Silly me,
I can confirm epik are just taking the money on new registrations. NO REGISTRATION. I was in my account checking expiry dates when a middling type of name - nothing great-was in the back of my mind. This was two weeks ago. What the heck, I thought, surely it can't be all this crazy. Money taken, confirmation received - No registration . Standard reply from Support, "we are looking into it" then nothing. It would have taken just two seconds to log into my Dynadot account - but I thought lets just see
Epik is just a fraudulent deceptive front now, the domain is still available to register