Warning to register.com customers

No more phone support

[steveb]

I've registered five domains with register.com. Two years ago I transfered one of those to register.com from another registrar due to a deal they were offering my webhost. All the rest were registered directly with register.com, including one a few weeks ago.

Two days ago, when I went to put one site online and change the dns info, I discovered that my domain manager account no longer worked. I called the 24 hour "support" number and was told they no longer offered phone support and that I had to use email (!) which would be replied to within 24 hours. (The one I sent was replied to in 33 hours.)

Despite always registering and renewing with register.com, they have now violated our contract by revoking their 24 hour phone support without any prior notification or consent. They say, because one of my domains had some relationship with a "partner" (my web host) that I know nothing about, that they will no longer provide phone support or even let me use the online domain manager for ANY of my domains!

I've told them via email to return my access to the domain manager and phone support. So far all I've gotten is some machine generated thing that answered nothing.

I am glad I discovered this over some trivial thing like putting a new site online, and not something more important. Obviously if they do not comply with our contract by tomorrow I'll switch registrars (and I suppose I should chargeback on my credit card too).

So, if you think you are a register.com customer with access to a domain manager and phone support, you better check, because there is a good chance you will not have access to either of these.

[webwoman]

Thanks for the heads up. I have several domains with them and started getting bad service in general a couple months ago. Maybe its time for a change. ya gotta love free enterprise!

[steveb]

Minor update... got a call from a register.com representative saying they would provide 6am to 7pm phone number (but not a 24 hour one) to those customers whose contracts they breached (lol, or at least to me!).

Also, I was told they are unable to transfer my account back to register.com back from wherever the heck it is because they are internally not competent enough to do it. Apparently their techs set up a one way door but are not able to figure out how to create another door back. The excuse of "we are incompetent so we can't fix the illegal thingee we did" is not very comforting.

I do hold out hope that they will get someone in there who knows what they are doing and will fix their mess so I don't have to go through the hassle of changing registrars but at this point I don't know if they know how to clean up their mess, or if they are just going to take the smallish risk of a class action suit from all the $35 folks out there and not care.

[cabbie]

I have had similar trouble with godaddy and wildwestdomains.com.They apparently did an upgrade and left alot of customers unable to access their accounts.
No email to inform and no reply to my email.On the phone I was greeted with unapologetic staff.Whats the business world coming to.

[SlowMove]

This is bad PR for them. I'd send them an email with a link to this thread.

[steveb]

I would guess the reason they called me and offered the partial phone support was partly (mostly?) because it was posted here.