Any advice appreciated.
Ok, I run a small time web host company, very small and part time. Recently a work colleague came to me and said they want to move web hosts and they hear I do that sort of thing on the side. I said fine, why not, told them my price and what I could do for them.
The group (it’s a small regional sports club in Australia) like what they heard and accepted my offer.
So I sent an email to the current also local web hosting company informing them the clubs plans to move and requesting the domain to be unlocked and to please send me the auth code. After 3 days and the club president contacting the company directly I received the auth code. On finding the domain was still locked I then contacted them again. Once unlocked I proceeded to start the transfer from my registrar.
Everything was going fine until it turns out the person on the domain as administrator no longer has access to the email address on file.
Sadly it took 4 days before this became obvious. At this time the current web hosting account was set to expire / end in 2 days (tomorrow in fact).
So I asked the organisations president to contact the current providers asking to extend the hosting for one more month while they sort out their domain. It was reported to me the owner of the web host was very unprofessional and they would not extend the hosting for another month.
Upon hearing this I thought the club president must have heard wrong. So I called up the owner and asked him to confirm where we are at and he confirmed that as of Easter Saturday (and this was 4:30pm yesterday the Thursday before Easter Saturday) he would cut them off. Seems he and the web designer of the site have some connection and he told me she was upset too and he “sided” with her.
Note through this conversation he reminded me a couple times how this was his business, he had been doing this for 15 years and how the likes of me (being a part time web host company I guess) should leave it to the “professionals” and I should know who to transfer the domain even though the email address on file is dead.
Throughout this he always insisted though this is not personal and just business and the group and I should be able to sort this situation out without his quote “hand holding”.
So I contacted the company he uses to register this domain through at which time they said contact the web host company and ask them to changed the email. Sadly I told them the sorry that those guys are refusing to help. This company said I would have to contact ICANN to regain control of the domain. The person I was speaking to did not know how long it would take. She also said there might be a possibility they could help if I can produce an invoice which shows the group paying for the domain - at this time it looks like the invoices from the company in question did not include the domain name.
After all this and realising as of Easter Saturday the website will go down and there is nothing I can do move this domain away from there crazy people I emailed the owner and ask him to changed the DNS records to mine which thankfully he did.
Sadly when I came home after work (as I’m a part time web host after all and have a day job …) I tried to log onto the site FTP and control panel to download it (as it was currently down because of the DNS change) but I found the account was suspended and I had no access to the files or databases. Note here the group was paid up until tomorrow Easter Saturday. Might not be the most professional action to take.
Luckily I had taken a backup a week or so before so even though it was old at least I could upload the website and have it working within the hour.
Anyway, after further discussions with the group they plan to reach out to the web host company owners friends (mutual friends) and ask them to see if they can help changing the email. Weird I know - small towns …
Either way the group is buying new domains and if need be will be filing a domain dispute with ICANN to get it back. Does anyone know how long a dispute like this may take?
Our location is Australia.
Any advice?
Cheers Paul.