Help Me And Advise Me On My Domain Transfer My registeration company went bust

[mandla 0]

I have a major problem. I have had a site for two years and Sudeenly the person I bought it via has gone awol. I dont know if they closed down during the recession or what but I have been trying to email and call the number they had and get through to no one. All the email I send bounce back after a few hours. I even went a step further and used the email they have registered on Who.is but no joy. Does anyone have any idea how I can recover my site. Unfortunately I never got the details to log in and change my dns servers because when I bought the domain I actually paid 10 pounds extra because on of their options was that if you choose to pay extra they will give you all this extra support, like backing up your site every week, ensuring that your site would be highly indexed on Google. Back THen I had no clue about domains and website design so I had taken this option because I thought I needed all the help I can get and to be honest they were always helping me and sorting out any problems I encountered but then suddenly they went dead last september. I assumed seeing as they were a small company they probabaly were travelling or on holiday but by mid november i was starting to get worried. and wierdly enough my email to them which earlier on when I email I would get a response in 24hours and a reaction as in actioning of my request would have happened with in 24hours now the emails started coming back saying the address didnt exist. I have tried getting their phone number and getting any contact details available on the net but still I am geting no joy. At some point I went of FAcebook cause I rememebered once talking to the CEO on facebook but his facebook was deactivated and so was his skype. Subsequent emails have all returned to my inbox citing that the email doesnt exist.Unfortunately the reason I wanted this transfer is because I changed hosting companies and I am now with Trap 17 and the site domain still points to my old hosting company and I want it to point to my new dns servers. I had backed up all my files manually and have uploaded them to my Trap 17 account but now I cant access the domain to change the servers to point the right place and my old host has since eactivated and deleted my account meaning my site now goes to google not found.I have worked so hard to promote and make the site grow and now Im stuck in a rut I hate it cause Im so help less. Wierdly enough I did email them in August saying I wanted the passwords to my account and they had said thats fine we will email them to you in next few hours and I didnt get anything I didnt see any rush so I had given them time to send me and when I started emailing them again a month later i statred to get bounced back email. Anyone know how I can sort this out. My domain is a dot com domain How hard is it to sort this out. Has anyone had any experience with this problem. How did you solve it?

[BuffaloHelp 24]

I'm afraid you are caught in the middle of some ugly domain name war.The way it is going, and you do not take drastic action, you will lose that domain. Perhaps you will lose that domain to someone who is really interested in or the domain registrar will hold it for ransom by asking you to pay for big money to get it back.I am unsure if UK follow these rules but here in the united states there are steps to be taken by registrars when a situation like this happens--someone else owns the domain name and you would like it to make it yours.Contact the domain registrar. They will offer you two options--send a domain register change request to the first party and wait for the respond, or request back order/bid for the domain. A domain registrar has no idea what is really going on and to remove from any legal action (by transferring domain name from one person to another), they require written authorization from the first party to transfer to the second party. This means, if the first party does not respond you are out of luck. No matter what you do you will not get that domain to be your domain. Basically you have no control over your domain and thus you will end up losing that domain.The second is to place domain back order or bid for the domain. This process is very tricky and risky because you have to wait for your domain in question to be expired and pass the domain renewal/redemption period (usually 30 days). Before the domain expires, you create a user login account with the same registrar. And then you place back order of the same domain name. When the renewal/redemption period is over you will then own the domain name. But here is the risky part. If someone else place the back order like you, then the domain registrar will go ahead with domain auction--all parties who placed that domain as back order will now have the chance to own the domain name by bidding. The highest, of course, bidder will win the domain name.Contact the current domain registrar and explain your situation. Be professional. You're not the only one and you'll not be the last one who has this issue. Be courteous. And listen carefully to their solution. And be patient. Let them offer you suggestions and think about it.

[akira550 0]

yeah I think they kidnapped your good domain name and maybe it is a good one can you place it here? so that we can appraise itand it is a 2 year old domain name which is good anyway you can always start with a new domain name but to become a good domain like that you need to wait for 2 years, I am so sorry If I can't help you with this matter because as you've been said the registrar is shutdown already so you are searching now in the air, unless if you can contact the registrar and take not if they asked for some money don't give lah,,domain transfer is free but you need to pay for the company where you are going to transfer it

[mandla 0]

I cant believe Im stuck in this situation. I will take you advice and email the company that registered the domain and be completely cuteous. I hope that this will help me get my domain back and be able to conitnue the service I was providing. Thanks for all your input. I will keep you updated on whats going on maybe you will be able to see what I miss as we go on

[anwiii 17]

i am a little confused. did you buy the domain from a private party, a reseller or a registrar?when you do a whois on the domain, does it list you as the admistrative contact or someone else?when you originally bought your domain, how did you initially set up your dns settings to point to your website? did they do it for you? was the domain and hosting bought at the same place?i wouldn't tell anyone your domain...especially publically right now to further protect yourself. you also might want to consider a trademark this also may help you protect your domain namea domain is like real estate. you wouldn't buy a house and not change the locks, right? by not doing so would allow the previous owner to possibly enter anytime they wish with a copy of the original key. you should have accessed your domain control panel as soon as you purchased it and protect yourself. also, printing out your whois information is a good idea too as well as signing up for a service that monitors whois information changes. this will be a learning experience and i am sorry for your struggles.i would DEFINATELY talk with the registrar unless they are the ones that went out of business. it really makes me wonder how we really OWN a domain when things like this can happen....and it happens all the time....

[akira550 0]

I cant believe Im stuck in this situation. I will take you advice and email the company that registered the domain and be completely cuteous. I hope that this will help me get my domain back and be able to conitnue the service I was providing. Thanks for all your input. I will keep you updated on whats going on maybe you will be able to see what I miss as we go on

Yes contact them be courteous maybe they will reply if they didn't reply to your email well atleast give some time for them to reply
if the day limit you give to yourself of waiting ends and still no respond from them, then that's very hard and sad all you have to do is to decide and get a new domain name here at xisto since they are offering it with only $10 or 10,000 mycent I think you have got the mycent $ enough now since your posts are quiet good and long thats why you have enough now to buy your new domain.
and whenever they reply to you and you've got a new domain name then you can parked it anyway so that the two domain name is pointing into one site of yours. Hope you get all this fine and hope they will reply, how long have you been contacting them? and how many times now?

[rvalkass 5]

All .com domains are ultimately required to follow ICANN regulations regardless of the country in which the registrar is located. However, most of ICANN's regulations deal with the unlawful transfer of domains without your knowledge or the 'stealing' of a domain name containing a copyrighted/trademarked name. If you tell us the domain name we can look it up on the WHOIS database and find out who the domain is currently registered with. If you got the domain from a reseller then you should be able to contact the ICANN-approved registrar they got the domain from to get your domain back. If you bought your domain from an ICANN-approved registrar (rather than a reseller) then you are in a much more difficult situation.

It is also a requirement for registrars to provide you with access to some kind of administration of your domain. If your current registrar has removed their website and control panel then it may be worthwhile contacting ICANN to get them involved with the company. There is also the possibility of contacting Trading Standards and getting them to investigate. They have legal powers and should be able to do something. Finally, if you were dealing with a UK-based company, check Companies House for their records. That will provide you with the company's current address, and whether they have actually gone bust, or just gone in to hiding.

[mandla 0]

Sorry for not updating you all earlier but I eventually managed to get a response after I went on who.is I found the registeration company infor using the old registration site which was no longer available but still registeres. At the bottom of Who.is they have related sites or sumfink like that so I clicked on one of the such sites and who.is their infor and they were owned by same person. I took a chance and wrote thema letter hoping that they would pass it on to the owner and how i was unhappy with the service and everything and i felt cheated by the sister company. I also mentioned that I was going to report the issue to ICANN and it would mean there was a possibility that ICANN may shut them down if they are having dodgy business dealings like that. (Obviously I bluffed this not sure if thats true in reality but I did say that. I said I had thoroughly gone through the ICANN code of conduct for website domain provders as I had been in contact with ICANN and was actually told to use the email they were reading the message on as I got that off ICANN and I was to send a copy of the mail to ICANN to. I gave them 48 hours to respond and in 24hours I had a response.I was given some bull story about someone breachign their security and stealing their passwords and that they thought I was responsible for it seeing as my Site had been altered to bear my address details. Which was untrue as Who Is still showed their details. By next day Who.is had no details showing as if there was no Administration info or Technicall Infor. I dont know if they did this on purpose to back up their story or it was coincidence. But they said they would not give me my domain back until they were 100% sure I hadnt tried to get the details on my domain changed. It was the best response but hey they were talkign and for me that was fine compared to silence.I explained over and over that I wasnt responsible then suddenly my domain was redirecting to a for sale or Lease page. I was told this by a friend who was just trying to log in and was asking if I was selling the domain as he wanted it cause it was a big name within our county. I emailed them asking whats happening and again they told me they were actually trying to get to the bottom of things They said they never saw my emails at all and were emailing me from a very similar address to a previous one but witl a slightly altered spelling. Without looking closely I'd never have found it lets say their email was blackcolor@mailisfake.com they were mailing me from blackcolour@mailisfake.com and they were saying they never changed address and I never wrote them as they had been using same email for over 6 years now. Lucky i kept copies of all the mail I had been sending them and I copy and pasted them thats when I realised the spelling and mentioned it.They tried pulling a fast one by say ahhhhh you see you were using wrong email thats not our problem you messed your spelling then. It was your fault not emailing to right inbox. hence I asked them notice you used to reply from that address and this tells me you are lying and covering your tracks. We exchanged meails back and forth and then they told me they would sort it out as they have realised that it was probably not me who hacked their system. I just dont understand it all.I havent had any hard proff that the site is back up but will let you know in the next few days if they go back on their word or are truth full.Thanks to everyone for the hints and advice. I trully appreciate it. I was lost without that advice cause I didnt know what to do. A bit of this and a bit of that when shaken to gether mixed and overflowing made progress for me.Thank You