The insanity of Crazy Domains
I won a domain name in a SnapNames auction this month. It’s been a pain ever since.
[Update: the issue has been resolved, and it’s a bit complicated. Here are the details.]
Winning a domain name at SnapNames can be frustrating when the domain is at a registrar you’ve never used. You must set up your account at the fresh registrar and get used to a fresh interface. For this reason, I generally avoid bidding on domains that aren’t at Network Solutions or Register.com.
But earlier this month, I won a domain at a different registrar. It has proven to be such a headache that I wish I had never bid on the domain.
I won the domain name on March 4 and received an email saying the domain was in a fresh account at Crazy Domains.
The same firm that owns SnapNames purchased Crazy Domains as part of a $73 million buyout in 2019. (The Whois for the domain shows it is registered with Public Domain Registry, another registrar owned by the same firm.)
As I usually do when I acquire a domain, I logged in to change the nameservers to Afternic.
Crazy Domains’ account interface is fairly straightforward, but I got some errors when trying to change the nameservers.
So, I reached out to Crazy Domains’ chat support. The support person also stated they couldn’t change the nameservers for some reason, so they escalated the issue to the domains team.
That same day, I received an email confirmation that the issue was resolved. Sweet!
Except that it wasn’t. The domain was still pointing to the old nameservers.
On March 5, I replied to the support email stating the issue hadn’t been resolved.
Crickets.
On March 13, I sent another email.
On March 14, Crazy Domains responded, asking if the issue had been resolved, and I explained that it had not.
The next response from Crazy Domains? Asking me what domain name was at issue. Is the firm’s ticketing system so bad that they couldn’t see it from the previous discussion?
On March 18, Crazy Domains support told me it wasn’t able to change the nameservers directly and escalated the issue to the domains team again.
On March 19, I received another email saying the issue had been resolved. Sweet!
Except it still hasn’t been fixed. The nameservers still point to the old site.
When I replied to the ticket to explain this, I received a message stating that the case I was responding to had been closed.
Making matters worse, those old nameservers the domain points to resolve to the previous domain registrant’s site. Imagine what would happen if they noticed this and filed a UDRP against the domain?
So now what? If I open another ticket, I expect to get the same result. They will say it’s fixed and close it, and I’ve wasted even more time.
