required in transferring to other registrars. These are normally displayed in clients’ accounts, which are accessed by private login and password codes. It appears however RegisterFly.com has stopped displaying the codes.
Calls to the various telephone numbers nominated for sales, technical support, and billing enquiries are going unanswered. Emails are not being responded to, and the registrar’s online support system appears to be unmanned or so under-resourced it is giving that impression. The company has recently introduced a new fax support system. However faxes are going unanswered as well.
Customers attempting to renew domains are receiving emails saying their renewals have failed, without any other information or explanation. In some cases attempts to subscribe to other services are unsuccessful with online messages indicating there is a problem with their credit card, or payment is denied. On checking with their credit card provider they are sometimes finding charges have in fact gone through.
They send fake spam email with extremely low prices for transfer and register domain names. After that they grab the customers who transfer the domains to them (the prices are lie because they charge much higher than they write).
They supposed to have technical problems, economical problems (but all this is a lie because they don’t have staff, everything are automated and they have huge profits). The names that are expiring they don’t renew them, so the domain name is expired and it is theirs and in a short time your domain name advertises their collaborators.
RegisterFly.com uses a security certificate to encrypt data during transmission. Pop-up prompts now appearing on its site however are notifying site users that the security certificate, which had 12 months duration, expired on Saturday.
A major concern for domain owners is that not only are their names at risk, but in many cases those domains involve Web sites.
A site http://www.registerflies.com has been established for disgruntled RegisterFly.com customers to air their grievances. Curiously http://www.registerflysucks.com is actually registered to, and hosted by, RegisterFly.com itself as a “landing page” or “parked” site. Unfortunately for the embattled company the site features a review of RegisterFly.com which is far from favorable. Reviewer Jim Darson says, “It seems from the comments/emails I have received, that you should definitely stay away from this company. How they have managed to continue operating with all the negative feedback I’ve received is beyond me.”
One poster, Anon, added, “My account is restricted, my domains are locked, I can’t transfer to another registrar.”
Adventurepack commented, “These guys are horrible. Besides quadruple charging my credit card without authorization and trying for weeks to get hold of them by email and phone (one time I called on their toll free line at 2 pm central time and was on hold till I came back the next day at 9 am central time). They tried to use a service called stormpay. What a joke. They try to charge you a $12 fee for returning your money that they wrongfully charged you for in the first place.”
Lee S. said, “They have taken at least three of my names and sold them to other parties. I have always paid my renewals on time, but that doesn’t matter. One of the names they hijacked isn’t up for renewal for three weeks. And, of course, they are still billing me as if nothing is happening.”
On digg, poster publicXcuse says, “Over the last three or four weeks I’ve tried renewing one of my domains about 10-12 times now and I get a failure every time. Registerfly keeps saying sorry and to try again. It keeps failing it doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon.”
The problem with RegisterFly.com highlights the vulnerability of domain name owners generally who entrust the world’s approved registrars to act as custodians to what is becoming extremely valuable property.
The value of domain names has shot higher in recent years, particularly with the proliferation of parked Web sites. Here domain registrars, including the majors, are using their customers domain names to establish advertising vehicles for which they derive advertising revenue. Often the domains are used without the authorization, or even the knowledge, of owners. Some however offer customers participation, but usually at a fee. If customers don’t take up the option, then the registrar often just uses the domain anyway, pocketing the revenue itself.
The business is so big, one of the majors monetizing domain names, Demand Media, Inc., has acquired two of the largest wholesale registrars, Bulk Register.com and Enom.com. Enom.com had ties with RegisterFly.com, which was one of its resellers for several years (since 2000) until the arrangement was terminated in February last year.
Founded in April 2006, Demand Media is a next-generation Web media company which has put together more than 150,000 domain names and turned them into niche content Web sites.
A dilemma for domain name owners is that registrars are becoming increasingly involved in the use and monetization of domain names themselves, raising suspicions when owners are not advised of pending expiries of their domains, and in the case of RegisterFly.com where they are unable to renew or transfer them. (This is monopoly and fraud which is forbidden by the laws of USA) It is unlikely registrars would deliberately engage in practices to pirate domains they are guardians of, but there are many disgruntled former domain owners who blame their registrars for their losses.
RegisterFly.com is involved in providing what are called, “landing pages,” whereby either text ads relevant to the domain name feature, or unique content is established on the domain page or pages, surrounded by advertising banners or links. The advertising revenue generated in this case goes to RegisterFly.com and owners are not given the opportunity to share in it.
At least for the past week the monetized sites appeared to be down with the message: “We’re sorry, but something went wrong. We’ve been notified about this issue and we’ll take a look at it shortly.” Some domains are now back displaying text ads again, while others don’t propagate. Meantime a number of domains registered with RegisterFly.com are now pointing to EventRobot pages related to a company that claims to “transform your site or message board into an interactive social networking experience, converting your audience into a passionate community.”
Problems with RegisterFly.com, which claims to have two million domains under its control through one million customers in all fifty U.S. states and 120 countries, appear to have surfaced long before its accreditation with ICANN and appear to have played a major part in the severing of ties with Enom. As of Monday RegisterFly.com was still listed as an ICANN accredited registrar. The ICANN Web site in describing RegisterFly.com says its, “various products and services is backed by 24/7 World class customer service via phone, live chat and email.”
RegisterFly.com, which according to ICANN has its offices at 4th Floor, 404 Main Street, Boonton, NJ, also offers hosting services and claims to be presently serving more than 300,000 Web sites. The company claims to be debt-free so it is unclear whether it is undergoing a financial collapse or its technical resources have been exhausted (probably lie). However the longevity of its problems suggest a structural deficiency.
The claim of registerfly.com by being low profitable business, which leads to bankruptcy or low quality of services, is a lie because they use automated systems, which can be very hi profitable business. Very importact is that the fact until few months ago, they didn’t show any telephone number and you could contact them only through chat or e-mail. Which shows the real low cost of the company. The fact that all this was planned, it can be seen by the fact that now they put telephone numbers on their web site.
It is very interesting the press office of ICANN:
ICANN, through its press office, was made aware of the pending publication of this story well prior to the commencement of business on Friday. ICANN was alerted to the claims being made about RegisterFly.com and was asked whether it was prepared to issue a statement concerning the status of the registrar. ICANN was also asked what mechanisms were in place to protect domain owners generally in the event of a default by an ICANN-accredited registrar. ICANN did not respond.
It is also very interesting that ICANN knows the profits of registerfly but it covers them. Their profit are huge because of the huge number of domain names that they have, the frauds that they have made to the domain owners, the stealing of the domain name, the ads that they are putting there, and the selling of the domain names without notify the owners first. Also they didn’t use any staff because everything was made automatical.
On 28th February 2007 8:42 PM, kriaras said:
About the claims of registerfly.com that the low prices drives the company to this condition is clear that this is jus a stupid claim.
The prices that charge their customers are much higher than other companies, which with lower prices and fewer costumers survive and have a profit.
In domain names business, the things are better when you have a lot of costumers like registerfly.com has.
The prices are not extremely low, for example $9.90 for a new domain and $7.99 for renewal action.(Without considering the thousands of frauds that they had done to the domain owners, in which they took large amounts of money all this years).
Those kind of business are having much better position when they have so many customers. Their expenses are staying extremely low because of the automatic function which drive everything well. And when the directors want it everything go badly.
For example a domain company who has a bad financial season, they only have to upgrade the prices by only one dollar. So one dollar is enough by 1 million customers to gives you 1 million dollar extra income every year. Domains owners are not willing to change registrar for 1 dollar upgrade of the prices because any way is much cheaper the prices if a domain owner wants to change registrar every year. (Transfer action is cost 6.99 to many registrars)
On 6th March 2007 11:45 PM, kriaras said:
Icann.org is the main responsible of registerfly.com fraud (and enom.com and any others which are hiding behind of this big scandal which disparage the reliability και the reputation of USA).
Registerfly.com would not have tried to do all those well-planed frauds if they hadn’t the support of icann.org
They knew that icann.org would not take off the permission despite the accusations that are coming everyday to them, in which they don’t do anything and they don’t protect the thousands domain owners who are trapped by registerfly.com
So, they sent fraud emails all the time which are telling for low prices and like that they gather domain names in their account and they don’t let them leave (they don’t unlock the domains and they don’t give author code to transfer them domains to a legal registrar) Also they hi charge credit cards, they charge credit cards without any reason, they let domains to expire without renew them and they keep them for them or they transfer them to enom.com. They sell domains, which belong to their customers, and they keep the money without giving them to the domain owners. I see my domains to be “for sale” in the Internet but I never gave them any authorization to sell my domains.
They are criminals but icann.org is responsible for all this because they knew everything and they didn’t do anything.
Thousand desperate domain owners from all over the world are trapped in registerfly.com and icaqnn.org continue to promote registerfly.com (and enom.com) as a good and authorized registrar for the domains owners!!!
Icann.org must stop immediately the registerfly.com frauds and allow to the domain owners to be transferred in other registrar as soon as possible!!!
Icann.org must go together with registerfly.com to the curt room!!!
On 8th March 2007 11:24 PM, kriaras said:
Registerfly continue their fraud
All time they do the trick of the repairing of the site, they pretend that they solve their internal problems (financial management etc). However, that’s never come through, so they never sent us author code but they continue to tell us lies about the supposed repairing of the site in order to continue with their fraud.
The Problems in my domains continue although as they say Medina left. I had renewed some of my domains but they made them to expire and they took for them. Also, they still don’t let me to renew my domains. They don’t send me the Author Code and they don’t unlock my domains in order to be transferred in other registrar. They continue to attack their costumers by sending fraud spam emails by fake prices. (TheFlyPaper.com)
We login everyday and we send them tickets for our problems but they don’t answer them. Also we sent email to ICANN but they don’t answer and they cover them. They pretend the problems in order to continue their frauds. Thousands domain owners are hostage in registerfly and steal our job our time , our money. Our names goes to enom.com and are managed my advertisers which are connected with them (enom.com is hiding behind registerfly)
DO SOMETHING NOW. PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!
REGISTERFLY PROBLEMS WILL NEVER EXPIRE, BUT OUR DOMAINS EXPIRE EVERYDAY.
We mustn’t believe them about the repairing until they solve all our problems.
WE WILL NEVER SOLVE THE PROBLEMS, ICANN COVER THEM. ALL THOSE ARE PART OF THIS BIG FRAUD.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!!
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