Have You Been Screwed By Registerfly?

First and foremost, I have been a Registerfly customer since 2004 and am not affiliated with any of their competitors. During this time, I've had issues with customer support but none so serious that warrants immediate attention.

For those who aren't aware, Registerfly[dot]com is a domain name reseller for eNom.

Anyway, I had trouble registering 2 domain names on New Year's Day, but managed to do so after a number of tries. I then tried unsuccessfully to change the name servers - the first time it had happened to me. And so I promptly wrote to Registerfly's customer service, knowing in advance that it would take a while for them to get back to me.

Again for the benefit of those who don't know them, Registerfly has a "fanstastic" customer service team - their slow response (if any), incompetence and rudeness is almost legendary.

3 days and no reply, I dropped by GoDaddy's website today and looked up the 2 domain names that I had registered earlier - they were still available!

So Registerfly had taken my money, put the names into my account but yet they were still available for public registration - am I missing something here? Not taking any chances, I quickly registered at GoDaddy:

a) AdsenseDummy.com and AdwordsDummy.com were registered on Jan 1st.



b) Yet I managed to register them on GoDaddy today - 3 days later.
 

Based on this discussion at DigitalPoint, it looks like I'm not the only having problems - some have lost high-traffic domain names lately. Infact, there are suggestions that Registerfly could be in financial difficulty and may go under soon.

Not the one to take any risks, I've begun transferring my domain names to GoDaddy - a little more expensive for me but totally necessary IMHO.

If you plan to do the same, you may have trouble locating the Authentication Code for your domain name because Registerfly has definitely done a good job hiding them to prevent you from moving your names to other registrars. Here's how to look for them (thanks mhdoc!):
a) log into your account
b) click on "Manage Domains"
c) select the domain name
d) click on [+] at the end of "Domain Contact Info"
e) click on "Configure"
f) scroll all the way down and you will see the Authentication Code

If you're still unconvinced, you can read more horror stories over at Registerflies.com :)

Update: I finally got a reply from Registerfly's Customer Support today - more than a week later! The reply wasn't helpful nor addressed how they lost my domains and what happened with my payment:

Back to: Article Index