After my article on Bargain Blog about the cheapest .au registrar, I decided to transfer my yang.id.au domain from NameScout, whom I registered with since July 2002, to IntaServe, because it is (a) $2/year cheaper (b) having an Australian contact number.
However, the transfer didn’t proceed that smoothly.
Transfer Saga
2 Feb: Order went in after I fill out their on-line renewal form, and straight away I received a confirmation email. So far so good.
3 Feb: IntaServe’s support emailed me to ask me to forward them my domain password, as it should have been sent to the email address that I have registered with NameScout. Except — doing a WHOIS reveals that domain owner email is the obfuscated/randomly generated NameScout email address that is not even reachable! Thanks to the super secure “privacy-protection” feature. IntaServe’s support did made a remark saying “NameScout” and “Enom” are known to be difficult to transfer. Oh well.
Alright. I’ve unlocked the domain, and unchecked the privacy “feature”. Doing a WHOIS still reveals old email, and IntaServe still cannot get the domain password over to me. So being lazy, I think I’ll just wait and see whether WHOIS gets updated.
A few days passed — and I almost forgot about it…
14 Feb: IntaServe sent me another email reminding me about the domain password. I then checked WHOIS, and its information has finally successfully updated to my real email address. Replied IntaServe about the update, and pretty much straight away the domain password landed in my inbox, which I need to forward to them to initialise the transfer. All good from now.
16 Feb: WHOIS now showing transfer pending. It’s not as fast and as easy as .com/.net/.org transfers, but at least it is moving.
18 Feb: All done now. Registrar for my domain now shows “IntaServe” under WHOIS. They sent me an email telling me that all domain related information will be retained untouched, i.e. my contact information, DNS, etc. That’s good. Basically I don’t have to do anything and the service continues as usual.
Well, it is quite a bit of drama to try to save $2 a year, but at the same time I prefer to pay to someone whose office is in Sydney than in Barbados.
Would I recommend IntaServe? Hmm, maybe not. You pay peanuts, and you get monkeys.
I am not saying that their service is not good — in fact thanks to TT from IntaServe handling my case to have my domain transferred. And once domain is registered, there is hopefully nothing much you need to have service for.
Until I try to manage my domain.
IntaServe Domain Management
Basically, I was presented with the raw WHOIS management page when I need to change details about my domain. I need to login with my domain name and the domain password (instead of an IntaServe account ID), and then there is the control panel — a single page where you need to manually type in space deliminated NS, registrant handle, etc.
For example if I want to update my address, I will need to create a new contact handle with my new address, because my old handle, created by NameScout, never came with a password — all hidden by NameScout’s management interface. After my handle is created, I then need to paste that ID into domain’s management page.
And I still haven’t figure out how to change my renewal instruction. Support email sent — still waiting for replies.
With a great price and Sydney-based contact, IntaServe can be a good registrar for bargain hunters — only if they can have a good management software. Since they are new, I am hoping that they will eventually upgrade their software to be more user friendly.
Hi Scott,
Just read your blog with great interest. Thanks for the feedback and the independant look over our processes.
I must say that we thrive on offering great customer support and also on the resulting customer feedback and if your experience has been less than 100% we are certainly more than happy to know about it. We are always updating and improving our systems and are in the midst of an upgrade on our domain mamagement interface as we speak.
Making the interface more user friendly is fairly straight forward and we’ll make sure that this becomes a priority for us.
I’ll endeavour to keep you posted on progress
Best regards
Amin
——-
Managing Director | IntaServe
Thanks Amin. I am looking forward to that.
Intaserve technical support are fuckin stupid. You ask them for instructions on how to do something, and instead of telling you how to do it they go and do it themselves. WTF? Morons! This company is a security threat to any business working with them.
Hello Nik,
Our Techncial Support Staff aim to go beyond the call of duty. Therefore in cases where clients are having technical issues, or are having difficulty understanding something then we step in and assist. This is appreciated in 99% of cases. I’m sory that you did not appreciate it.
Secondly, I do not respect anonymous posts where people do not provide the channels for recourse – what is your email address or name?
I suspect that you are the same client that actaully requested assistance on updating their records shortly after this post?
Anyway as I stated before – we welcome feedback and are always looking for ways to improve ourselves.
BTW please kee p a look out for a new domain management interface that is being launched very shortly.
Amin
So Scott how is it now?
I stumbled onto these guys from a google search. They will be $10 cheaper then cheapdomains.com.au – but I really haven’t had a problem with cheapdomains.
There management interface isn’t exactly hard to use (bit awkward, but fine) and they are pretty quick at getting unknown name servers into the system…
Cheers :)
Hi Nicholas!
The user interface is certainly much better now, however I think it is still confusing comparing to the interface of my gTLD registrars (GoDaddy and NameCheap).
For .com.au I think the cheapest now is Hostess.com.au — $25/2 years for .com.au/.net.au, and they are part of NetRegistry so no small operation either. I have a few domains with NetRegistry and they are pretty good, but have not tried Hostess yet.
hostess.com.au look pretty good – I’ve signed up with them and see how they go.
- Thanks :D
Well I don’t like Hostess :P
Too much crap gets emailed that is irrelevant, I just registered a domain…. No hosting, so why do I need ftp login & web stats info??
Plus I can’t use them for all my domains as they don’t allow transfers without hosting packages…
Cheap domains stays :)
Oh yeah talking about trying to sell you something… Now I remembered and I should not recommend Hostess and NetRegistry :)
Two months ago I register a .id.au domain (domains for individuals btw) through NetRegistry for a friend, and then someone from NetRegistry emailed me and called my home phone trying to sell me some related services. It is just a .id.au domain and is not for business!
But I guess it is just companies trying to be “creative” when the margin is just way too low for commodities like domain names.
Intaserve lost my website – then when I challenged them about how the logs seemed to only go back to the moment they refreshed the hosting account (interestingly at almost exactly that time my customer emails me that he can’t access his website).
Their cPanel is missing most of the functionality that you normally get (no subdomains, ancient file manager, no php/apache/sql tools – the list goes on…)
I use Rochenhost Managed Virtual Server (those guys really know customer support – and there’s an Aussie Support rep!) and I have a Vigabyte Virtual Server and I have never lost even a file!
Hows this too – one of the support tickets with information has mysteriously “disappeared” too?
It’s the old get what you pay for scenario.
BTW – nice blog Scott…