Hiya Rye. I voted 1and1 as well. I've had more than my fair share of dissatisfaction that registrar. .
I once bought a domain through SnapNames that was registered at a registrar called DomainMonkeys. In order to do anything such as enable whois privacy, transfer, push or anything like that, you had to fill out a form and send it to them via fax/email including a copy of picture ID(or the form would have to be notarized). I was never able to transfer it to a better registrar because I had whois privacy enabled. I am too paranoid about identity theft and other scams to leave my whois info exposed. The service representative claimed that when whois privacy is enabled, the company owns the domain. In order to transfer the domain, I would have to fill out another form and have ownership transfered back to myself. Then I would have to wait 60 days to transfer the domain. I have never heard of any other registrar that did this.
You really do have to be careful about who is administering your private registration. ICANN recognizes the registrant listed in the WHOIS as the legal registrant of a domain name. Not having a good contract with your privacy service and not using a reputable, well known service can leave you wide open to having your domain name "owned" by your registrar or privacy service. .
domains.ws although registering the domain was fine to deregister it I had to call the states it cost me $30
If you mean GDI, then yes, I wish I put that in the poll. Definitely not a registrar that I would use again. They don't even have ANY support on weekends or night time (after business hours PST) on weekdays/weekends. Plus their phone number, (which you must call to cancel BTW) is a local California number - a bit odd for a company that prides itself as being "global" and is only available during normal business hours M-F. .