An actual example of 123-reg's customer support service and a hard lesson in making sure you personally know when your domain name is due for renewal

123-reg state on their website

"Our job isn't done once you've bought one of our domains, web hosting packages or anything else we offer. We understand that this is just the beginning, so whether you're building a website or running a business, we want to help things go as smoothly as possible."

The account details and names (including those of the actual 123-reg support agents) used have been withheld to protect the innocent, however, an actual copy of the full support conversation has been retained on file.

A HARD LESSON LEARNED

Account owner renews .EU version of a domain name
123-reg invoice number: (withheld)
Payment reference number: (withheld)
Tax point date: 2009-07-08

5 days later the account holder notices that the .EU version of the sites domain name (which is directed at the master domain name) is not working and contacts 123-reg customer support.

Account Owner contacts 123 REG on 13/07/2009 00:30:39

The forwarding for this domain name is not working. I have checked the dns and it tells me that the domain name is not on your servers so could you please check into what may be wrong or why this might be the case.

123-reg sends an Auto Reply on 13/07/2009 00:30:39

Please find below a list of articles that may contain the solution to your problem.

If the suggestions below have not resolved your issue, your question will remain open and our support team will respond to you shortly.

If one of these suggestions have resolved your issue, please mark your ticket as Closed using the Close Issue button at the top of the page.

Account Owner replies 13/07/2009 00:44:45

Hi. none of these checks have solved the problem, any help in resolving the problem a.s.a,p would be appreciated

Account Owner sends another message on 13/07/2009 at 12:24:10

this problem still exists any help would be appreciated

Account Owner sends another message at 13/07/2009 13:25:59

I have checked the DNS and it seems that the domain name is not pointing at your nameservers, I tried pointing them to ns.123-reg.co.uk & ns2.123-reg.co.uk as requested but it tells me there is an authentication error.

123-reg Support Agent sends message 14/07/2009 15:46:34

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 13th July 2009.

I can confirm we have had a look into your domain and found that the domain has been deleted, the domain is now in quarantine, in order for us to take this domain out of quarantine, we will require a fee of £30.00 + VAT, please confirm if you would like us to continue to take this domain out of quarantine.

The domain fell into quarantine due to late renewal.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Account holder replies 14/07/2009 16:01:26

Could you please let me know why I not informed of this when I decided to renew the domain name

If I decide now that I do not wish to pay to take it out of quarantine then what happens to the amount I have already paid (shown in the invoice below) to renew the domain name.

123-reg Support Agent sends message 14/07/2009 15:46:34

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 14th July 2009. If you do not want us to recover your domain name I can refund you the renewal fee paid. Would you like me to refund this for you ?

Account holder replies 14/07/2009 17:15:03

Unfortunately the answer is yes I would like you to refund the renewal fee I have already paid.

The cost of taking the domain name out of quarantine would negate any savings I have previously made using 123reg domain services to purchase my other domain names which would make it uneconomical. However I suppose it is a hard lesson learnt.

I can not stress how annoyed I am that when I renewed the domain name I was not informed of any problem, perhaps it would be a good idea if 123reg had a system in place at the checkout which would inform customers of such a problem.

Account holder send a further query on the 17/07/2009 at 13:00:58  

Hi
It has now been nearly 3 full days since I sent my last reply, could you please tell me what is happening about my query / problem with the domain name in question

Account holder send a further query on the 18/07/2009 at 10:50:16

As a customer of 123-reg It would be appreciated if my customer support could please support me in bringing this ongoing particular customer support problem to a satisfactory conclusion,
Regards.

There is now no reply to the account holders last reply for nearly another 3 days and it should be pointed out that the cut off time after which a support question is deemed to be solved and closed is 72 hours !!

Account Owner send another reply 21/07/2009 07:39:54

Hello, Could someone please help me bring this ongoing issue to a satisfactory conclusion

Support Agent sends reply on 21/07/2009 11:13:37

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 21st July 2009.

I can confirm that a full refund for the renewal has been done, please allow 5 days for the money to appear in your account. If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.

As you can see it took 8 days to sort out the problem and then to put the icing on the cake the 123reg  system even showed it had a sense of humour or irony when it sent out this message only 7 minutes later.

AutoReply noreply@123-reg.co.uk 21/07/2009 11:20:06. Automatically closed by system: No response in the last 5 days or no response in 72 hours.

Even though we were annoyed that the domain name went into/was in quarantine before we realised (even when the domain name was renewed) we should all understand that we are personally responsible for knowing when any of our domain names are due for renewal and if the opportunity to pay less for a domain name at 123reg arises in the future we will still take the opportunity to purchase domain names from them.

For example we quickly realised that if we took advantage of the fact that 123reg are currently offering .co.uk domain names for £2.99 we knew we could have purchased 10 domain names for our customers for less than the £30.00 it would cost us to take the problematic domain name out of quarantine.. 

We simply did the math's :P