[tlug] domain registration/deletion problem

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Ulrike Schmidt writes:

 > The short version is that my provider did not pay and that the reseller 
 > between my provider and the registrar had my domain put on hold without 
 > contacting me, although I am listed as the owner of the domain with 
 > valid contact details and the existence of the reseller was not even 
 > known to me.

The problem is that you are "owner" in the sense of listed contact,
but you are not owner in any legal sense as far as I know; you are
merely renting the right to use the domain, and the service of having
it listed on the root DNS servers.  In fact, I would guess you were
re-re-renting it from ISP, which was re-renting it from the reseller,
which was renting it from the registrar, which appropriated it from
the dictionary according to rules established by ICANN.

You had better get legal advice.  I suspect that Germany and/or the EU
has certain regulations in place, and that is why the .de domains were
treated differently.  I would call the EU regulator on these matters.
They might not be pleased that the reseller (who is presumably a
German entity?) is playing these games, just because the top-level
domain is different.  I am pretty sure that there is a regulation that
the affected customer (you, I mean, not the provider) be contacted.
It might very well conflict with another regulation regarding honest
dealing with the reseller's direct customer (see below); that's why we
need lawyers.

 > I asked the boss of the reseller why they did not contact me in the 
 > first place. He said he contacted my provider, I should ask him for the 
 > money, he could not contact my providers customers.

This is probably true.  The reseller's customer of record is the
provider.  The reseller did what he was supposed to do: contact his
customer.

 > My mistake was to take this provider and not their company. They had 
 > lost so much money because of my provider and still help me.

Don't feel too sorry for the reseller.  They have acquired an asset
without any ongoing cost to themselves; their entire costs are based
on collecting money from their customers.

 > And what about my time and money? We would not have this problem at all 
 > if he had contacted me. My contact information was available. I did not 
 > know that he existed. I had no chance to find out about his existence 
 > before I threatened the registrar with legal consequences. What is this? 
 > Is this legal? No reply from the boss on these questions yet.

It probably is legal, see above.  Your only recourse is probably with
your provider, but that company is probably bankrupt.

 > Also my problem is not only about the restoration fee. My site had quite 
 > a nice google ranking, second place after the book on which it is based. 
 > I have several other domains pointing on it now, but still my site 
 > cannot be found via google (i.e. most of the time, sometimes it happens, 
 > as I can see in the server log).

For that, you can sue your provider, and you'll probably win the case,
but will there be anything for him to pay you with?  If it's limited
liability company in bankruptcy, game over, you lose.  You're unlikely
to recover legal costs.  There's no way you can blame the reseller for
this; he probably *legally* is not allowed to contact you, because
that would be a threat against his actual customer, your provider.

 > I also tried to understand the registrars agreement: 
 > http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm
 > But I could not find or understand the relevant part. Can anyone point 
 > me to more "human readable" information?

No, "human readable" is of no help now.  You need to talk to a lawyer,
and you can try your consumer protection agency.  I think the reseller
is price-gouging, no matter how nice he seems; you should not have to
pay an exorbitant "restoration fee" since you were not the customer in
arrears -- you are a new customer.  In fact, the charge for a single
domain from the reseller is probably much higher than what you were
paying, but you may be able to avoid that because the reseller
explicitly split his invoice into a "restoration fee" which is bogus,
and the original rental fee, which is probably way lower than he would
charge to a new customer (but that's his problem, not yours).