Registra shut my site down, what can I do?

I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on this situation.

I have a country specific domain that I registered two years ago with registrar A who's based in New York state. This domain is associated with a company based in the UK and has a fair amount of paying UK members that access the domain regularly.

About two weeks ago I received an email from registrar A reminding me to renew the domain which I did and after which I received a confirmation email from them confirming receipt.

Three days ago I visited the domain to find a registrar holding page in place where the site homepage should be. It turns out the domain had expired.

I called Nominet (the internet registry for .uk domain names.) who said I could still renew the domain provided the registrar on their records contacted them to confirm renewal. The registrar on Nominet books was registrar B, based in the U.S. I called registrar B who said they can't renew the domain until they hear from registrar A.

Speaking with registrar A on the phone their support staff tried renewing the domain using their automated system without success. They have since setup a support ticket with their 3rd level support staff. That was 48 hours ago. The site is still showing registrar B's holding page. I would assume even once they renew the domain it will take 24 hours to propagate.

To give you some of the background on registrar A, they offer three forms of support :- Live chat with level 1 and 2 support staff, a ticketing system and phone support with lower level support staff. None of which connects with either managers or the 3rd level support staff.

My question is this what can I do about this situation?

 

What to do is a tricky one. You're not the first person to find themselves in this situation:

What you need to do, imo, is backorder the domain via a reputable registrar. My own recommendation is www.godaddy.com. They're not the best at snapping names but they're worth a try as a contingency plan if your attempts to redeem the name fail.

By the sounds of things, Registrar A was a reseller for Registrar B, which complicates things somewhat.

I do know from experience that you will eventually get a letter from Nominet for the .co.uk domain, giving you one final opportunity to redeem the name - with a hefty charge for the privilege (about £100 ish).

I would also be extremely wary about divulging the domain name to anyone - lots of sharks swim in the waters who would only be too happy to get hold of a good domain name with traffic.

You may or may not be aware of a number of other organisations and websites who offer to grab expiring domains for a fee. Without getting into specifics, many of these organisations will grab the domain for themselves should the unwary webmaster attempt to use their 'services'.