As some of you have noticed, our website came up with a big warning sign for almost a week. Here is the story of what happend and how we got our domain back. Some time ago we decided to have our own hosting services provided to our clients as this seemed like a growing demand in our design projects.
We transferred all the domains and hosting into one place except for one. The main breadwinner – Safarista Design, which domain we had bought when we started our business back in 2008. That time we were a bit novices to who is who in hosting, and bought the domain from OneandOne (1&1) Internet.. little did we know, and as good as the price seemed at the time, to end the contract with them, they asked us to fax or mail over an ID! In a world of web that seemed like a hoax and completely irrational thing to ask for, specially from a web hosting company!
So we kept our domain there, and I never got the renewal of the domain email from 1&1 (except for an email to update my info on whois?) I of course remembered, but it was a day too late.. So I lost the domain. And with that the rating of web design Lincoln, which we had built for a few years.. Hence the moral – always pay for your domains on time or have a direct debit set up for it, and don’t do business with 1&1..)
It took a great effort to get the domain back. Apparently 1&1 has a policy that you still have 1 month of mercy time when you domain expires and can then get it back. Except. They don’t tell you that they have a contract with some guys at domcollect.com and a day after my domain was expired, it was transfered to some Andre Schneider in Germany! Here is another person who ended up with the same problem! So, do please read up on 1&1 and their misleading ways, before you believe all their adds on TV. That should not be done, as domains cannot become available before 3 months is up.. and one day certainly didn’t equal to 3 months.. I got very very upset. But all that was heard from the other end of the phone line was a bunch of – we have elevated your case.. there was no phone number to the transfer team, and when I emailed them, I got no response from them.
I only got a reaction back from 1&1 when I asked to speak to a manager.. Why does it always have to come to that. And of course, our ranking, our good name.. destroyed in just days. Do they care? No. At the end they – 1&1 send me an email saying the have to contact the current owner of the domain and get him to transfer it back? How on earth is there another owner already? Cheeky buggers.
So now, Safarista Design is back live and ranking at 89 place, when searching for Lincoln web design. In a small place like ours, it plays an important role of how you stand on Google. So, after all this ranting – thank you 1&1 for never sending me a reminder to renew the domain, thank you for transferring it to some guy in Germany a day after it was expired (note – the whole process took a week to get safarista.com back online!), thank you for taking the food away from our babies table. But you don’t care, do you.
Anyone who has children, always keeps an eye out for flooring that is good quality, hard wearing and easy to clean. The latest in all the floor designs is Rubber Tile Floors. So lately we have been working on a website dealing with Rubber Flooring, called therubberfloorstore.co.uk. It is an online shop, where you can buy Rubber Tiles in different colors, PVC tiles in various colors and create your own Rubber Flooring. It is great fun working with all the Rubber Flooring materials that they sell online and making it easier for the customers to purchase them online.
