The Mean not so Clean Domain Naming Business

A while back for a specific campaign, I had a self-hosted WordPress blog. I decided that for the future, it would be simpler to maintain on Blogger. The problem is I bought the domain name from Aplus.net, who do not have any obvious way to detach the domain name from them and for absolute simplest future maintenance, I wanted to buy the domain via Blogger.

After repeated emails and online service requests, with gormless responses that always started with

Dear valued customer,

Your email has been received by the Aplus.net Domain Services Team. One of our domain services representatives will review and respond to your request.

I gave up at the point where they said they would park the domain name for 90 days, then charge me a penalty if I wanted it back. This seemed to me rather the contrary to being a “dear valued customer” but I didn’t think it would matter too much between campaigns if the domain registration lapsed for a few months. A little more than 3 months later, I tried to buy the domain name for the blogger site, and found Aplus.net had sold it to a Japanese domain parking company.


Great.


A low-budget non-profit campaign is not the thing to be wringing the last dollar out of (hint: there was  reason I used a “.org” domain name). They can keep their domain name. And their service.


The warning for next time? If you buy a domain name, make sure it’s yours to keep and you can easily transfer it away from whoever registered it on your behalf.