"RegisterFly.com is one of the largest internet domain name registries.
They originally operated as a reseller of services from Enom.com, but in
February 2006 they received their own ICANN accreditation and became
authorized to manage and sell their own domain services. There has been
friction and difficulty between RegisterFly and Enom for well over a
year, and in the past several weeks it appears that Enom has "fired"
RegisterFly. They sent alarming emails to all the customers who had been
receiving resold services announcing that their relationship with
RegisterFly was severed and informing them how to access their
automatically transferred domain names in a new Enom.com account.
I have experienced a long and dreadful history of problems with
RegisterFly, and I am apparently not alone. In fact, some industrious
person has set up the domain "www.registerflies.com" where he has
documented numerous problems AND the failure of ICANN to act responsibly
to address a situation that is clearly not acceptable for an accredited
registry managing over two million domain names.
But the real story isn't just that people are unhappy. Last night I
called their secondary customer support number to see whether they might
be able to help with major problems that have been occurring all week
(since the main support number obviously could not.) I'm not talking
about minor stuff, but rather a situation where the customer service
reps and administrators at RegisterFly CANNOT ACCESS their own systems
at all!
The rep I spoke with told me a story about the real problem. It seems
that the partners who started the company are fighting with one another,
and one of them is trying to force out the other. The one who is being
forced out has apparently been retaliating by hacking into the registry
systems and databases and making changes that have utterly paralyzed the
company. Suddenly my recent problems start to make sense. The outsourced
customer service reps have been telling us since Monday that they would
like to help, but that they cannot access the backend panels that
control their systems. They suggest it will be working in a few hours
and ask the customer to call back then. When you call back they loop
through the same scripted routine again.
This has been going on since Monday! The company cannot control its
systems. Even worse, the support rep indicated that they fear the
alienated partner is trying to hack and destroy the domain registration
databases. It is an incredible situation. Infighting at a domain
registry jeopardizing over two million domain names and preventing
customers from even being able to make minor changes to the domains they
own."
