At the end of 2007 some strange activity took place on all Matt's .uk domain names. It seemed that godaddy were "messing about" with them and had not felt the need to share this fact. There was and still is a chance that some UK domains held with godaddy might be lost.
Lord Matt Emergency Notice: This is an emergency post made by Lord Matt on a server not quite ready to run his blog but placed here out of fear of reprisals from godaddy.com - if you have been "shafted" by godaddy over your dot uk domain names this page will show you what you can do to stop your domains being lost. I am not a solicitor so for solid advice on matters of law please talk to an expert.
This issue effects ALL godaddy customers with dot uk (.uk) domain names. It also equally effects all customers of godaddy resellers as these guys and gals have little or no authoritative control over your domain name. I should know I am one. (but not for much longer).
Godaddy is misrepresenting the data it holds for dot uk (.uk) domains. I have spoken to a source inside Nominet (the dot uk registry) and he confirmed that godaddy was never a member of Nominet. what they have been doing is effectively reselling via a third party with whom they have stopped doing business.
Check, for example, keztral.co.uk which I registered for my wife in 2005. The whois points to German registrar "Key Systems" (key-systems.net) as the registrar. Without telling anyone they made this change on 17 July 2007 and I found out today (25 October 2007). According to godaddy the domain is registered until 2009 but according to Nominet it expired on 08 October 2007.
I used godaddy as they are generally the cheapest and with the dollar to pound exchange rate on my side this was a very cheap deal indeed. However, this means that we are into the grace period for renewal after which the domain is lost. All my UK names are equally at risk and if you are a godaddy user then so are all of yours.
Godaddy have made these changes without informing their customers (potentially hundreds of thousands of them) that they could loose their uk domain names. Possibly godaddy are unaware that they are representing the UK names as renewed when they are not but past experience lead me to doubt this.
At first it looks as if I can now choose to pay Nominet UK£94 (about US$200) to have them run the renewal directly or I can loose the domain. I might be able to deal directly with "Key Systems" if only I could read the German language.
My contact (who I am choosing not to name) within Nominet informs me that I will still need to carry out my control of co.uk domains via godaddy. I am further informed that godaddy have acted as they have because they no longer wish to trade in dot uk domain names and are choosing to focus on the more profitable dot com.
There is some hope. However I have no idea how one might recover renewal fees paid to godaddy for renewals that have not been made. This is going to require the use of the telephone, a credit card and another company. I recommend lowcostnames.co.uk for a few reasons: (1) They are a British Company and thus in the same country and under the same laws as Nominet; (2) They do not charge you a fee to transfer away later; (3) I have never had any trouble with them.
Now you will need to phone your target registrar and tell them you would like to bulk shift some uk nams to them and ask for thier tag. The Low Cost Names tag is (I think) AI but it would serve well to ask them. The tag is the marker text that tells the register (Nominet) which registrar is authorised to make changes.
The Key-Systems tag is KEY-SYSTEMS-DE you will need to make a note of this tag too. Log in to godaddy and make sure that the contact details of all your UK names match exactly. Godaddy will force you to tick a box saying you will reject all changes for the next 60 days but don't worry too much about that.
While you ar logged in to godaddy write down the DNS details for your domains if you use them for mail or websites. The reason being that in the transfer the DNS records will be lost and you will need to set them again. For the msot part this will be to "A records" under "(custom) name servers" - the exact details will be different depending on where your hosting is. You may also need to obtain MX entries if you buy email services from godaddy. If in doubt write down everything.
In an ideal world DNS cache should reduce the impact of this move to nothing but this is the real world so expect email delays and a day or so with patchy site access. If you run a blog make a post telling your readers that this might happen and perhaps consider asking fellow bloggers to blog about it so your readers are aware of the disruption.
Now pick up the phone and call Nominet on (+44 if you are outside the UK) 01865 332244. Of you are in another time zone please make sure you check the time difference to call after 8am GMT. Make sure you have the details of the new registrar (especially the tag).
You will now have to pay UK£10.00 plus VAT at 17.5% which I make to be UK£11.75 (around US$24). For your money Nominet will forcibly reset all the tags where your name, address and email address match. They will change from the old tag to the new tag.
Give the system up to 24 hours to get that sorted and then login with the username and password you set up with the new registrar and then set about adding that DNS stuff back to your names. Hopefully this will amount to just typing in the name servers of your host and pressing save.
If you live in the UK and paid by credit card phone the police, report a fraud and ask for a crime number. Tell the police the name and address oft he credit card company as well a godaddy's details. Then phone your credit card company and tell them that you have called the police and that you have reported a fraud. Tell them the crime number and enjoy how nice they are to you.
Under the UK law the credit card company is jointly liable for all purchases you make and so should simply give you a refund. This leaves the using a company in another country to a more qualified institution and get's you cash back pronto.
If you live in he UK and paid by debit card give the police a call and do the same sort of thing but tell them you used a debit card - let them know the bank that backs the card. Give the bank a call and tell them what you have done. You have slightly less rights but banks will generally not want to bother with the police and often can get you your money back by reversing the debit. Be nice and with a little luck your money will be given back.
If you paid via PayPal then you may still be in luck. PayPal will allow you to start a dispute over the transaction and seek recovery. Try your bank or credit card company first and get a crime reference number (or whatever your country uses) from your law enforcement agency if you can.
I am not fully clear on the exact process with PayPal but I do know that they are regulated by a number of authorities both in the US and in the UK. How much protection that gives you is something an expert will be able to tell you.
If you live outside the UK then I have no idea at all what you might do. I assume that you might have laws similar to those in the UK but you will need to seek advice. You might try just asking godaddy to give the cash back - stranger things than that have happened.
I am not an expert on law and am reporting only what I understand to be true from my phone and paper based conversations with Nominet and others. My tips on credit cards comes from experience of having done this sort of thing before and from what I have read but my knowledge is limited so I must disclaim all liability because every now and then people act on the first thing they read and I have no wish to be sued if I got a detail wrong. That said I am pretty sure of what I have written.
If you want to comment then my blog will be talking about this issue but the server it is on is not up to much at the moment. Fortunately it has not got a godaddy uk domain name. I will update this page if I have more information to share.
I wish you the best of luck.
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