Dotster now a no-go

Always use a third party DNS service.

Until now this wasn't necessary; we literally had zero problems with Dotster.

Another update. Our 'escalated' ticket never got any direct response (to us, via phone or email). Notation on the ticket said that when they looked at the DNS settings they were ok (of course, since we had to go through and fix them for the second time). No response to why, no answer to several questions posted as part of the ticket. They just closed it.

Another customer has their own account on Dotster and needed to update contact street address information for several domains. They are still using the 'premigration' web page that always worked for us.

Every attempt to modify contact info generates an error. We opened a ticket for them on Monday, spent 45 minutes working with a tech who was unable to tell us what was wrong or what the error messages we were getting meant. The ticket was 'escalated' at 4PM on Monday, including request to put the correct information on one of the contacts (and that info).

Wednesday at 4 we checked, the ticket was still 'new' and untouched. We posted a followup requesting service.

Today we checked again, the ticket is still 'new' and untouched. 3 full days on an 'escalated' ticket with no response. And we still cannot update the contacts.

Who are these people and what have they done to my decent registrar???

I've been looking for a different option of late, and my thoughts are leaning towards NC, but I thought about dotster. As I had been looking all over when it hit me no one had mentioned them.

clicktechs said:

I've been looking for a different option of late, and my thoughts are leaning towards NC, but I thought about dotster. As I had been looking all over when it hit me no one had mentioned them.

Click to expand...

Just wanted to add my 2cents here. Namecheap is simply the best registrar I've ever had the pleasure of doing business with. They seem to always care about customers and deal with issues really fast. I transfered all of my domains away from Godaddy based on this. Never had any problems.

As Dotster goes, I was a customer about 4years ago. (They may have changed now, I haven't used them since) But back then I was using their web hosting. I always had really bad downtime and the support in my opinion was a little crappy. Although bare in mind that was 4years ago haha.

Another update on the state of Dotster.

The third customer account there (with 5 domains) has not yet been transitioned to the new flashy Vdeck control panels. They signed in to update the street address of tech and admin contacts for one domain, and kept getting errors.

So we called support, they could not explain why the problem was occurring, took down the new address info and said they would update it, and the ticket was being 'escalated' up one tier to handle that. That was Monday 8/06

We checked back on 8/08, 8/10, 8/13, and again today. We added comments to the ticket requesting an update. We called and left messages for the support tech. This because the ticket still shows 'new' status, the addresses have NOT been updated, and any attempt to update them by the customer or us still fails with the same error.

Ten day old ticket with NO response.

This is so far beyond unacceptable. what the hell happened to this company? They really used to be pretty good...

I came across this thread after having an issue with two of my domains that are the .us and .org registrations of my primary domains were in the dotster control panel. They appeared in the system, but were showing that they were registered elsewhere. The .us domain has an image catalog that I use on my eBay account which is about 40% of my revenue currently. I opened a ticket and got a response in 2 days. Not fast enough. The response blamed the issue on my browser cache....really? Well the domains are back but the dns settings were somehow changed to something wrong. The registration on one of the domains had lapsed(or did it?), now it shows it is registered until 2017. Something rotten in the state of Denmark as they say.....I am probably going to leave Dotster after being with them for close to 10 years....this new control panel sucks. The granular control I had on my domains(about 80 of them) is gone.

I see someone discussing NameCheap here as an alternative. I am going to try them out. Any other recommendations?

I see someone discussing NameCheap here as an alternative. I am going to try them out. Any other recommendations?

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Dynadot

I use them for more than 4 years so far, no problem at all. Easy, fast, reliable.

They screwed up my 'transition' When I first started registering domains I used them, so I have maybe a dozen left there.

The 'transition' process took multiple calls on my part wanting to know where domains had disappeared to, etc.

I do not use them for hosting, so my problems were not what yours were. Still, I ended up being quite irritated, and it normally takes quite a bit to rile me. Thank goodness I happened to have printed off a list of my domains from dotster two days previous, because we literally had to go through that list to find my domains and 'transition' them, i.e., put them back in my dang account.

Dotster Migration Debacle

I see I am not the only on in Dotster Hell.

I have used Dotster domain registration and hosting for about 12 years - never a glitch.

Then this migration .... GRRRR

I got an announcement that the migration would take place on Jan 7th ...
then
BINGO
December 27th - everything died.

All my email accounts were reset (aka no incoming emails anymore)

All my websites were lost.

I was told I could access it all via the "old system" if I logged in via the given link.

HOWEVER - the link didn't let me in.

I posted an urgent tech support ticket immediately as I was off overseas in a few days and desperately needed the email online and working.

10 days later it was still not responded to.

I can no longer renew any of my domains.
Despite the credit card registration check telling me the CC was fine, it wouldn't renew any domains - with an error message stating the address was wrong (what BS!!)
No other credit cards work either.

So I can no longer renew any of my domains, and one by one each of their services and registrations are lapsing.

All of the data about past invoices has "disappeared" along with everything else.
Their new invoicing emails do not provide any information about the upcoming charge either - so you dont even know what they are about to charge you for. (if the CC would only work!!)

On a particularly boring note - the service no longer provides offsite pointers (where you can point your domain to another site/location, other than Dotser), so none of my domains point where they are supposed to anymore.

I finally got a response to my Ticket on Jan 29th - more than a month after the initial request - telling me "they were working on it".

There is no longer an online chat tech support.
One must "ring" ... which totally sucks when one isn't in the same country or timezone.

The service at Dotster has gone down the toilet.

I am trying to work out what to do as I'm not a domain-techy-person ... and I just wanted something real simple that I could manage myself without needing to get a degree in domain management.
My business is struggling already and there is no way I can afford to outsource.
But this has just made the whole thing 10000% worse.

How can they justify leaving businesses offline for over a month ?!!!
With still no resolution.

I had all my work and family emails and domains running thru Dotster - and I am SO over their migration.

It wasn't broke - so why the hell did they try and "fix" it.

I came across this site simply because I was wondering if all this Dotster nightmare was just me, a phishing scam or just their incompetence.?

It strikes me that someone new has taken them over and just arent up to the task.

New host home suggestions welcome.

I am in the same situation and am hold with them as they have now lost one of my websites. I have been with them for many years without a problem, and nothing but problems the past few months. I can't imagine a company so screwed up.

Yes you are right - the original Dotster did NOT screw up.
They WERE a good company.

The problems are with the NEW company who has acquired/bought Dotster.
Their service both technical and sales is very very poor.

In regard to the problems I listed above.

Repairing the problems (or some of them) took several phone calls.

The first thing was to get the billing corrected (the first thing that they did) so at least I didn't lose my domains.
The email addresses and forwarding were reinstated about 7 weeks after originally requested.


The remaining problems are still outstanding / not fixed.

The website files are still not recovered (Let alone working) - nor are the domain pointers.

They finally got my websites fixed properly. The day I made the post above I got a support guy on the phone who I'm sure regrets answering that call. I'm sure he could here me all the way from Bar Harbor, Maine without using the phone. I screamed and used quite a bit of foul language, and at some point while I was on hold, we got disconnected. That was the final straw so I bombarded all my open support tickets with just what I thought of them(I was having a bad day anyways, and this had just made it worse). Then, about 15 minutes later I got a call from an upper tier tech who was able to get everything working for me. I also got a few followup calls to check on things.

In the end, even though I had to build all new websites using a new program, I am much happier because my new websites look better, load faster and work correctly on mobile devices. Their email server works much faster and filters out almost all of the spam (I had been getting about 200 spams every day, now a get about 5).

I will also say that through all of this, the many support people I spoke to were all friendly and as helpful as they could be - I feel bad about the last one because I really read him the riot act. I think they bit off more than they could handle with the platform change.

If you get an email for a two question survey - answer it as they do read them and want to make things right. After the third survey I answered with a 1 or 2 out of 10, I got a call asking me what it would take to make me happy. I told the sales rep and within a day he took care of it and I am keeping my end of the bargain by now giving them a good review.