Register.com Gripes

computergripes.com is a domain. The company that reserves this name for you and charges you for the privilege is called a domain registrar, or sometimes just a registrar. Register.com is a registrar in New York City. The original registrar, and still the biggest, is Network Solutions in Virginia. My experiences with Network Solutions were always confusing so just before a domain of mine came up for renewal, I tried to transfer it from Network Solutions to Register.com.

They Have Problems

August 21, 2005. The New York Times. Mark Cuban Is Mad (Again). But Why? by Andrew Ross Sorkin. This article is mostly about the proposed sale of regster.com and the price being paid for the company. Quoting from the article: "To be fair to Register.com's critics, the company does have a lot of problems. But perhaps the biggest problem is that it hasn't been able to fix any of them. Indeed, the company has had three chief executives in the last three years."

December 2004

I had to deal with register.com regarding the transfer of a domain from one registrar to another. This generated a ton of gripes, which I have yet to write up fully. The net effect of this interaction is that I will never use register.com again.

Poor Security

September 7, 2001. I went to register.com web site to make some changes to a domain. The URL of the first login page was
http://mydomain.register.com/index.cgi?1|2377881127|

On this page you enter your userid, password and domain name into what they refer to as "Domain Manager". Just under the form where you enter this information was the following

The gripe is that this web page is not secure. The fact that the URL above starts with HTTP instead of HTTPS proves this. Data entered into a web page using HTTP is not secure. Turns out you can fudge around this security problem by entering an invalid userid/password. The resultant web page with the error message is secure.

Transferring a Domain Name

September 28, 2000

I started the ball rolling by sending them a form in the mail. The instruction on their web site about how to transfer a domain do not mention that you can start the process by sending them a piece of paper in the mail. However, the Adobe Acrobat version of the required form mentioned it and provided the address.

October 2, 2000

I get three email messages from Register.com. The first one said:

Thank you for choosing register.com, the first step on the web. Register.com has received your inquiry and a representative will be responding to your request promptly.

I did not make an inquiry, I made a registrar transfer request. No representative ever contacted me.

The third one, from Richard D. Forman, President & CEO said:

Recently, you contacted register.com Customer Support and we want to hear from you!
Please help us better assist you by following the link below and completing our short survey.

How is someone whose request has just started supposed to provide an opinion about the service rendered? At this point, the only service the provided was the other two email messages. Nonetheless, I did fill out the survey and said that I was very confused by the second email message, our next topic.

The second email message was the payload. This is the one that says they started the process of transferring the domain registration to them. At least I think that's what it said.

***************************************************************************
If this response does not completely answer your question or if you have additional questions about your domain name, click on the link below or copy and paste the link into your web browser to submit your inquiry to a Customer Support representative.
http://www.register.com/reply.cgi?ginewrn999=9999999999&smwerw=9999
***************************************************************************
RE: <my domain name>
Thank you for transferring your domain name to register.com. Please click on the link above to reopen this email. In the body of your reply email, please state that you confirm the transfer of your domain name to register.com. Once the confirmation is received, we will begin the transfer of your domain name to our service. By clicking on the link above, you are agreeing to the terms and conditions of register.com’s Registration Agreement, which can be found at:
http://www.register.com/service-agreement.cgi
Once the transfer has been initiated, you will receive a verification email from your current registrar within 8 calendar days to confirm the transfer. Once the registrar transfer has been confirmed via this email, the transfer to register.com can be completed.

Should I respond to the email? Its not clear. The description of the link makes it seem as if it is only for my asking questions. The body of the message however says to click on the link to "reopen this email". There is no such thing as re-opening an email message. You can delete it, reply to it, save it, but you can not re-open it. Nonetheless, it says what to put in the "body of your reply email", so I guess that I am supposed to reply to the email message (back to support@register.com) Bad guess.

The end of the message is confusing (to me at least) too. It says that I should expect an email message from the old registrar within 8 days. Then what? It's not clear what I am supposed to do when I get this message. Also, why doesn't register.com send me something when the transfer has been initiated? That is, how will I know they got the confirmation request from me that I really really want to transfer the domain? What can I expect to happen when the transfer is completed? It does not say.

October 4, 2000

My email message was returned as not deliverable.

This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:
The following module was unable to complete its task. Please refer to the following information: Module Name: AutoReply-Handler Message Name: <name was here> Process ID: 2787 Exit Value: 139 Signal Value: 11

Okay, it must have been the web page link that I should respond to. I do. I fill in the form in the web page and say that I really do want to transfer the domain but that I'm confused as to whether this is the correct way to do it. After submitting this text, they display the message below:

October 5, 2000
No customer service representative contacted me in 5 hours so I opted to call them on the phone.
They said that for good luck, I should respond to the email message again and state very simply and clearly that I confirm the transfer request. I did.

October 6, 2000
No real gripes today. They sent an email saying the transfer has been initiated. However, this email said:

Once the domain name is released by the NSI Registry and you have confirmed the transaction via email, the transfer will be completed.

Its not brutally clear just what transaction it is referring to that I am confirming. They also sent another request by email to fill out a survey as a result of my confirming the transfer request. They take the surveys, but judging from the last few days, its not clear they read them.

October 7, 2000
Network Solutions sent me an email message today saying they approved the transfer. Nowhere did it ask me to approve the transfer. I'm not sure whose in charge here, but the gripe is that register.com said I would have to approve the transfer with NSI which was not true.

October 10, 2000
A check of my domain at checkdomain.com shows that it is now owned by register.com. In fact, it said that the domain was registered on October 6, 2000. Being off the ball, register.com had not notified me that the switch had taken place. Also, the administrative contact was wrong, it was my name repeated twice. The organization was also wrong, it was my name repeated twice.

NSI reports the authoritative name servers for your domain when you look up who owns the domain. Register.com does not.

October 16, 2000
Still no notice from register.com about the status of the transfer. I asked them about this by filling out a customer service request on their web site today.

October 20, 2000
They responded to my email today saying that the transfer was complete. I should not have had to ask. The message also said that they allow me to edit my name server. Why would I want to do this? They don't say, I guess it's brutally obvious to everyone but me. A second email message asked me to fill out a survey about my tech support experience. I did and asked why someone would want or need to edit their name server.

I went to make changes to my domain and it did not like my userid and password. Fortunately if you enter the domain name, they generate an email to the main contact with the userid and password, or so they claim. I did this and the email message consisted only of my userid, no password. However, it did have a link to a web page where I can enter a new password. This worked. I modified the Administrative contact today. We'll see how this goes....

The web page they provide for making changes to your domain information is mydomain.register.com. When you go to this page to log in, the connection is not secure. As a result, the userid and password that control access to a domain are sent in clear text over the Internet. Not a good thing.

October 24, 2000
The name of the organization in question includes my name. Since my name is not part of the organization, I tried to change it today. The good news is that using the register.com web site I was able to effect immediate changes to the organization contact information. The gripe however is that I could not take my name out. Using the "change contact" feature on the web site, I went to change the organization contact information. Deleting my name resulted in an error, it's a required field. I tried a couple spaces for my first name and last name, but this too was not allowed. I got around this by entering a period in the first name and last name fields which was happily accepted. Now when you view the organization information for this domain it looks like:
     ORGANIZATION NAME
      . .
    ADDRESS LINE ONE
    CITY, STATE   12345

It seem illogical to me that organization contact information must include the name of a person. After all, there is a separate and distinct entity for an administrative contact.

FYI: Customer Support (800) 899-9724

FYI: I've had gripes with other registrars, register.com and Network Solutions.

Page last updated: August 21, 2005