The tale of one domain name

Announcement of the jerry-rigged fix:
If you have any difficulties reaching www.schlockmercenary.com over the next few days, please click over to www.schlocktroops.com. It has been set up as an alternate location for fans to get their daily Schlock fix. Please spread the word in the event of a problem. That is the important information. Like any good reporter, I’ve put it first in case people don’t care to read the rest of the story. We are in the process of renewing the Schlock Mercenary domain name. Due to a comedy of errors (some of which are our fault, why did we not take care of this months ago? I keep asking myself this and then remembering exactly how busy we’ve been for the last three months. That’s my excuse. I’m sticking to it.) the renewal may not be complete before the domain expires. We’ve set up the www.schlocktroops.com site so that no one need to go Schlockless while we sort things out. Some of you may remember the domain name snafu of last summer when Howard and I only became aware of the domain expiration after the site went down. We vowed to not let that happen again because that was really embarrassing. So we’ve improved. Perhaps next time we need to renew the domain, we’ll figure out how to do it without a public brouhaha. That would be nice.

The Back Story:
Last year, just after Howard departed for Comic Con, I received a phone call from a friend that the Schlock site was down. I investigated and discovered that the domain name had expired. We’d registered the name seven years earlier and all our contact information had changed, so the registrar could not contact us to warn us of the need to renew. I called a registrar and fixed the situation. I then spent the rest of the day fielding phone calls and emailed offers to help. It was cool that people made international phone calls to offer to help. It was also extremely embarrassing that we’d allowed it to happen at all. I’ve had “Renew Domain” on the calendar ever since then. I paid attention 3 months ago, but was busy. I paid attention 2 months ago and discussed how to proceed with Howard. Did we want to stay with the same registrar or transfer? At the one month mark it was time to act so that I would not have a similar fiasco with Howard out of town.

The Details of the effort to renew:

Renewal is simple right? Yeah. We thought so too.

Company A sent us a renewal notice, suggesting we should renew and set up auto-renewal. “What a good idea I thought.” So I clicked the link only to have Company A’s website tell me that we are not registered with them. So why am I getting notices plastered with Company A’s name? I call Company A. The tech guy says that the name is registered with Company B and I will need to contact them to renew. I contact Company B. They tell me that they do not handle renewals and that I will need to contact a registrar company to renew the domain name. This bout of non-information lasts more than a week via both phone calls and emails. I ask Howard to please, please take care of this because I don’t know what to do next.

Howard is insanely busy and does not have time. He finally makes time and calls Company A. The tech guy at company A says that we are registered with company B, but gives Howard an authorization code sans any instructions. Howard has to leave for a convention and hands the mess back to me. (This takes another week)

I call Company A. The tech guy tries to tell me that the domain is registered with Company C. I not so politely explain that I am confused as to why we are continuing to get renewal notices saying “click here to renew” from Company A if they don’t have the domain name. Also what is this about Company C? I’ve never even heard of them before. I mention Company B, and the tech guy backtracks and says “Oh yes. You’re with company B.” Apparently Company B is somehow affiliated with Company A, so that Company A handles their notices, but not the renewals. Or something. I still don’t understand it. Also a mystery is how the name ended up in the hands of Company B since it was Company A who I called and paid money to last year when I renewed the domain. In order to renew the domain name I have to transfer the name from Company B to Company A. Apparently this is the purpose of the unexplained authorization code. At this point we are 9 days from expiration. Transfers take 5 days, we should still be fine. 7 days later the transfer is not yet complete. It is a Saturday, so no one answers the phone at customer support. The emails I sent to support go unanswered (Despite assurances of a 24 hour response.) It is now Saturday night and the domain is due to expire on Monday.

So we set up an alternate domain address. First thing Monday morning I will be on the phone to discuss the situation with a manager rather than a tech guy.

The End?
I don’t know the end yet. I’m confident the problems will be solved. Hopefully a quick phone call tomorrow morning will be answered by a knowledgeable person who will banish my problems with an application of his knowledge. Less happy, but more likely, I’ll be told that I just have to wait for the system to finish processing which will take however long it takes. Then I will have to be mean to customer support and demand to talk to a manager. I don’t like getting snitty with customer support. They’re just trying to do a job and in this case they’ve frequently been as confused as we have been. Which is sad really. So I growl at some poor guy, knowing that when I get off the phone I will be recounted in todays installment of “Unreasonable Customers.” Anyway, having jumped through many hoops and made many contortions, I hope that tomorrow it will all be resolved and I can think about something else now.