I am an unfortunate Featureprice.com customer like many others on the boards who has been affected by their seeming shutdown over the last 2 days, and also like many, only just recently discovered that they registered my domain name with dotregister, "a divsion of iHoldings, inc.", and FP used their own information for the whois records, making it impossible for me to move my domain registration until FP actually corrects this. I consider this to be fraudulent, and have filed complaints with the Fla Attorney General and the BBB.

Knowing that FP is not communicating with customers at all now, I have been sending many emails and also left voice messages for dotregister in order to get the proper information set into my whois information. I've sent emails to every address others have listed on the boards. The first response I got back from tech support was that they could not do anything. After sending a bunch more emails back I got the following response from Ben Tyler, their sales manager:

"In order to have control over the domain name you will have to forward us
the initial mail Featureprice sent you to help@dotregistrar.com which has
every instruction to use featureprice's helpdesk with your login information
along with the domain name in dispute,
Once done this you must go to Dotregistrar.com and click on the link "open
an account"

Put all your data properly and purchase a DRY (domain registration year) a
single DRY costs 19.99$, Once done this you must contact us and we will move the domain name to your account and we will renew it using the DRY you purchased when the account was opened,

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you,

Best Regards,
--
Ben Tyler,
Sales Manager
http://www.DotRegistrar.com

Now, its fine to send them my account information. Another user on these forums posted that they did so (to prove ownership) and dotregister agreed to change it. But now, apparantly, they are trying to extort customers by forcing to pay again for domain registration - at an outrageous amount, I might add. I replied to them that I considered their demand exactly that, extortion, and that if they didn't fix things immediately, I would file a complaints against their company with Florida, and look into what I could file with the FBI and FTC in regards to extortion and deceptive business practices across state lines.

For others in my boat, I will repeat the emails I've been using to write Dotregister:

'bt@dotregister.com';'support@support.dotregistrar.com'; 'administration@dotregistrar.com'; 'sales@dotregistrar.com'; 'admin@admin.dotregistrar.com'; 'jp@dotregistrar.com'; 'hostmaster@dotregister.net'

If anyone gets a class action lawsuit together against FP and\or Dotregister\iHoldings, I would love to hear about it. I sincerely hope others in my situation will not stand for Dotregister trying to extort more money from customers to allow them access to their domains they should have already had.

Strike the last address in my list, 'hostmaster@dotregister.net' it got bounced..

Featureprice deserves all your comments. Dotregistrar does not. They are attempting to help you in the best way possible and have assisted many former featureprice customers. If you consider $19.95 extortion for renewing a registration, then you are the one with a problem. You could just wait a while longer with your expired registration and let it fall into the redemption period. Then you could pay a fee of $200.00 or so.

You made the mistake of allowing someone else to register your domain in their name. Dotregistrar is going out of their way to try to assist you in recovering. Consider yourself lucky and be greatful to them.

First of all, I already registered my domain, and anyone who tried to "double charge" me is doing something very dishonest. Have you really thought about what you are saying??

- Dotregistrar already has my registration.
- My registration was already paid for, via Featureprice

I've already legally registered and paid for my registration. The same registrar trying to get me to pay again for an account they already own is trying to extort me. If you think otherwise, I hope I never run across one of your businesses professionally or god forbid as a customer.

As far as my making a mistake in letting someone else register a domain, there are thousands of resllers who engage in the same practice and I am sure not all do it the same way. For someone new to web hosting and the whole internet domain saga from the beginning all the way to the present controversial ICANN era, it's a very confusing thing for the average hosting "newbie" to understand. Its worse when the registrar agent (FP) does not explain anything about how they are actually going to register your domain, or give you an account\pw to allow access to the actual registrar to change it.

I've already notified the Florida Attorney Generals office about this aspect of the whole FP fiasco. FYI, they already have over 400 complaints, many of which focus on customers who have not been able to get back their domain names.

I'll accuse and go after anyone who is illegally holding my domain name hostage, and gladly aid and local, state, or federal agency that is investigating them. The only thing I owe Dotregistrar is reasonable proof of my ownership of my domain, which I have provided them. Any further fees charged by them to release it are blackmail as far as I am concerned, and I would guess the vast majority of FP customers in my position feel the same way.