After the Moniker issues of last week, I was able to transfer my last remaining domain there, to Uniregistry.
It took 5 days, and the domain still shows in my Moniker account.
Moniker always had issues with syncing its system to the Registry, so I’m left with a ‘ghost‘ domain that’s already moved out.
The peril at Moniker that many domain registrants are currently facing is representative of the consequences of corporate mergers.
Without a plan to evolve the brand instead of using the existing customer base as coinage, existing brands that get acquired often become shadows of their former glory.
I also transferred out my last remaining domain at Network Solutions, as I cannot support a company that sends “opt out” emails to inflate registration numbers, as in the case of dot .XYZ. They also take 3 days to send out the authorization codes.
Good luck to everyone with domains at registrars that do not really care about the customer.
I always hated Network Solutions. They are dying for years and now it’s replacement is about to go public. When they do you need to run…
Kosta – I still get domains there thanks to NameJet. Plus now they manage former SnapNames/Moniker acquisitions. Ugh! 🙁
A few things I learned from support reps on the phone and my experience there.
1) No matter what anyone tells you, if there’s multiple invoices for the same domain, Moniker will try to process each one, even if it means renewing the same domain multiple times. Many reps will deny this happens. They’ll swear on their mother’s grave, on your mother’s grave, on a Bible, anything to get you off the phone. But, it does–the same domain, in multiple invoices, will be renewed each time it appears in an invoice. No, neither you nor they will delete invoices.
2) Thinking of prepaying with Paypal? IF you prepay $40 with Paypal. And you have invoices for $48, $9.51, $22.31, etc. The money never appears in your account but is “applied” toward the highest invoice. You won’t see any names from that invoice renewed. But it’s being “held” for that invoice. It’s “right” that it doesn’t appear in your account (in their view). You then have to add more money for the highest invoice to process. I strongly advise against using paypal because it seems to confuse the billing and payment system. If you later add a credit card, your paypal money may never appear and all will be billed to your credit card. You’ll have to call in to sort it out.
3) When you set a domain to delete at expiration, it does not “save” in the interface. When you change pages, it looks like the option did not set. However, if you get an email confirmation of your change to delete the domain at expiration, it does work. This SHOULD cancel the invoice for that domain.
4) In cases where #3 above fails, they can’t delete invoices. Instead, they would rather issue refunds for domains invoiced more than once or domains that renewed when they were not supposed to.
5) In my case, I had to play this game their way to renew several domains so I could get them out. I had to add a credit card to my account, even though I already paid $40 via paypal that seemed to go nowhere. Later, I replaced my good credit card number with a bogus one so they cannot bill me further. I’m staying ahead of future renewals by transferring them out.
6) My backup plan was to keep everything on a credit card, a real credit card, not a debit card. And then dispute charges with the credit card company for domains I didn’t want renewed or multiple renewals to the same domain name. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. They issued the refunds.
7) Be prepared to stay on the phone a LONG time. One call today took 2 hours, as I sat on hold, while the poor support rep answering the phone chatted with people in Germany and waited on someone to get out of a meeting. I had domains with odd expiration dates (one half year off from the registration anniversary), domains in auction (even though they were showing as not even expired), domains with multiple invoices and wrong charges, domains I could not modify but showed to be in good standing, etc.
8) When they give you advice, such as “if you would only do this…”. Do it right then, so you can say, that did not work. That forces them to stop making up solutions to get you off the phone. It forces them to go chat with someone in Germany to find the real answer. Be prepared to be put on hold again. It’s a game–and that game is to get your domains out of Moniker. Eyes on the prize… Their incompetent–you know it, I know it, even they know it.
9) When you call, I’ve found I get much quicker hold times if I do NOT enter my account number. And if I pick the option that says “password problem”. Otherwise, many times, no one will ever pickup and after 30 minutes, you are sent to voicemail.
This took a week and over 5 successful phone calls (and about 20 calls that were unsuccessful–no one ever picked up). Lesson learned. Never stay at an unstable registrar. Hopefully, you have a speaker phone option. Anyone who stays with this company is beyond a fool.
Really easy fix for all of these problems – send support a ticket and word it like this:
“Hello Support –
Please unlock all of the domains in my account and send me the epp codes for each and every one.”
This is the only answer for Moniker.com issues at the moment.