the blog of ludwig wendzich

I am so so so sorry for anyone who had trouble or well to be honest who couldn’t get to my site and instead got a “Suspended” page.

I moved host. And then I started the trasnfer of my domain to my new host which I thought would take a few hours.

The first time, this went on for about 8 days. A few times a day I would check whether the transfer had completed only to be greeted by a lovely message, “Transfer (Pending)”. Yay, it’s pending. That means so much. I didn’t get much status report at all. Maybe a message of the current stage and the percentage complete of the transfer (since it turns out there are multiple steps.) No, just ‘pending.’

Now this would be fine if I waited for a day (like most people) before it was finally trasnferred but see there was the ‘multiple steps.’ Now one of those steps is sending a confirmation email to the regsitrant of the domain who has to reply and confirm that yes they are the person who owns the domain and they do in fact want to transfer it.

Now, I only found out this bit of information after the domain transfer failed after the first 8 days. No, not from information in the email (or the webpage) that told me the domain transfer had failed but because I had to specifically ask the support team.

You are probably thinking, why didn’t you check your email for 8 days, and if you did why didn’t you answer this confirmation message. Well, I did check my email, several times a day infact, and the reason I didn’t answer the confirmation email is because I didn’t receive it. How come? Well I found out that I am not the registrant of the domain.

Hang on, I’m paying for ludwignz.com but it’s registered under my old hosts’ name with my old hosts’ contact details, including their email address (which happens to be their sales email address, odd.)

I contact my old host to get the registrant information changed but I can’t because if I do, I can’t transfer the domain for 60 days. Why? Apparently it says so in the Terms of Service. Well ok then.

It’s at this point that I explicitly tell my old host to check for a confirmation email from my new host which would be sent to the email they had filed as the registrant email for my domain. They agree.

I restart the process and it’s been 5 days now. My old host claims they haven’t received an email yet, and my new hosts claim they can’t tell me when it has been sent. It’s fast approaching the time where I have to pay for the domain again and I’m not paying the old host for a years use of the domain only to have the domain transferred 3 days later and then have to pay my new hosts for another years use (the same year.)

So, I’m having problems with my hosts and transferring domains. It’s still not sorted out yet, but the reason that you see my site again is because I realised this could go on forever and I may as well get my old host to change the DNS to point to my new host (because I can’t control that myself at my old host.)

Lesson to be learnt. Buy your domains from an independent provider like GoDaddy.

Sorry for the rant.

Tags: domain, host, frustration, problem, domain transfer