[Blood]

Hello

One of the domain names we have regsitered has prematurely expired. The name was due to expire in 2014 but expired last weekend.

At the beginning of the week I was able to log in to the registar's site and submit a support ticket. I received no answer. I contacted support via email and received no answer. I tried 'phoning them and... no answer.

When I accessed the registrar's site today, a message was displayed saying it had expired - meaning the registrar's domain has expired.

This is serious because this means we have no way of regaining control of the domain. Luckily, we only had the one site registered with this registrar.

I have contacted ICANN and requested assistance but do not know if they can help.

Can anyone suggest any other course of action that may be open to my company in order to get the domain back up?

Thanks

[Ossian]

What extension is it? (co.uk, com...)

[Blood]

Hi, Ossian

Thanks for replying.

It is a .org domain.

[Ossian]

Looks as if they are handled by the "Public Interest Registry":
http://www.pir.org/home

Assuming you have evidence of the domain registration and expiry date, and the registrar has gone bust or similar, there should (ha ha) be no issue getting it to another registrar

[Blood]

Thanks very much. I'll contact them

[Blood]

Phew! What a job!

Right. It seems that the registrar we used temporarily went down. Even so, the fact they allowed the name to expire prematurely says oodles about them. I have since discovered that many complaints have been lodged against them during the last week.

What really helped us was keeping an eye on Whois results. Soon after the problem began and the registrar went down, the 'sponsoring registrar' changed. I contacted the new sponsoring registrar and they put me onto ustinet.com who apparently are responsible for our domain name. They took it off the original registrar and placed it with a new one.

I had to amend the A records for the domain - an extra set had been added which appeared on at least one black-list. A day and a half later, the name is now resolving to the correct IP address and everything is hunky dory.

Man - nothing a like a website going down (especially one being used as a pilot for a UK-wide project!) to make you sweat...

Thanks for the help, Ossian. You put me on the right path.

[Ossian]

Well done!
Very glad its sorted out

Out of curiousity (and in the interests of "naming and shaming") do you want to tell us who the offending registrar was?

[biggles77]

Originally Posted by Blood

Man - nothing a like a website going down (especially one being used as a pilot for a UK-wide project!) to make you sweat...

Yes, having a web site go down on you can make you sweat alright.

[Ossian]

nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean, squire...

[Blood]

I've been trying to get my head round this and have received some helpful advice from the body that dealt with my complaint.

These are the organisations at the top of the heap, if you like. These are the official registries:

http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registries/listing

Registrars below these are 'accredited', and below these are either partners of the accredited registrars or resellers. There is a heirarchy, and resellers seem to be at the bottom of the heap.

The WHOIS output will always show the registering authority. Thus, one of our other domain names was registered with a reseller, but the actual registration of the domain name was undertaken by an accredited registrar, Tucows, and Tucows is the name listed in a WHOIS output for the domain name. So, if I had an issue with our reseller for that domain and was unable to contact them, or if I felt that they were not responding appropriately my next step would be to contact Tucows.

So - I wonder if the 'sponsoring registrar' changed as I said...

This is a very simplistic view. I still don't fully understand how all this works but hope it helps anyone else who may be unfortunate enough to experience a similar issue.

[Edit]
Accredited registrars are listed here:
http://www.icann.org/registrar-repor...fied-list.html