A Tale of 2 WAHMs

I’ve been talking about making some changes on my original site, Mom’s Market, for a long time. It’s original purpose was to be an online mall featuring mom-run stores. The concept just isn’t what it use to be, and it was beyond time for a change. I’ve been debating on what that change might be for the last several months, and finally decided on what I’m going to do.

Before doing anything though, I wanted to move the hosting to my reseller account. I was tired of paying over $100 annually for just one site. Not worth it. Especially not worth it when I still have room on my reseller account that I pay a flat rate monthly for. Yup, time to move.

Now that posed a problem too, since the domain name and hosting were purchased together. In other words, I was paying a lump amount every December for both. Not good. Canceling one means canceling the other. So I needed to transfer the domain name somewhere else too. Of course I was moving it to GoDaddy because it’s where all the rest of my accounts are (actually they are with a reseller for GoDaddy…more specifically, Anita!)

I thought I’d be smart and move it all now, before the account expires and when I shouldn’t have down time. Smart right? After all, they wouldn’t delete my account completely if I still had 2 more months paid for right?

Well I was wrong. I thought I’d get the domain name transfered first, then I’d set the nameservers to the new hosting, THEN cancel the account. They wouldn’t let me. Said I had to cancel the account to get the information for the domain name. Now that’s just WRONG. I should have had access to my own domain name all along, not just when I decided to cancel. That makes absolutely NO sense. So there is the first strike against them.

They said once I canceled I’d have all the information. They were half right. I got the info to log in and change the contact email (which should have been MINE to begin with!). So I was able to start the transfer because the emails with the codes were going to my email address finally. Although I was asked for something I still didn’t have - an authorization code. Where was THIS? Strike two!

Now I’m in a panic because as of this morning the entire site was down, including my email. This is a HUGE problem. I called their support to get this code, but get an answering machine with their hours (which they should have been answering phones at this time!). I sent a support email and tried calling a few more times with no luck, then went out to lunch.  Strike three!

The email I come home to - the same information I had been given when the account was canceled. No authorization code. Now I’m mad! I called support again, finally getting a live person to talk to. I’m told to “submit a support ticket”.  :evil: Are you kidding me? I said no, just give me the number because I already did that and it got me nothing. They said reply to the ticket, and that got me an error message (something about the ticket number not being valid). NOW I’m really upset, and fight off the urge to scream profanities at the customer service girl. Once I point out that I can NOT email anyone because it’s getting me nowhere, she says they’ll “resend the code”. THANK YOU! How hard was that? Don’t you love when they try to pass off their job to someone else?  :roll:

Now we are finally getting somewhere, and the transfer is pending. Although I think it says the current registrar has to approve, so it’s making me a bit nervous. I still have bouncing email, although I *think* it’s working to the point I’m getting all my messages. I had another hosting account all set up, and even though I’m not able to set the name servers, I can set up my email using the temporary IP address. Not sure exactly HOW it’s working or how well, but I’m at least getting SOME messages.

Now the moral of this story…..do not trust companies with your domain name except for GoDaddy (or a reseller, like Anita - they DO sell for GoDaddy and it’s complete with GoDaddy support!) . I wish someone would have told me this when I bought that first site.  It would have saved me a lot of trouble in the long run. As for hosting…..well GoDaddy is fine for starting out too. It’s not a huge mess to change later on (if moving to another good host like HostGator), I can guarantee that!   :roll:

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