No access to make changes for a domain

[Marcia]

I've got a site that needs to be launched next week and there's a bit of a problem with the domain name. The client registered the domain name through a free host for convenience, not having had any experience, and just left it there with "nothing."

I'll be hosting it for her, and when I went to make the nameserver and tech contact changes, found that there is NO access for the admin contact to make any changes whatsoever.

I sent an email to tech support hours and hours ago, and received nothing but an autoresponse in return, so I sent another.

They can verify and make the change if and when they get around to it, but that isn't the only issue. There will still be no way for either the admin or tech contact to make any further changes, so essentially it's being held hostage. And of course now it'll be the weekend and they'll probably not be there, which holds it all up further.

It's my understanding that the admin contact should have unlimited access to control their own domain name; who should be contacted to remedy it? They are a Tucows reseller.

[hasbeen]

Marcia,

I was in a similar circumstance. The solution was to send emails to both the reseller and the company being resold (sorry, not sure how to phrase that). In your case, the reseller and Tucows. I nicely explained the situation, and got a great help from the Parent company (in my case, it was eNom), giving me the username/password combo.

Therefore, try contacting Tucows, or have the customer contact them, and explain what's going on. Maybe they can help you out.

[Lisa]

Marcia,
The admin contact at Tucows does have access. But the reseller may not have told your client his username, password, and address to the control panel. Either the reseller or tucows should be able to forward you this information. Ofcourse they will only forward it to the admin contact's email.

Tucows is a great company, I am sure they will have you all fixed up sometime today.

[Marcia]

There is an authentication error with the sign-in, using the information that was provided. And Tucows won't reply to mail unless you're a reseller - so it's back to the host that sold her the name. I've been back and forth with that host all day fighting over this.

I use a different Tucows reseller, with their own sign-in and it takes about 90 seconds to make a change. We can't transfer to the other registrar until 60 days has expired, which is a shame because you get responses from a live person within a couple of hours at the most.

I wrote and told them that either they get it resolved or take the banners that are hanging up loading off at no charge until we can transfer registrars, since with this hassle it's not conducive to paying them for a year for a banner-free upgrade.

[netshooter]

Call them

[Marcia]

To follow up, the reseller kept sending me to opensrc, who will not deal with an end user. They will only deal with the reseller, who kept sending me back to opensrc - they just didn't get it. The reseller is supposed to handle all end user/domain owner issues.

The domain name would still be tied up, but fortunately the 60 days expired, and it was resolved by having the client change registrars to the one I always use, a different Tucows reseller, which solved it within the hour.

Meantime, I had hunted around for other email addresses and several days later got a response from a live person. I explained the situation, and just got an email from an opensrc.org compliance officer, and they will be with dealing the complaint about the problem reseller, who alone is supposed to deal with end users - opensrc won't. They just don't know, so now they'll find out what they're supposed to be doing.

It took making a lot of noise, but now I've got a name and an email address in case it's ever needed again.