This is a true story that occurred the 3rd week of November 2008.  It is titled, "Domain Name Limbo."  I had a client who left my service to join another service that was based on marketing dental lasers. The client lectured for a dental laster company so it make sense for him to make the switch. About six months after he left my service, I was at annual TBSE 2008 seminar when someone approached me to look at their website.  When I opened their site, it was a blank page.  The site was offline.  She told me who her website service provider was and it was the same provider that was providing the service that my client.  I tried to view his site, and it, too, was offline.  Every site they hosted was offline.  I contacted my client and told him we could have his site back online in a few hours once DNS was changed (read below to learn about DNS).   When the client left, he had the domain name transferred to GoDaddy.  The domain name was originally listed in the WHOIS (read below to learn about WHOIS) registry under a corporation in my name.  My name was still showing in the WHOIS along with my physical address and my email address.  That meant that I was in control of the domain name since the "registrant" controls ownership of the domain. With my client's permission, I went to GoDaddy to retrieve the user name and password. GoDaddy's system lets the domain name account holder enter an email address that receives all communication regarding the domain name.  The company that the domain name was transferred to used an email address that only they had access to so using GoDaddy's electronic "lost user name and password" system was not an option.

There was an option on GoDaddy's system to provide a drivers license and proof of corporate ownership via email or fax.  I gathered the corporate documents they would accept to show ownership and I sent them via email from the email address listed on the WHOIS.  The corporate ownership document  showing the official seal of the State of California along with my corporate name was rejected as insufficient.  They would accept one of six documents as proof of ownership of the domain.  Two of the proofs were a "Doing Business As" document and a "Fictitious Name" document.  I provided both.  These were rejected because the documents only showed DDS.com and the WHOIS listed Digital Dental Strategies, which is an acronym for DDS.  I sent them a link to the corporate information on the State of California Corporation Business portal website, and the information online matched the documents I sent to them. This was rejected because they do not accept any Internet-based documents as proof. On my second call to GoDaddy, I was advised they would accept a letter from the IRS showing my Federal EIN number issued by the IRS, and the corporate name.

   

I phoned the IRS, they faxed the letter, which I converted to a PDF and sent to GoDaddy.  This was accepted and the domain name in now in my control, and the website is back online.  You can see the numerous messages that were received from GoDaddy, and the process took over 3 hours over two days to straighten out. GoDaddy was doing what they had to do and I have no complaint with their procedures, or their handling of the issue, and I actually commend them on the way they handled the issue.  The issue was caused by the company that my client had switched to since they did not properly update the WHOIS information, which, in this case was fortunate.  If they had transferred it to their name, the domain name would not be available until 2017 since it was registered for a 10 year period. 

     

It used to be much easier to transfer a domain name, and a con man figured that out.  Click the link to learn about a famous legal case involving Sex.com. Then read what happened to the con man.

   

The moral of the story is to make sure the "registrant" info is up-to-date, and either in our control or in your control. 
 
Learn about DNS, WHOIS, and Registrant information