I really need help with something real quick...

Ran a WHOIS:

Registrant:
Artistic Iron Doors
1232 Los Vallecitos Blvd.
Suites 101 & 102
San Marcos, California 92069
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: ARTISTICIRONDOORS.COM
Created on: 30-Jan-03
Expires on: 30-Jan-06
Last Updated on: 17-Sep-04

Administrative Contact:
Verela, Jesse [email]artisticirondoors@yahoo.com[/email]
1232 Los Vallecitos Blvd.
Suites 101 & 102
San Marcos, California 92069
United States
7607376049 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Farrell, Dennis [email]dennis@linuxcn.net[/email]
Linux Communications Network
1125 N Broadway, C205
Escondido, California 92026
United States
7607376049 Fax --

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.LINUXCN.NET
NS2.LINUXCN.NET

Looks like your client is the administrative and registered owner if I'm reading this correctly. He may be able to contact GoDaddy and have the account switched over to you as the technical contact and give you login / DNS control.

Malibu, thanks for running the "who-is". I had checked that a while back and the Administrative Contact, in this case Jesse, is the client, the other guy Dennis, is the one who doesn't want to transfer the domain.

So is the administrative contact the one under who the account was opened and is it registered under his name or the Dennis guy? I'm just trippin' out here a bit because this guy Dennis is in California, but the PayPal invoice sent to me requests payment to an address in Arizona.

Now when I tried to open an account at GoDaddy the first time I tried using "jessevarela" as the account name but it was taken, so I went with "artisticirondoors" and it went through, but I put his name on it. I only have it set to my email until this thing gets sorted out and once the site is up I'll leave him in control of everything.

So originally I had asked the guy to just kick down the password to the account so we could take it from there and that's when he asked for us to open an account and he would just transfer the domain.

I emailed the guy last night and told him he had nothing to do with the DNS, as I followed Deker's advice but I haven't heard from the guy yet. I gave him two options which were to turn over the name, or get a call from the owner of Artistic Iron Doors.

But in this case, would the Administrative Contact be Jesse Varela? Or how can I know what person the domain name was registered under? Thanks for your help man...it's greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Sounds like paying $40 would be easier than going through all this mess...

aw what? I'm just getting some momentum here...c'mon Dek, if we pay $40 dollars this guy is still in control of the domain, and that's what we're trying to avoid right?

RIGHT! Semper Fi! Batton down the hatches! Lock-n-load! Take NO prisoners!

Let us know how it works out, I'm sure we'll all fight this battle one day or another.

Alright, now I'm pissed. Check out what this dirtbag emailed me:

"David,

you are correct I didn't mention any fees when we started this conversation. the account was still in good standings. since that time their service expired, end of July 2005. as for our charges, they are clearly outlined at our website under contract system/network admin. the minimum for any work is 2 hours @ $125/hr, because of past involvement with artistic iron doors, i elected to bill for only 30 min at a reduced fee of only $85/hr. i felt this would be just compensation as we no longer are obligated for this domain. perhaps your time is worth nothing but ours isn't. as i stated previously this domain is not being held hostage, it can be moved anytime you want, almost to where ever you want without any problem. we will be more than happy to approve transfer from a registrar when received. as for goddady's policy, i do not control it. as for your option to go through another registrar by all means do that. if you want to stay at godaddy and they require intervention from us, the fee stands.

df"

Malibu, you ran a "who is" check and this domain doesn't expire until 2006! This guy claimed it already expired and that the client hasn't paid - which he did, and you must've seen the site yesterday, and if you go to www.artisticirondoors.com the idiot took the site down.

Now what?

Tell him you'll give him $7.083333 for the 5 minutes of time it'll take him to type in 2 DNS numbers. and that by taking that he's overbilling you by 3 minutes. jerk.

chris

Here is the easiest way to do it.

Go to another registrar, like www.itsyourdomain.com and request a registrar transfer. Then all this guy has to do is click a link and it's done. And it sounds like he won't charge you for it. You'll have to pay $11 for the transfer, but that will also renew it for a year.

Problem solved hooray.

I have an account with registerfly, but they don't allow me to initiate a transfer, which I thought I could do. So I called them and they said it had to be initated by the holder of the domain name. BUt I'll go to the registrar you mentioned and try from there.

Thanks for your time and help man. I'm just amazed at what some people will do to try to keep things for themselves because they lack marketing skills and can't seem to acquire new clients. This guy wanted to charge my client $400 bucks to host him for the coming year and that was on a shared server.

Okay, it looks like we're advancing. I called GoDaddy...again. This time I asked if they could just forward the account information to the administrative assistant, in this case my client. But they couldn't. However, what they did do is send him a pdf form which he needs to fill out and then fax back to them with proof that he owns the business (like a tax id or business license, etc.)

Then they'll send him a security passcode and let him log in and make any changes he needs to make. So we'll see how this goes in the next couple of days.

Thanks to all you guys who helped me out here. I'll keep you updated on what is happening.

Cheers!