RegisterDomain.ca, is anyone home? (1 Viewing)

In retrospect, I should have known better.

I've turned to RegisterDomain.ca yesterday morning to register 3 .ca domains (none of them are important enough). I've paid the invoice. It is almost the end of the second business day and... nada. None are still registered, they are marked "pending" in the dashboard. What's worse, is that all of them show up as available for registration on any other service.

I've only discovered the service in the first place due to @CatchDrop. In this instance, however, I'd love to know what's happening. Is this a common expectation from them?

Emailed them yesterday — no reply.
Opened a support ticket 3+ hours ago — no reply.

They'll only register once, register them elsewhere and ask for a refund.

I was on the edge of doing just that, thanks for confirming it is the right thing to do. Took seconds to register with another provider.

I wonder if they're doing any sort of know-your-customer verification prior to accepting your first registrations?

Getting off the rails here a bit, I kinda wish all .CA registrars were required to do that. If we're going to have Canadian Presence Requirements, CIRA should make some feeble attempt at enforcing it proactively. A one-time verification of EVERY NEW REGISTRANT CREATED would go a long way to making that happen. Re-using existing registrants would not incur that responsibility for new domain registrations or transfers. Since it's a one-time expense at the registrar level, I don't think that's too much to ask from CIRA, nor too burdensome on the registrant or registrar.

rlm said:

I wonder if they're doing any sort of know-your-customer verification prior to accepting your first registrations?

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In this case they should either mention it on the site somewhere, or communicate this back to me (I've made two attempts to reach them).

Regardless, I've had an account with them for a while and there are a number of domains held. But this is a good signal that I should probably move them elsewhere.

Something is seriously wrong there. Still no answer from the provider and while I've already registered domains elsewhere yesterday, they still show up in my dashboard with a pending status.

Artashes said:

Something is seriously wrong there. Still no answer from the provider and while I've already registered domains elsewhere yesterday, they still show up in my dashboard with a pending status.

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Don't worry about that, the RegisterDomain.ca software is antiquated at best. I try to get forwarding to work, it's hit and miss, same with other features. I simply change the nameservers and point them to my WHC hosting account and use the forwarding feature there. Once the lock is off I transfer the domains to WHC because I need all the features and functions to work.

That said, they do give "at cost" pricing so if you just want the basics that might work. I know they are planning a huge upgrade soon so I think everything will be modernized at that time. Until then I think most members are using them to catch domains and then moving out.

It will be interesting to see how they develop, but right now CatchDrop seems to the main focus and I'm happy to say from what I see that all seems to work.


PS. Pending means nothing, just ignore it, open a ticket for a refund and maybe send a PM to catchdrop to speed it through.

MapleDots said:

Once the lock is off I transfer the domains to WHC because I need all the features and functions to work.

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At cost is great, but not when it comes broken or with a "maybe it'll work" stipulation. Thank you for the advice and information on upcoming changes.

I'm a Grade A idiot. I had a TBR leftover to register so I decided to test it on CD and it seemed to register properly, but when I looked at WHOIS to check if it worked, my personal data was plainly visible on the record. I picked "Canadian Citizen" during registration and I have domains there (from CD) that are redacted, so I have no idea what's going on.

EDIT: I fixed this by creating a new Contact that I filled in the same info on my WHOIS, saved and then switched my profile to the newly created one for the recently hand-registered domain. Bingo! It redacted all my personal data.

It looks like anything coming in from CatchDrop works fine and has the correct WHOIS setting, but hand-registering domains on RegisterDomains.ca may have some definite issues.

DomainRecap said:

It looks like anything coming in from CatchDrop works fine and has the correct WHOIS setting, but hand-registering domains on RegisterDomains.ca may have some definite issues.

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Exactly my thoughts as well. Registrations from CD have been very quick. It is direct registrations that are messed up.

In the meantime, the support ticket from Feb 22 is still unanswered, even with a follow up reply.

I have also noticed that some expiry dates displayed at RegisterDomain.ca are incorrect and could be a year ahead, so when renewing, you better have records as a lot of mine display 2025 renewal dates that are actually 2024 expiry on WHOIS.

Most are correct and it's really random which ones display the incorrect renewal dates. Be very careful checking against your records as you don't want valuable TBR domains going into redemption.

Also, I just renewed a few 2024 expired domains there today and on WHOIS they now have 2026 expiry dates (??), so I really have no idea what's going on there or if anyone is manning the ship.

DomainRecap said:

I really have no idea what's going on there or if anyone is manning the ship.

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There is no one there. More than 2 weeks later and the domains are still showing pending in my dashboard when they were already registered elsewhere. Additionally, no response to a support ticket over the same time frame.

It is safe to say RegisterDomain.ca is broken. I just hope they stay online for a bit longer until the time I can move my domains away. Which actually makes me a little nervous if that's even going to work...

For now, the advise for anyone is to stay away.

Why isn’t CatchDrop responding? Aren’t they the same company?

theinvestor said:

Why isn’t CatchDrop responding? Aren’t they the same company?

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If they are, they certainly have a weird way of showing that they care.

Everything is working just fine, and all support tickets get replied to quickly and many members here can confirm that. The reason Artashes ticket never got a reply is simple.

First of all the 3 domain registrations you had an issue with is due to an error on your behalf and since we value the privacy of all our customers I will not outline here and it's the main reason I didn't reply to this thread until now.

I personally advised our support team not to reply until we thoroughly investigate the matter. And then the arrogance started so I just advised to ignore it completely.

You opened a ticket and 5 minutes later literally you went on the forum complaining and defaming before even a technical support agent had the time to reply.

You also immediately went ahead and registered the concerned domains with another registrar within minutes. You have also forgotten to mention here even when it was brought up, that you received a full refund within less than 1 hour of your purchase.

Needless to say that border line arrogance is not tolerated and far from our corporate mentality.
Any user/client that jumps the gun and starts employing this kind of behavior can simply purchase his domains services form another registrar.

CatchDrop / RegisterDomain.ca prides itself with outstanding customer service, including 15 hours/day Toll free phone customer service. Yo could have called 1-833-MY-DOT-CA and your issue would have been solved in less than 5 minutes.

Many active users here on this forum can confirm that all their support tickets were promptly resolved or Telephone support were answered and taken care of.


enough said
Your Truly,
Yaacov

Yaacov, with all due respect, you have your facts wrong. I am not a newbie and I've been around the hosting/domain industry long enough to know what I am doing.

But firstly, there is absolutely zero reason for you to be rude by calling anything that has transpired arrogant. You don't know me, I don't know you, so please stay respectful. Very clearly I am not the only client who is having issues with your service, and if it took you hours, days and weeks to inform me that I made a mistake, then that's on you. What kind of investigation takes this much time to discover a customer made a mistake on registration anyway?

I opened a ticket and then came to this forum hours later, not 5 minutes as you so boldly claim, asking the community if this level of responsiveness is common with RegisterDomain.ca. If that is "arrogance" and "defamation" to you, then you have some thin skin, my friend, and you should probably stay away from forums in general. In the meantime, as of today, my support tickets are still unanswered, and that's a fact.

You also immediately went ahead and registered the concerned domains with another registrar within minutes. You have also forgotten to mention here even when it was brought up, that you received a full refund within less than 1 hour of your purchase.

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No, I didn't immediately register the concerned domains. I again waited hours and once I realized there may be a problem with your service (how would a customer know otherwise if he isn't communicated with?), which now I know there definitely is, I didn't want to wait longer to secure the names elsewhere. Other members here would have done exactly the same thing.

No, I didn't forget to mention that I received a refund. Of all people, you should be aware that it can take a few days for a refund to show up on a statement. But how would I know that if, again, I am not communicated with?

Finally, "you could have called" is a terrible response for any provider in the service industry. Unless phone support is the only option available, I don't call. As a customer, I chose to use your support system instead. You made the ticket system available, please have the ability to take care of it in an equally attentive way.

The only thing you seem to be proud of is having the audacity to "personally" advise your team to ignore a customer support request based on something you read somewhere and didn't like. If your "personal policy" is the one you govern your businesses with, I will happily move my domains elsewhere when rules allow me to do so and take my business elsewhere. You don't even need to give me a hint about doing so.

I personally advised our support team not to reply until we thoroughly investigate the matter. And then the arrogance started so I just advised to ignore it completely.

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The problem, as I can tell now, is not that you personally make decisions who to service and who to ignore, as you acknowledged so publicly, but in the gross lack of communication. You were quick to see my post here, but not to respond to me via your own support desk. Should you have pointed out a mistake right away (which to this day I don't even know if there is one), there would not even have been a second support ticket, or my follow up posts about my frustration on DN. Should you have simply informed me that a refund was issued (I literally just checked since you brought it up, I see it on my CC, thank you), then I would have gladly followed up with my post confirming the same and that everything is ok, much like I did here with one other experience. You see, if there actually was a mistake on registration that I made, I am man enough to have admitted that in a follow up post — it makes for an excellent learning experience for others. But no, you made a conscious choice to react the way you did, to keep a customer in the dark on purpose, and that's completely on you.

I am not going to be following up with any other response, as I lost any interest in you or any of the services you run. I am just going to wait until my domains can be moved, and then gladly be on my way.