warning PSA: Do not transfer to Sav

[Sam1234]

3 or more of my most valuable domains were transferred to Sav. Even though the WHOIS shows they are now at Sav, and Sav shows the transfers as completed, they are not in my account. The technical aspects of this are not so complicated for a registrar, and there is no excuse for this. I am sure I am not the first person who has reported this, and that Sav has had plenty of opportunity to fix the automated aspects of their transfer process, yet my domains are missing. So I can only reasonably conclude that Sav is deliberately failing to put domains into people's accounts in the hope that they will overlook it and fail to renew them. Not everyone is so well-organized as the average domainer, to notice this. I only noticed it because I was auditing my domains.

I don't know how they will respond to my support inquiries, but I am encouraging people to avoid Sav at all costs, because there is really no excuse for this. I decided not to wait for their stupid reply before posting this, because I don't trust them.

When I got into domaining 5 years ago, I never encountered this issue. Now all of a sudden all of these shady ass registrars are making these weird "mistakes" that screw over the domain owners and allow the registrars to steal the domains. In this climate no registrar should be given the benefit of the doubt. I suspect Sav is probably owned by the same shady assholes who own Epik, which has also recently started screwing people over. So I suggest that you not transfer anything to Sav, and keep a VERY close eye on any domains you have there in case they disappear.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I have transferred many (well from my small portfolio perspective ) names to Sav.

I did have a few cases where they showed to be at Sav but not in my account. I reported it to service, and within a day or two everything was in my account.

I am not sure why this sometimes happens. I think certain TLDs are more likely to have issues, but I might be wrong.

They will respond to your ticket, just not instantly, and I have confidence they will show up in your account. I know it is nerve wracking when a top name that is in limbo though.

The DNS settings supposedly should be what you had them set to previously. Was that Afternic? If so all is good on that front.

Bob

 

[VadimK]

Well, I can only say that if someone's domaining life becomes boring and you feel a desperate urge to spice it up with troubles, problems and tech glitches - just transfer some of your names to SAV.

 

[Nick R]

Hello All. It sounds like our support team was able to get this handled as soon as they came in on Monday! We are experiencing a delay of up to a few days with a small number of transfers but manually look at this each weekday morning and add them to the user's account while we get the root cause resolved. Thanks to everyone who chimed in with help as well.

 

[NickB]

Not saying you're wrong, but how do you know?

That is easy to find out......Godaddy is a publicly traded company so you can easily find a list of their subsidiaries, brands and acquisitions

 

[Sammy Jakes]

I experienced this same issue of Missing domains in May 2022. The domain sold on Afternic for $2988 so I went to my Sav's account to get the Authorization Code but I was surprised not to find the domain there.
I went to my email to see if I truly bought the domain, and I saw the receipt. I chatted them up, and they restored the domain back to my account within 48 hours.
I took conscious effort to audit my domains on SAV and I discovered that some of my domains are missing again. I sent them a mail and they fixed it.
Sincerely, I think SAV should up their game and be more accountable. Some of us have large portfolio that we may not notice a missing domain easily.
I would not have noticed that my domain was missing if it didn't sell.

 

[ksusha64]

Sorry to hear it my friend. Names can't vanish though. They will show up shortly in sac or back from where you transferred.

 

[Vivere]

About 2 weeks ago, I experienced a similar issue. Transferred some domains to SAV, and one of them didn’t land in my account even though WHOIS records showed it was at SAV. Took SAV about 4 or 5 days to resolve this, but it did get resolved (screenshot).

Flipside: Recently purchased a domain from the aftermarket. The seller's registrar was SAV, but I wanted the domain elsewhere. There was also some kind of technical issue at SAV that delayed the transfer-out process.

Some registrars are far better than others, but you can’t rule out the possibility of any of them having technical issues—even with “uncomplicated” processes. Annoying as it can be, we have to make reasonable allowance for this in some cases.

In your case, I’d suggest you wait to hear back from SAV. If they don’t get back to you within a few days or they refuse to fix this, then raise as much dust as you need to or go after them legally.

P.S: I can confirm that Epik has also been having issues (I currently have a pending case of failed domain registration/outstanding refund with them, etc.). But, as far as I know, Epik and SAV are separately owned.

 

[Sam1234]

Sorry to hear it my friend. Names can't vanish though. They will show up shortly in sac or back from where you transferred.

I know they're at Sav, pretty sure 2 of them were in my account previously when I audited it a couple weeks ago. When I transferred at least one of the domains recently I made sure it was in the account before noting it on the spreadsheet. Some people probably don't keep spreadsheets and stuff to track all of their domains, so if they look at their domain list in Sav and a domain is missing then they might not know they have a domain to renew. Domain expires, and Sav puts it to market. Or perhaps you go to renew on the last day and the domain is missing, and there's no time to sort it out. Is how I'm looking at this.

 

[Surya Giri Kurniawan]

You have to contact @Nick R at NP. SAV is a good registrar, but some of staff can't solve any issue, I always contact the owner through Linked.in or Nick R at Name Pross, and always got a good support.

@Nick R , are you still in SAV, you have to support this issue...

 

[Haroon Basha]

We read hundreds of complaints against Sav.com on NamePros, but Staff from Sav.com here, not care to reply to any complaints. Who is the ultimate authority with whom we can lodge a complaint? Is there anybody who is monitoring the Registrars? We just cannot be fooled by these crooks.

 

[Sam1234]

@Sam1234 You also mentioned that the domains were not in your Sav account. Are they now?

They are not. I want to mention that I overreacted, and I have asked the mods to change the post title and move this to another forum. That said, these domains are my most valuable and I'm pretty sure I saw them all in my account since I transferred from Epik because I felt they weren't safe there. So right now I'm exceptionally upset over the inability to get help from Sav on the weekend, and the sleepless night I just had as a result. Someone else mentioned they transferred a domain a couple weeks ago and it never showed up until they contacted support. I had the same experience a few weeks ago but this case seems different. I have experience in the IT field and IMO any such issue like that should never be allowed to persist for so long (like, not more than a day). Sav has a high volume of transfers and it sounds like this is a common issue. It doesn't seem like they are really trying to resolve it. A lot of domain stuff is time sensitive and IMO it seems odd that there is over a 48 hour period during which Support cannot be provided, given the nature of the business. I do plan to transfer out and ditch Sav regardless of the result of this.

 

[Future Sensors]

but it seems like Sav/Afternic are the same entity

They're not the same entity.

 

[Bean]

You should really provide a detailed timeline so that people can have a better understanding of the situation.
When did you transfer the domains?
How many domains did you move to Sav?
How many of those are missing from your account?
When did you notice the domains were missing?
Did you contact support immediately?
How long did you wait for a reply?
How long have you been using Sav?

If you've been with Sav a long time and have never experienced something like this, it could just be some isolated technical issue, no registrar is completely shielded from these.

 

[Sam1234]

Sav got back to me and the names are now in my account. I don't believe there was any shadiness, just the common bug that has been mentioned previously, though it still seems to me that I observed these in my domain list at some point previously. I don't "disrecommend" Sav as long as you are aware of the bug and the inability to get support over the weekend. I'm sorry for going ape**** here and for pushing whatever hasty impressions I had with Sav based on my experience. I don't think they are going the way of Epik or trying to steal domains, and I regret jumping to conclusions and for being so critical towards Sav over this (though I think they should prioritize this bug). One of the domains was for a major personal project 5 years in the planning, and also is possibly my most valuable and "liquid" domain that I could not replace with anything equal in utility for said project, and the thought of losing the domain took me very quickly to a kind of dark place. Obviously I have a lot of personal lessons to learn from this. Thank you all for your support, advice, and critical comments which in some cases may have been deserved.

 

[Bean]

@Sav.com I would like to add on Sav marketplace domains registered elsewhere.

I've haven't used Sav marketplace in a while but earlier this year I auctioned domains registered at Namecheap there. I don't know if buy now listings of domains from other registrars are allowed though, never tried those. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be. Have you tried it?

EDIT - I just checked and it does seem like they allow domains from other registrars on their marketplace, both auction and BIN listings.

https://www.sav.com/domains/sell

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Not saying you're wrong, but how do you know?

Afternic isn't a registrar, only a sales platform affiliated with GoDaddy. Sav is a competing registrar and marketplace comparable to GoDaddy.

 

[Sam1234]

The DNS settings supposedly should be what you had them set to previously. Was that Afternic? If so all is good on that front.

The DNS settings were what they were from the previous owner, who had had them at GD, which apparently lists people's domains on Afternic for some reason (the previous owner had not known the domains were ever listed on Afternic). I had that wrong about a suspected relationship between Sav and Afternic, and I'm sorry for giving the wrong impression about that.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Sav got back to me and the names are now in my account.

Thank heavens! That was more excitement than you probably needed over the weekend. Hopefully Sav will finally smooth out these technical glitches in general.

 

[Nick R]

I will try to remember and will be happy to share on here when it's live. If I forget, feel free to DM me anytime.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

3 or more of my most valuable domains were transferred to Sav. Even though the WHOIS shows they are now at Sav, and Sav shows the transfers as completed, they are not in my account.

Did you check lookup.icann.org?

 

[Sam1234]

Did you check lookup/icann.org?

It says the names are at SAV but for some reason nameservers show Afternic. Does this mean Sav is now selling my domains on Afternic?

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

It says the names are at SAV but for some reason nameservers show Afternic. Does this mean Sav is now selling my domains on Afternic?

Not sure. Let's see if the pros weigh in here. So you didn't have them at Afternic before the transfer? If not, definitely sounds curious.

 

[Sam1234]

That is easy to find out......Godaddy is a publicly traded company so you can easily find a list of their subsidiaries, brands and acquisitions

Obviously this is a poor way of "finding out", since if I own GoDaddy and I buy Sav, Godaddy does not now own Sav.

In this case the Afternic listing was from the previous owner's Godaddy account.

 

[Sam1234]

I had issues more serious than yours with SAV and Onamae but I did not come here to cry about it.
You even did not give them a chance to reply through ticket.
All my issues were resolved through tickets I never opened topics like this.
It's like NP's is your mummy that must change your diapers in every issue you may have with registrars.

If your names didn't suck, maybe you would have acted differently. WTF does "smoke a weed" mean?