WHAT A HASSLE.

Despite all those nice full-size banners about “leaders in domain business” and great web 2.0ish interfaces all the registrars I’ve been working with simply fail to deliver.

Registering .ca (Canada) domains at NameCheap : failed despite multiple tries to fill out those company-specific data… after 2 weeks without a solution from support I tried again, failed again, mailed screenshot again and got this response

Please prefund your account with amount necessary and advise us of doing so, along with ALL registrant information (including, but not limited to .CA-specific one). We will try to register this domain manually for you then.

Thank you.

Registering .at (Austria) domains with Moniker : failed to change use the registrant data, failed to update the registrant, only tech-c was updated… (April 22) manually process promised (May 2) – still waiting for any response or result (May 9)

…We will then contact our .AT partners with the information to see if this modification can be completed…

(IF this can be completed?)

Registering .es (Spain) domains at United-Domains : pure rip off – I didn’t even get past the first page… United-Domains is one of the most old-schoolish ripoff company, and they charge EUR 79 for a spanish domain. You can get the SAME for EUR 14 elsewhere… On a sidenote let me tell you that they had the guts to charge me an “overdue fee” after a credit card expired. And in a typically germanish long and winding back & forth that lady explained me it’s my own fault I didn’t take care of updating the credit card… that was the moment I decided to transfer everything away from them.

Registering .es (Spain) domains at EuroDns : appears to be the company that United-Domains (see above) are reselling… paid them EUR 18 for the .es domains – still reasonable compared to unbelievable EUR 79 … fast registration, nice interface… actually not a bad experience.. I chose them cause they got a ton of other euro TLDs at good prices and got good information on specific country-requirements

Registering .fr (France) domains WHERE? : apparently you only get domains from the frenchies if you have a local address in France… I bet I need to get a PObox there, but it could be worse and they force me to incorporate… I guess that will be just as lengthy as incorporating in austria or germany… or even worse [and I just want a stupid .fr domain! ]

Registering/Transferring .de (Germany) domains with Moniker : started this on February 19 … got a nice promise that it’ll take 4-5 weeks until .de transfers work with the… today is May 9 and there’s no solution in sight…

Registering .co.uk (UK) domains with Moniker : more than TWO weeks the registration is still in pending state… and apparently this doesn’t go on without inquiring with Moniker support (once again)

I’m sorry however the process to register/transfer .CO.UK names is not the same as a standard .com transfer/registration. Changing ownership of a .co.uk name is a very involved process.

Below are the steps:

The change of ownership and actual transfer process for .CO.UK domain names is very different then transferring a .com or .net name.

This process can take up to 2 weeks to complete. I will cc Client Services on this email. Perhaps they can shed a little more light on the situation.

THANKS

Registering .it (Italy) domains at EuroDns : HAHA - this is a funny procedcure to get into the “DBNA (Data Base dei Nomi Assegnati)” [and no, so far I didn't have to bribe anyone ... ]

Italian language contract to be signed to get an .it domain

… still EuroDNS got a great automation interface, but in fact you have to a) fill out company registration, VAT info, etc online… b) download the generation ITALIAN contact c) sign and FAX that (ITALIAN!) contract to EuroDNS (to a Liechtenstein Fax Number) and then wait for 2-3 days… now that’s close to a company formation for the frenchies … AFAIK the steps for a DBA in the united states are not very longer – and you can do it all online…

Bonus – checkout the attached screenshot on the left of a piece of italian “domain contract” required to sign and fax

Info on some mentioned companies

A lot of hassles are with Moniker, cause I got nice prices there, got a responsive (yet not very helpful support) – but still, do a lot of registrations there after moving huge number of domains there…
Tought everything that is nt com/net/org/biz actually doesn’t work well with them (including broken privacy mail forwarding) I am quite happy with them.

The german company brand “United Domains” is about the worst experience I had with support – and despite last contact with their snotty “Support” was 3 months ago, I’m still sure I’ll get my germanish domains moved away from them

I think that were all hassles… 100% of my country domain registration were more or less hasslish in the one or the other way… and about 50% of them are STILL NOT registered after weeks.

Hey, It’s No Wonder that Country TLDs are not so important – you cannot even buy most of them…

Ok – I’m off – gotta put my “sottoscritto” on that italian contract now

What is your experience getting country-TLD domains?

What TLDs do you deem important for your business?