Domain Disputes
2nd March 2009
My business runs a couple of managed servers which are dedicated exclusively to our clients. Across these servers we host about 250 websites which between them have nearly 500 domain names mapped to them.
That’s an awful lot of hosting accounts to manage and an even greater number of domain names to control on behalf of our clients. Needless to say, you can bet your bottom-dollar that over the years, we’ve devised a pretty effective system that ensures we don’t miss any renewals and that each client gets plenty of notice and the opportunity to renew their domain or hosting account with us before it expires.
All in all, in practice what this means is that there isn’t much we don’t know about the management of domain names or hosting accounts. Whether it’s the complexities of CNAME or A records for a domain through to the configuration of Apache modules on our servers; I like to think this knowledge is one of our unique selling points (USP) over the automated web based domain and hosting commodity portals that are out there selling domains and hosting at thrupence a go. Yes we charge more, but unlike these portals, we’re there when you need us to sort out any issues.
An example where this USP of ours scores above the commodity providers may be demonstrated by the recent example of a domain dispute case which we arbitrated in on behalf of a client.
Here’s how the story goes;
Our client, a large UK based management group, found themselves in dispute with the former IT provider of one of its subsidiary companies. The IT provider was proving to be particularly uncooperative in many areas including the task of handing back control of the client’s own domain names at renewal time.
Subsequently their domains lapsed resulting in loss of their website and email. A nasty situation all round!
The exact nature of this dispute I haven’t been privy to and to be honest it’s not really important to this story from our point of view. What is important though, is that the client understood our expertise in this area and asked us to “get the domains back” if we could.
The domains in dispute were .CO.UK domains which means they are under the ultimate control of the domain registrar Nominet. Now Nominet do offer a domain dispute policy for circumstances like this but to be honest, unless you’re familiar with it and know what you’re doing; it can be a time consuming and confusing process for the uninitiated.
So to save our client the possible expense of legal litigation against this IT provider and the possibility of them getting wrapped up in something they don’t understand, they asked us to work with Nominet on their behalf.
After satisfying ourselves that the client was actually legally entitled to own the domains to which they lay claim (they were), we set about contacting Nominet and working through their domain dispute procedure.
Where we added value to this process as far as the client was concerned, was basically to take all the leg work out of the process. This involved a number of tasks which included;
- Writing faxes and letters to Nominet and their former IT provider, for the client to sign.
- Verifying the client’s identity with Nominet.
- Modifying IPS TAGS and Nameserver settings when and where needed.
- Paying Nominet’s fees.
- Acting as the client’s domain administrators.
Ultimately the whole process took just under two weeks to complete with the end result being that Nominet intervened and forcibly removed the disputed domains away from the IT provider in question and gave them to us to manage.
So there you have it! We now have a happy client who has control of his domains back, a website that is back on the web and emails that work.
All is well with the world although I don’t suppose the IT provider is smiling.
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Tags: Clients, Domain Names
