The 123reg rant

[familychoice]

Ok, I've been holding off this one but I think it's time.

123reg have been relatively reliable in the past, and domains ordered are usually registered fairly swiftly, and nameserver changes going through in a couple of hours.

Last week I ordered and paid for a .co.uk domain. 24 hours later it was still available for purchase. Tried their support form - broken, tried live chat (broken) but eventually got a support request in.

They apologised though blamed Nominet, and then told me the purchase of my domain had been 'queued' to be looked into. After a few more support emails they finally purchased it and I applied the nameserver changes. 24 hours later no change and on checking the settings discovered the changes I'd made hadn't gone through. They apologised and said they'd have to do this manually for me, it's Nominets fault etc. Finally a couple of days later it went through.

Part of what's helped spur things along is my tweeting of the issue via my company account that has 16,000 followers, and after one such agonised tweet they phoned me and offered a couple of free domains as compensation with a confirmatory email to follow.

No email, no credit, so sent message to support to see what was happening. They confirmed that 123reg do not offer compensation.

So, I tweeted this and this morning had another call from them repeating the offer they'd made with an immediate confirmatory email and credited account. No email, no credit, contact support again who then restate they don't offer compensation.

I think 123reg are in some kind of poo-loop. Definitely a company to avoid at the moment.

Update:

They've just replied via Twitter "you have received 2 .com credits to your account" yet there is nothing in my account except a message stating "I cannot see any record of this being said. We do not offer compensation as stated previously.....we cannot offer free domain names"

No wonder they can't even register a domain name properly.

[Dom]

Ok, I've been holding off this one but I think it's time.

The word 'rant' in the title got me a bit excited, but this got me really excited.


Sorry to hear it though. It's so annoying when you have an idea (or an urgent need) for a website, only to be held back because of domain registration issues. I've 'bought' one or two domains in the past that were somehow snapped up by domain parkers as soon as I registered it. My money was taken, but I never got the domain, because someone got in there first. I got a refund in the end, but it annoyed me that they can say that you've "successfully" purchased a domain, but really you haven't.


You know what I'm going to say though... go with Xilo!

[familychoice]

Fortunately no-one grabbed it, but it was a good domain, and coincidentally so was the other one I had problems registering.

I've just had a support message saying they've credited my account, but I've just logged in and it says £0.

They've also just sent me an email:

  The DOMAINS you were interested in are STILL AVAILABLE!
Get them NOW before it's too late!

We noticed that during your visit on 2012-01-16 you put the below domain(s) into your basket but were unable to complete your purchase.......johnsrugby123.co.uk
 

I've never even heard of that domain.

As I say, 123reg seem to be going into meltdown.

[familychoice]

Just had another email:

The DOMAINS you were interested in are STILL AVAILABLE!
Get them NOW before it's too late!

We noticed that during your visit on 2012-01-16 you put the below domain(s) into your basket but were unable to complete your purchase...

test1234.org.uk
 Available

I didn't, but thanks for letting me know it's available.

Brilliant.

[Steve Lampkins]

You could save a lot of time if you just change your username to familychoicerant. Save you having to type it out every time.

[familychoice]

Latest email from 123Veg:

The DOMAINS you were interested in are STILL AVAILABLE!
Get them NOW before it's too late!
.....test1234.org.uk...Available...

I got my compo but I'm bored with the emails already.