You’ve got to be kidding me! Moving to a new domain Registrar should NOT be this difficult

OK, so I own about a dozen or so domains. As a big batch of my domain started coming up for renewal, this batch being under Network Solutions, I began to think that domain registrar fees simply should not be as expensive as they are with Network Solutions. So I began to evaluate all the registrars in an effort to consolidate my domain under one roof. I ended up selecting GoDaddy as my registrar of choice. Their costs are much more reasonable than Network Solutions and their control panel is much more straight forward and clear… and then my woes began…

I started by logging into my Network Solution, 1and1 and M6.net accounts and setting my domains to “Unlocked” status so that transfer can occur. I then requested and got a confirmation key code for each domain, except M6.net who is STILL holding my domains hostage. Then I signed up for a GoDaddy account and requested my domains be transferred, using the confirmation keys that I had previously received. True to the process, I received an email from my current registrars asking me to confirm that I’m moving my domains to another registrar. I clicked on the links provided and logged into the confirmation pages where I then confirmed that I was making the transfer.

OK, that should be it right? That should be all that’s required to allow my domains to switch to the new registrar. I even configured GoDaddy to keep the existing domain settings from the original registrar so that services would not be interrupted. That should be it right? WRONG!!!

I will say that 1and1 released and relinquished their domains without hassle or fuss and the transfer was pretty seamless. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Network Solutions. If it wasn’t for the fact that M6.net was holding my domains hostage, I would say that Network Solutions was the worst registrar in my book. As it is, they are only slightly better than M6.net. Why do I say that? Where do I begin? OK, here goes…

To start, Network Solutions noted that the transfer could take up to 4 days to complete. Up to? It DID take 4 days to complete! Even after I logged into their confirmation page and explicitly confirmed that I wanted to transfer my domains, it still took 4 days after that! Why? I just don’t get it. Alas, that’s not the worst of it. In what I can only think is sheer spitefulness, Network Solutions moved my domain settings from their DNS pointers that point to my blog, email and other locations, to the default parked domain settings. Then they stonewalled the transfer for 4 days before finally handing it over to GoDaddy. Besides the fact that this action dumped my online activities such as my blog, email etc. into darkness for 4 days, I had to reconfigure all my settings from scratch once I got the domain to GoDaddy! There must be something illegal about what Network Solutions did…

Given my 4 days of darkness, you may have noticed my blog disappearing. At least I have it back up and running again and everything at GoDaddy works really great. No if I can just get M6.net to respond to my email, since they do NOT provide a phone number. Actually, I lie. They DO provide a phone number to contact for support. Of course when you dial it, you simply get a fax tone!

And so the trials and tribulations of domain consolidation continues…

Cheers
C