Whats going on at Dotster.com?

[karter9977]

Last month I had a friend come to me asking why they werent able to renew their domain name. The name had only expired about 10 days prior. The name was still showing in his account but the button to renew the name was gone. He contacted dotster.com several times with no luck. I then called dotster and they claimed it was a mistake and that the name was taken out of their account and that they were going to put the name back but that the owner only had until the end of the business day to renew the name or else dotster would take the name back again, which didnt make much sense since technically the name was still in redemption.

Today I had another person call me with the same situation. I called dotster once again. This time when I questioned what was going on there was complete silence, then he said they didnt have a clue. So I asked them to put the name back into the owners account, this time they said they need to know the dotster account number so they know which account to put the name back into. I said shouldnt that be on file, they said no they dont know which account it was from. So now I need to call back with my friends account number


Is dotster.com just taking names away the day they expire? Both cases I really had to argue with them to get anywhere. Both times they claimed that the name deleted. Then I threw the redemption period at them and both times they said hold on and came back and said they werent sure what was going on but they did admit the names were takin out of the accounts.


Anyone else have this issue with them?

Steve

 

[katherine]

FYI their expired names are sent to snapnames as prereleases.
I think that the expired names business is more lucrative for registrars and they have every interest to screw you...

 

[Sheva]

not only that..... many times I start a transfer out transaction at dotster 10/15 days before the expiration date, so I request auth. code on the site and the code never arrive even if on the site says "the auth. code was sent by email", than I start to contact the support and don't get any answer so the only solution you have is renew the domains there............ how do you call this?......

 

[katherine]

I have the same problem with them: I don't receive the auth codes by mail from them, and other people complain about it as well.

 

[karter9977]

Just realized this too. Dotster expiring names get parked with Sedo.com and they are listed for sale with a minimum bid of $1,000. I wonder what happens when you make an offer via sedo.

Update:

I called back today with my friends Account ID and they told me sorry the name was sold this morning. How can they do this? The name had only been expired for less than 30 days and it had bids at Namejet not to mention yesterday they said to call back with the account number and they can fix it.