I’ve transferred many of my domain names out. I’m working on the rest.
It’s been 7 weeks since domain name registrar Moniker switched to a new platform. 7 weeks since Moniker broke.
The company has fixed a lot of the problems, even if confirmation messages were clearly written by a coder. But as I’ve written before, I’ve lost confidence in the registrar. I’m transferring my domain names out.
I just completed my second batch of domain names and have now transferred out several hundred. It has taken hours of my time to figure out which domain names I plan to keep, unlock the domains (which you can now do in bulk), set up forwarding again at the new registrar, etc. I also have to reset my sales listings for these domains at Afternic. Not to mention thousands of dollars in early renewal fees I’ve paid.
Moniker customers have a reason to be mad. This isn’t a simple case of “oh, customer service went downhill. I’ll use another company.”
It’s like a bank suddenly reported the wrong balances in your bank account and left you to figure out where the errors were.
The most frustrating domains for me are the ones expire in the next 6 months. I’m not sure if I’ll renew them or not. But I don’t want to keep them at Moniker any longer, so I go ahead and pay to transfer them anyway.
This past week I received two renewal invoices totaling about $100 for domain names I was transferring out. (The “renew at expiration” option in the drop down box actually means “renew 10 days before expiration.”)
Yet when I looked up the domains in whois, they hadn’t actually been renewed. Nor where they showing up as renewed in my account.
I called support and they said they can’t renew domain names that are “pending transfer”, so I’ll get refunds on them.
Add these renewals to the list of things still broken at Moniker.
The good news is that phone support picked up in under 10 minutes and was actually able to help me rather than just submitting a ticket.
More surprising are the domain names that were apparently renewed for a year despite expiring under the old Moniker system. I wasn’t charged for them, but Moniker had to pay for the renewals.
What a mess.
Scott Wolpow says
I am well underway moving domains. I must triple check because some domains were re-locking. Each month I move out all the expiring domains. I am amazed that Moniker has not reached out to any customers to see what they can do.
Domainer says
have you noticed that even after being transferred out of Moniker many names still show in account? some even attempted to be renewd?
Andrew Allemann says
I haven’t noticed that, but I’ll check my account.
James says
I would be very curious how many domains they lost in the past 7 weeks as a result of transfer outs. If anyone has the registrar data current and historical please post. I am sure the number must be very high.
Domain Sales Center says
I’m shocked that the drop was not more.
Less than 1% drop in the past 6 weeks???
Could that be true??
Total Domains
06/09/14 947,472
06/16/14 945,625
06/23/14 944,594
06/30/14 942,706
07/07/14 941,644
07/14/14 938,958
(from webhosting.info)
Andrew Allemann says
Not actual numbers. Just based on some limited data.
steven kaziyev says
I gave them a chance but today initiated the exodus of a couple of hundred domains, and still thousands to go. What a mess. I used to love Moniker now I hate them.
SF says
Moments ago, I finished another frustrating email to Moniker support.
Their support reps seem intent on wasting time with back and forth emails, rather than looking into the technical problems and trying to fix them.
Moniker Appears to have no desire to “reach out” to customers.
In fact, anyone that has a few stripes on their sleeve seems to be missing in action. They stopped replying to emails once the changeover happened.
They Honestly seem Not To Care. This makes you wonder if they are just trying to do a patch job on their system, with hopes of dumping the company as soon as they possibly can.
Or, perhaps they have accepted the fact that they have Already Lost their old loyal customers. So, why bother with them? Let them go. Then, wait. After this disaster “blows over”, new suckers will come along. New suckers who never knew the carnage.
Mike says
After dozens of names were lost to Moniker’s platform problems and after more were sold on snapnames (and for the sole profit of snapnames and moniker) we began the long and arduous process of transferring out domain names from Moniker.
It now appears that Moniker is cherry picking some of the better names in our account so they are unable to be unlocked for transfer out to another registrar.
When those valuable names expire, they are renewed by Moniker and parked on their parking pages so they make parking revenues on our domains – potentially exposing us and them to onerous trademark infringement lawsuits and UDRP actions due to the “related” links on those parking pages.
The woefully inadequate responses from Moniker support include the statement “not all domain names can be unlocked”. Now why is that? Now, it’s back to the grind of transferring many thousands of additional domain names out of Moniker to other registrars.
BT says
u-n-i-r-e-g-i-s-t-r-y .. say it with me 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
I like Uniregistry, but they don’t have connections into any of the distributed sales listing services.
Bummed says
I currently cannot unlock any domains. I noticed in the list of jobs they are pending after days… but other jobs happen immediately
Mike says
We had more domain names sold off by Moniker on snapnames and we are no longer surprised to see Moniker intentionally preventing us from renewing our domain names and then selling those same names off on their associated site snapnames. It’s not an accident – Moniker makes more profit preventing us from renewing our domain names and selling them off on snapnames than they do allowing us to renew those same names.
This is the proverbial fox guarding the hen house. Moniker keeps us from renewing our domain names by not generating the invoices that we need to pay to renew those domain names and then Moniker sells those sames names off on snapnames for their profit.
I guess bidding against their own customers didn’t land any of Moniker’s staff in prison so their cavalier attitude towards their customers continues to this day. They have not learned their lesson yet.
All our other names are being transferred to other registrars before their expiration dates. We hope to have our domain names as far away as possible from Moniker as soon as possible.