Microsoft Office Live

[spinweb]

I am trying to start a business online and thought that Microsoft Office Live's website tool would be a good, inexpensive way to start out, boy was I wrong.

I signed on to their Basic Beta program in June and set up a website using the program, then initiated the domain transfer from my original domain provider to MS Office Live and began a hellish experience of MS telling me they couldn't transfer it for various reasons (one of them was because it was "locked" at my original provider, which it was not).

Then finally, finally the domain did transfer in early September, and NOW they tell me it can't go live because I initiated the transfer with an MSN email account (don't get that one at all).

I have filled out support tickets over 50 times and each time I get some nice flowery email saying to do this or that (which I had done already several times before), or they tell me they have people "working on it."

Does anyone have any insight as to what is really going on at Office Live? I would transfer to another site provider/host, but I don't want to go thru another 3 months of hell trying to get my domain away from Microsoft. I am emotionally exhausted and a the end of my rope.

[daveVk]

Your domain name should be registered in your own name, and stay that way. Who you register it with, is also your choice NOT your hosting companies, I would go with a registor independent of your hosting company. Check your domain registration details and go with a hosting service that offers better service. Setting up should be a matter of hours not months.

[spinweb]

After the domain transfer to Office Live didn't go thru after several weeks, in late July I had the original domain provider point the URL at the Office Live DNS servers and was assured it would work. It didn't.

So then I pushed thru to get the domain transferred from the original provider to Office Live, which finally happened in early September and still the site I created in June is NOT live and I get this "we're working on it" line from Microsoft everytime I try to find out what is happening.

One person on one of the boards I frequent wondered whether Microsoft was pulling the plug on Office Live. Another person had a similar problem to mine and tried to transfer away from Microsoft and is now in a horrible situation because they can't get it transferred out of there. I have never seen such a fiasco.