Sunday, January 30, 2005

Mongohosting

Last year in May, I signed up for web hosting on behalf of my sci-fi club with Mongohosting. My original intention was to register the club's domain name for myself and then set up the website but I made a mistake and Mongohosting registered the domain. Well, the whole package cost $25 for the year so I didn't think it was that bad. At such a low cost, it wouldn't be a problem to wait for the registration to expire and then get them to transfer it when it did.

Well, as the year progressed, I began to think I had made a larger mistake. I had some thoughts about moving my personal domain but their website and price structure was undergoing some revision at the time and my e-mail requests went unanswered. Later, I had our website go down and my e-mail requests for support again went unanswered. Bad omens.

Today, I sent an email to the admin asking about transfering the domain. I was very pleased to receive a response quickly from Cindy the Mongohosting admin but disturbed that they were asking $150.

$150 to transfer a domain? That's userous! That's blackmail! Year ago, I worked for an IT company and did domain registration transfers. There's really no processing effort, just signing onto Network Solutions website and changing the account properties. Click "submit" and it's done. If I registered with Network Solutions, I could get 9 years for less that $100.

I returned an email questioning what could cost so much. They said: "Your Domain along with many others were sold to us when we bought the company from *******." I hadn't known that. Well, if all my previous problems were *******'s fault, maybe this could be dealt with in a businesslike manner. Except that I started looking things up. Mongohosting had been bought by Silver Cities back in September. According to the chatter on the Mongohosting support forum, that's when the problems really started.

Cindy's email also said: "As we just reregistered the domain we would be expecting to recoup costs
and expenses associated costs from the hosting charges."


I did a whois on my domain and there was no evidence that it was re-registered. It was still due to expire in May.

"As we won't be doing that if you move we have to cover our loses."

I hadn't said anything about no longer hosting at Mongohosting, I had inquired about transfering domain registration. And even so, even if they had already re-registered the domain, unless they registered it for the next 20 years they have no justification to charge me as much as they are.

Of course, justification has nothing to do with it. They have a domain that I want and will make me pay for it. My only other option is to simply not pay the bill at the end of my year. The website will expire and, if they are true to their word, they will have already re-registered the domain for at least a year, keeping it out of my hands. That would be devistating to my clubs web presence.

It is blackmail, pure and simple. And now that I'm looking this up, things look even worse. Earlier today I was on their support forum and there were plenty of postings about the lack of support. I even recal one about them having been reported to the Better Business Bureau. Now that I've gone back to actually check on the details of that all the messages have been deleted from the forum.

They are attempting to cover their tracks.

Oh, this is bad and it looks like I'm going to have to submit to their extortion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have the same problem, only that I left and they did let me go to another server..however it is now up for renweal..only the site does not expire until 2006!