The Perils of Gotcha Customer Service
Domain registration company 1and1.com goes rogue
Domain name registrars have a license to print money. There are about a thousand of them and there are hundreds of millions of domains paying an annual registration fee.
A domain name is really just a data base entry called a zone file. The database is the domain name system (DNS) and the zone file is the entry that allows someone to be directed to your web server when they click a link to your_domain.
Put simply, when you buy a domain name you're paying up to $35 a year to be allowed to put an entry into a database.
For the last 8 years, we've been paying our money to 1and1.com. At $8.99 per year they were the least expensive registrar that we could find and, so long as they're accredited by ICANN, any registration works as well as the next. Or so we thought.
The heart of a zone file is the "A" (address mapping) record which resolves the human readable your_domain.com to a machine usable IP address. It is literally a line in a flat file.
If you want to add a sub domain to your domain (i.e. blog.your_domain.com) all that's required is the addition of another "A" line to your zone file. In this, 1and1 found a gotcha.
They include 5 sub domains with each account. Whether you have 1000 domains or one domain you get up to 5 extra lines spread among all of your zone files. If you want more, you can buy lines in blocks of 25 - per domain - for $4 per month.
We have about 30 domains and we now need more than 5 sub domains among the 30. We called 1and1 and said, in essence, "WTF - are you crazy" to which they said "evidently so".
We looked around and found that GoDaddy allows unlimited sub domains and they also have a better control panel. They normally charge a little more than 1and1 but in our case (bulk domains) they charge the same $8.99 per year. We joined their affiliate program so, if you click this GoDaddy link, we'll get a dollar and you'll get registrations at $7.49 per year for every year that you buy on setup.
We went to transfer our domains to GoDaddy and found that 1and1 had more tricks to play.
Transferring a domain is a simple process designed to make sure that the registrars play nicely together. ICANN wants to make sure that domains aren't stolen but that they also aren't held hostage.
To transfer your domain you need to tell both the gaining and the losing registrars that you want the transfer. The losing registrar is supposed to let the domain go as soon as you give permission but the rules allow them up to five days.
After signing up with GoDaddy, we went into the 1and1 control panel to approve the transfers. Nary a button or link could be found.
We called 1and1 and asked "how do we approve the transfer". The answer was "you don't - we just wait the five days'. We wouldn't swear to it but it sounded like they were giggling in the background.
The moral of our tale is pretty simple: (1) Don't try to gouge your customers. (2) If you're caught gouging, don't try to hit them on the back of the head as they're leaving.