Dealing With Shyster?

[bettyblowtorch]

Dealing With A Shyster?

OK. Short story. Kinda. Not really.

We own a domain we initially hosted with doteasy and were happy having it there. Several years ago we hooked up with a guy who sweet talked us into having him host our website. Duh.

Anyway... there's been a little echo in my brain over him saying, "your site wont get properly indexed by the search engines because you're being hosted in Canada..." which I do believe is/was an outright lie.

But, wait. It gets better.

So while he has all the access necessary he then - without asking - takes the domain name we registered with doteasy and transfers it to his crap at tucows. We didn't like it, we didn't ask for it ... he just did it because he could.

In the meantime, he suddenly disappears and our hosting services that were prepaid... well, lets just say it was in incredible feat to have the company he bought rackspace from reboot his server. We moved off his space. And, we never heard a word from him. Ever again. Until a couple of days ago. 2 years later.

We wrote to the guy many, many times during the 2 years. Worried, concerned, sad, mad, livid... you name the emotion - we had it. Everything on the meter except the happy plus end.

Did he write to us out of the blue? Nope. He wrote after being exposed on a private website where he was again, offering his "services". Surprised to see him selling himself again, I posted as calmly as possible... mentioned him dropping off the face of the earth, how we wanted control of our domain back, emailing him and surprised we never heard from him.

His response was to write on that board that he was alerted to the post by one of his clients. And how surprised he was that he never got any emails from us - ever (from 3 different addresses), was in the hospital for 6 months back then and that he would assist us in any way possible. Mr. Nice Guy.

Privately, he wrote and added that we were his favorite clients. Which I nearly choked on but... whatever...

I wrote back, surprised he "never got" emails from us, but here are the issues we want to resolve -

Domain Privacy:
When requesting the info for ALL in the selection box: Admin, Billing, Owner & Technical – we are not receiving even ONE notification. Something should be coming to us connected to the site.

Tucows Domain Registration:
Also, it possible for us to login to our whois manage interface https://manage.opensrs.net? We have no passwords.

We want to be able to manage both our domain name and privacy information without the hassle of going through anyone else.

*** end of story ***

So... what if we never hear from him again? What can we do?

Any advice, insight... or humorous commentary regarding our naivety is welcome.

 

[Kate]

The lesson in this: Never ever let a webhost or amateur webdesigner take care of your domain. You should be the only one party in control.

Is the domain in the name of your company according to whois ? If you can prove you are the actual registrant you might be able to work this out with the registrar and shortcut the uncooperative middleman.
If, however, the domain name is cloaked under whois privacy, the registrar may still have the registrant information on file, if they are providing the whois privacy service.
Maybe you could approach the registrar for advice.

 

[bettyblowtorch]

The guy we were dealing with (don't want to name names here) wasn't an amateur.

Tucows has been "looking into this" and never got back to us. Sheesh. Hopefully the guy will just release it without hassle so we can move it.

Where to move it to and maintain complete control? GAWD... something else to consider. Hopefully an ICANN accredited register. But which one?

 

[Dave_Z]

humorous commentary regarding our naivety is welcome.

You're not alone.

Whatever happens, maintain contact with him as much as possible. And have
you somehow been able to obtain any bit of contact info as well?

 

[bettyblowtorch]

So far we have received nothing from him... the privacy place is registered via "contactprivacy.com" which has no identifiable info available about the business itself. And when we put the domain name in we get nothing back to us... no admin email, tech, owner or billing.

I don't know if this "contactprivacy.com" is associated with Tucows directly or not. Anyone know?

Ultimately, I know very little. Next to nothing. But this is freaking me out.

Thankfully, I haven't yet lost my sense of humor... well... OK... about this situation I am getting close...

 

[Devil_Dog]

contactprivacy.com is owned by tucows.

Registrant:
Tucows.com Co.
96 Mowat Ave.
Toronto, ON M6K 3M1
CA

So far we have received nothing from him... the privacy place is registered via "contactprivacy.com" which has no identifiable info available about the business itself. And when we put the domain name in we get nothing back to us... no admin email, tech, owner or billing.

I don't know if this "contactprivacy.com" is associated with Tucows directly or not. Anyone know?

Ultimately, I know very little. Next to nothing. But this is freaking me out.

Thankfully, I haven't yet lost my sense of humor... well... OK... about this situation I am getting close...

 

[bettyblowtorch]

Well that's good then... we should be able to work this out with Tucows even if the middleman doesn't deal with us.

That's a relief! But I'm still wondering why NONE of the information in the contactprivacy.com thing comes back to us when we request it. That would be the work of the middleman I think.

Any suggestions for choosing a SAFE, owner controlled ICANN accredited registrars? We're currently hosted via Lunarpages... I dunno if I want to transfer it to them or not... they aren't on ICANN's list.

Thanks for all your advice!

 

[Kate]

If Tucows is providing the whois privacy they can see the actual whois information on their end.
Problem is, the name could be in the name of the middleman instead of yours. So you can't prove you are the rightful registrant (owner)...
If the middleman won't help, maybe you need a lawyer to chase him and have him release the domain :gl:

 

[bettyblowtorch]

Ugh. Let's hope I don't need a lawyer for this.

I'll let you all know how this works out.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I'd just suggest transferring the name to GoDaddy and keep it there.

One golden rule is: Register your domains at registrars and get hosting from hosts.... I know it might seem easier having one company take care of everything, but never mix the two or you're likely to end up with problems.