I only need to know if we've the legal right to be able to retrieve in bulk our auth codes then we'll find a lawyer who'll follow our case, no more interest in wasting time behind them ... Or they'll assist us in getting our auth keys or they'll refund us for our wasted time and caused damages.
I am sure you have the legal right, but they probably don't have the obligation to provide transfer codes to you in bulk. In any case, why not simply retrieve them one by one. Do you have a 13 year old kid or someone who can do the busy work? Pay them $20 for the whole job of going in your account and sending each domain's code one by one.
As for getting recompense for wasted time, good luck on that one.
The main reason in my opinion for the problems at Dotster now are that your domains are not really with Dotster! The registrar of record is Domain.com (an EIG owned company), but the registrar behind the scenes -- the true registrar of your domains -- is Tucows. Dotster subscribes to Tucows' "OpenHRS" service for registrars. Tucows is the registrar they are the ones "really" managing your domains. Don't believe me? Check the whois for your Dotster domains and you will see it is the same as any Tucows whois except the registrar says 'DOMAIN.COM'.
Months ago, Dotster domains were apparently transferred to Tucows, without customers even knowing this.
So, you need an auth code, you need a domain unlocked from their persistent privacy service, you need a domain pushed and to have it work in the second account, you need this or you need that, then it is the Tucows registry in the background that needs the input for the change, and what is probably happening is that the communication system/interface between Dotster and Tucows is not seamless.
Hopefully some of these glitches get ironed out, but you can all but forget about one-on-one attention to your issue. They seem to focus more on fixing an issue for everybody, so you simply won't get resolution on your particular issue until they fix it on their end and then the 10,000 or so tickets in the system for that issue will be resolved.
Is some of this becoming more clear now? I don't have all this as official info, but it is what my experience tells me and I am fairly sure of all of this.
The question becomes, do you stick with Dotster / Domain.com / MyDomain / 000Domains / etc etc etc ? Well, a couple things to consider are whether you like the new interface (which all accounts will be migrated to), and whether you are satisfied with the ability to manage domains (but keep in mind, as they hammer out some of the technical problems, by the time you move all your domains out, they'll probably have most of the issues fixed! -- or, maybe not, who knows), and whether you like their customer service and the ability to get a hold of someone there who doesn't just blow you off. To me, this third issue is the one that is the most non-negotiable. But, I am of the belief that there are so many customers -- so many people -- that they simply do not have the work force to tackle each and every ticket in a personal way. Many of the tickets have to essentially be burned "for the greater good" of this monster company. In other words, they just don't have the time or resources to handle our issues individually and sing us Holiday Carols....(and more to the point, they can't do anything for you anyways, until the issue gets fixed for everyone, and they are still working on fixing things slowly).
Add to this the additional complication that the customer service representative that you are calling has no idea whatsoever what issues are being fixed and what the company they are representing is even doing. This seems to be the case all the way up to Tier 3 support. Furthermore, whereas the company used to be located only in Vancouver, WA, now when you call you will likely reach a call center in Arizona, or maybe MA or somewhere else. I believe the staff who worked at Dotster before the buyout is mostly gone, except maybe some senior management people.
It's an entirely different company. The only thing that is the same is that the website still looks (on the outside) as the old Dotster site used to, same logo and design. I hear some people saying that they want to remain loyal to Dotster after being a customer for so many years, but as I see it, Dotster has left the building. They are gone.
