If you are a RegisterFly customer you will know from the extremely poor customer service you are getting, that RegisterFly is experiencing internal problems prohibiting them from acting on transaction requests from customers.

ICANN is doing everything within its power to ensure that harm to registrants is minimized during these failures by Registerfly, including collecting registrant data from RegisterFly’s backend service providers, arranging for the registry operators to prevent names from being deleted (”dropped”) by Registerfly, and taking legal action against Registerfly in federal court for copies of their databases containing customer data. In addition, we have notified RegisterFly (as we are required to do under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement) that they are in breach of their accreditation agreement and have demanded that they cure the breaches of the Agreement within 15 working days (also required under the agreement).

You can find more detailed information on our website.

ICANN’s role

ICANN is not a regulator. We rely mainly on contract law. We do not condone in any way whatsoever RegisterFly’s business practice and behaviour.

The options for customers to transfer their names to another registrar at this stage are limited. We will advise if we have more information on this point. Last Friday, ICANN convened a telephone conference among those needed to implement a plan that will help cease unintended deletions. This will prevent names from being deleted from the registry and becoming available for re-registration by others. RegisterFly has assured us (for what that is worth) that they will process such requests as soon as they are again technically operational. We will keep a close eye on this.

We do hope this information is helpful and provides some small level of comfort in what is clearly a stressful time for registrants and others affected by these events. Check in at both here and at our website www.icann.org where these issues (amongst others) are being discussed.

Posted in ICANN

This was posted on the ICANN Blog 

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kamil1 - Was you whois info adjusted? Registered | 2007-03-05 22:25:28 Just wondering if anybody has seen any changes to the whois info of their domains stuck at RegisterFly that would correspond to the above words of ICANN? Whois for my .name domain still indicates that it will expire in 4 days...

PPNSteve - no adjustment here Registered | 2007-03-05 23:00:56 of course not: whois 1-gb.net Whois Server Version 1.3 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. Domain Name: 1-GB.NET Registrar: REGISTERFLY.COM, INC. Whois Server: whois.registerfly.com Referral URL: http://www.registerfly.com Name Server: DNS1.EXPIREFLY.COM Name Server: DNS2.EXPIREFLY.COM Status: clientTransferProhibited Status: clientUpdateProhibited Updated Date: 12-feb-2007 Creation Date: 11-feb-2006 Expiration Date: 11-feb-2008 >>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 17:24:23 EST

mopey Registered | 2007-03-05 23:23:23 have you tried unlocking, locking, unlocking the domain? it worked for some people when they did that...

estebanv Registered | 2007-03-05 23:39:27 I have the same problem anbd I desperate I tried unlocking and removing whois protection many times. And still it does not take the change. I nee help

flytrap - Dear Paul Levins Registered | 2007-03-05 23:53:57 ICANN arrives at the crime scene too late to do too little. And only because your fees were not being paid by Registerfly!!! ICANN knew of Registerfly problems even before the accreditation was given. ICANN has proven to be useless. I have lost my property under your noses to a bunch of sharks, vultures and flies. This is the reality of the domain name industry today. You will have some credibility the day you resign. Thanks for nothing.

ajmurphy1 Registered | 2007-03-06 07:20:29 The only thing I can say is that I TOTALLY AGREE! And YES, ICANN did indeed know of RegisterFly's problems BEFORE the accreditation was given. Or, if they didn’t know, then they darn well should of known because all of the information was out there in plane open sight for them to find. RegisterFly has been screwing it's customers for a long time now! ICANN is remiss in giving RegisterFly an accreditation in the first place! I think other people are correct on here – ICANN, you didn’t give a rats ass about this until you didn’t get your accreditation fees from RegisterFly and until people started complaining loudly enough that you guys started to realize that you might wind up becoming liable too, in one way or another. Now you let on pretending that you care about us? Yeah, right! Sure you do! I still don’t see anyone from ICANN saying anything at all about those of us out here who have lost our businesses because of these sharks at RegisterFly. I don’t see you saying anything about how you’re going to fix an industry that has gone completely out of control either. RegisterFly is on the hot plate right now but they aren’t the only ones out there who are taking advantage of domain owners – this is only the tip of the iceberg in an industry that is riddled with corruption. What is your response to this, ICANN??? Or do you even have one???

ajmurphy1 Registered | 2007-03-06 07:24:25 ICANN, you can't hide behind (contract law) as an excuse as to why you gave RegisterFly an accrediation status in the first place!

PPNSteve - re: Registered | 2007-03-06 00:52:02 mopey wrote: have you tried unlocking, locking, unlocking the domain? it worked for some people when they did that... I can't even access the account for that domain.. I'm basically locked out with no way to renew or transfer. Not good. not good at all.

JRBHosting - Yeah. What about the rest? Registered | 2007-03-06 05:49:48 Okay. So. Your domains don't expire. Wahoo. Now, how about the people who actually want to LAUNCH a site, as opposed to selling off their names? Are you giving us a plausible way to manage our nameservers, as opposed to telling us that our sites can go to hell?

f**ckedFly - I totally agree wirh FlyTrap Registered | 2007-03-06 08:16:11 ICANN & ENOM knew all along and did do nothing, for weeks I was like to kill myself as one major domain of mine was like 'HiJacked' by ENOM for over a year as RF let it slip in redemption mode even after I paid twice for renewal. This domain is worth money and not a few bucks as it was a popular Adult domain. In time I lost my database and somehow all the advertise money that I missed out on as you probably can guess what an adult domain can make a month. I advise all of you to keep sending in support tickets, if not several with the same issue at RF, this way I got my Auth.Code for another domain I needed to move away from RF. I know some of you go true hell because of this RF debacle, but please keep on trying, in the end the good ones will win.

flytrap - Dear Paul Levins (2) Registered | 2007-03-06 09:49:56 As you might know already, I sent the same message above to your blog http://blog.icann.org/?p=32. Who or why had it deleted doesn't matter, it further proves ICANN's ostrich approach to responsibility. Maybe it is that you've reached your level of maximum incompetence. If this is the case, please leave your post to someone able to clean up the mess you chose to ignore for more than a year.

gearedup - REGISTERFLY WEBSITE Registered | 2007-03-06 09:53:25 http://www.registerfly.com/ is no longer an active site. Is this a temporary move for a reopening or is this permanant? ...time will tell

jackinmalta - cant get auth codes Registered | 2007-03-06 10:36:02 I managed to move 70 out of 78 domains away from registerfly because i have the auth codes 8 domains have RRp and registerfly refuse to give me the codes they just keep closing the tickets, you cannot renew a domain and 2 domains that expired cannot be renewed. Its a total waste of time opening tickets to have them closed, all the names in question are in my name with my contact details and it cases like this Auth codes should not be needed with this so called registrar or they should be provided by ICANN

dsmj - EXPIREFLY Registered | 2007-03-06 11:00:33 The renewal failure "Grace Period" is a crap shoot, some may be lucky, many will not be. I have lost a few Regsiterfly "failure to renew" ( paid $$ and no results ) to EXPIREFLY linkfarm pages, as of yesterday. So literally Registerfly seems to enable the problem of expiration failre to persist. ICANN is acting as though they are able to exert control, but really this is the same runaway train wreck in progress that it has been all of 2007. Predictable. It follows the same paradigm of years ago where someone could buy a gun at walmart, and committ a crime with it. After the sale its the Police and ATF that absorb enforcement. In the Case of ICANN/verisign its much fuzzier, since no specific Internet savvy enforcement agency is really in place to respond. In each case, state by state enforcement is variable and inconsistent, and rather slow. .. and that, is just wrong... shame on you all, trust is broken, ICANN ACCREDITED stamps are no assurance of anything.

TOPEND Registered | 2007-03-06 10:59:56 When I call RegisterFly renewal/registration support.. they continue (for the last month) to say 'the system is temp. down and should be back up any minute. Our tech support just sent me a message saying it is almost ready.' He told me this every day for 2+ weeks. NEVER was ANYTHING mentioned about the CEO scandal or their unability to register/renew . It wasnt till about the 20th day that I finally realized I was still being lied to on a daily basis about the situation regaurding my domain names. I even asked him if he was hiding information from me and he denied any problems in the company besides 'a minor tech problem'. It was always the same guy answering that sounded like he was located in India, but he verified he is NOT a 3rd party support and that he is in the NJ RegisterFly office. I demanded to speak with a superviser but he continues to lie and say hes in a meeting until 7pm. (too bad the phone support closes at 6pm). Register Fly CONTINUES TO LIE. CONTINUES TO DENIE THE SCANDAL. CONTINUES HORRIBLE SUPPORT. CONTINUES TO FRAUDULENTLY TAKE PEOPLES MONEY. I find it VERY hard to beleive that they CANT stop taking peoples money. What I think, is that they are using everyones money to get back on there feet b/c as we all know .. they dont even have enough money to renew domains themselves. Besides continuing to ruine there own name. ICANNs name is 110% down the drain. ICANT do anything about anything. Also why has there not been a class action law suite yet?

umonster - re: cant get auth codes Registered | 2007-03-06 10:59:52 jackinmalta wrote: 8 domains have RRp and registerfly refuse to give me the codes they just keep closing the tickets, I've been having the exact same problem. It's disgraceful, and its been going on for weeks now. ICANN is useless.

ninjavenom - Registerfly site is down AGAIN Registered | 2007-03-06 11:03:22 Just yesterday a customer of mine made a deposit funds command to registerfly.com for $50. I just discovered this gripe site today. Sad for me...Well today as mentioned above, registerfly site is completely down. I have about 8 domain names there and my customers have them their. I have been using them since 2005, and they used to work great, but then went down the toilet. I keep getting domain name renewal failures. My wife went and bought 1 domain name there and received an additional charge for hostfly hosting?! Got it taken off credit card. Registerfly said they knew nothing about it. Their security certificate had been expired for a week or so when this happened. I lost $20 for 1 renewal and 1 new name purchase. No refund, no credit in my registerfly account. My customers have been stressing me out as a result. Now that the site is down today, should I even attempt a renewal? Wow, this stinks.

Ash - REGISTERFLY.COM OFFLINE? Registered | 2007-03-06 11:04:05 Today PM I cannot even see the Registerfly.com web site? Anyone have the same issue?

whouse - re: REGISTERFLY.COM OFFLINE? Registered | 2007-03-06 11:18:51 Ash wrote: Today PM I cannot even see the Registerfly.com web site? Anyone have the same issue? Same here! What else is new though! Nothing else seems to function properly within the RF structure.

DeanClinton - DNS Registered | 2007-03-06 11:27:10 RegisterFly DNS Down http://www.dnsreport.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=registerfly.com

carsonmedia - any help Registered | 2007-03-06 12:25:35 Does anyone have any idea how to get access to transfer my domains from registerfly. enom.com automatically transferred some of my domains but i still have dozens with registerfly i tried to move the rest but they are locked and require authorization codes HELP

chodomade Registered | 2007-03-06 16:40:16 looks like registerfly.com is back up. i'm unable to get the authorization code to move my domains. ENOM said they would call me back to assist me but haven't heard back yet.

Trixter - I'm fed up. Registered | 2007-03-06 18:30:02 I have complained for a long time to Registerfly and when they did finally respond, one person would say there is no problem and close the repair ticket and another would say that my site cannot be accessed as I didn't pay my fee even though they show they have over $400 on file. This would go back and forth for weeks. They have not answered any emails for a month now. And now I cannot unlock my sites to transfer my domains. I have also been trying to shut down one of my sites but, they won't respond. Not sure what to do.

traveltext - Don't panic about domain name Registered | 2007-03-07 01:15:52 A supervisor at Godaddy has just told me that domain names at Registerfly are safe.. He says that if Registerfly fail to supply authorization codes or respond to domain name changes within the two week period of grace that ICANN has just given them, ICANN will allow all domain name registrar changes regardless. But this will only apply to all those changes in the pipeline from Godaddy and other registrars, so get your transfers moving now and you should get your domains back pretty soon.

kimvette - CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD AT RF Editor | 2007-03-07 13:04:50 RegisterFly.COM has been wrestled away from Kevin and is back in RegisterFly, Inc's hands however Kevin put up a copy of the site on registerfly.net. With that, he has full access to your usernames, passwords, and everything else. He cannot muck around with RegisterFly, Inc's back end any longer, does not have access to their financials, bank accounts, or any other resources, but with your login credentials he can log in as any user, change the WHOIS, transfer your domains away, and resell them on the open market. While the arbitration forum can assist you in getting the domains back it can be an expensive process should you need to get attorneys involved. Please, CHANGE YOUR REGISTERFLY.COM PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY!!!

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