I have been using joker.com for my registrations for several years now and have never had an issue. This week, I lost a production domain which effectively killed my client's sites/file.

A couple months ago, I registered a domain with Joker. Nothing special. I got it up and running and my clients were all happy. Fast forward to a couple days ago.

The $24 charge was mistakenly reversed by the guy who paid for the domain. He made an (honest) mistake, but a big one nonetheless. Joker wasted NO TIME shutting the domain off and notifying us that it was off until either we wired them money and faxed a confirmation or had our credit card issuer contact their bank to let them know the money was not charged-back.

Our card issuer laughed at that notion, and wiring money from the USA is not a trivial task like it is in Europe. The other thing about all this is, the card issuer canceled the chargeback so the money was still in Joker's account. Joker refuses to recognize this. Countless attempts at contacting them have resulted in short cut-and-paste emails simply stating that we were sent instructions. Like too many companies these days, there is no way to get them on the phone.

I have since registered a similar domain name and switched to a new registrar. I'm up and running again. As it stands, Joker has our $24 and I have a domain that isn't active anymore. I think they are ignoring us on purpose now.

The moral of this story is just be careful who you deal with. When it's overseas, you're esdentially powerless to do ANYTHING if you're based in the United States and don't have lots of money. Yes, we could've followed the instructions, but then we'd be looking at needed a refund and who knows what the result would be. We're a two-person operation and running to the bank to shell out $100+ to wire $24 is just not practical or feasible.

I will never, ever use Joker again and am now transferring ALL domains with them to PairNIC (who I've had plenty of good luck with). I implore everyone with critical domain registrations and other such things to make sure you have a point of contact, or know exactly who you're dealing with.

It might take some more days for the chargeback to show up in jokers system as a credit back to them....sorry to hear about your case...Hope things turn out good for you in the future.....

Good Luck
:wavey:

Thanks. :)

The switch to a new domain was not really too hard, but it wasted enough time to be stressful. The fact that the card was charged back was a mistake on our part, but Joker's lack of any response and inability to accept another credit card is just crazy.

None of this would even be an issue, except by putting our domain on hold immediately meant that we had to scramble around. Hey, don't give us a few days to clear it up or anything before shutting us down! :angry: :angry:

well if you are not satisfied, move away.. thats it
(Benefit of Competition) ;)

Originally posted by domainwala
well if you are not satisfied, move away

Exactly! :D

just to make it clear, not all registrars located overseas are bad ;-)

Agreed! But it definitely adds another level of complexity sometimes.

Hi,

I use Joker.com about three or four years ago. Their service is really terrible. They have a NEVER ANSWER EMAIL policy which make me almost go heart attack by that time.

Best regards

I once bought a name that was registered at joker. Not a very friendly user interface. I ended up transferring away

Originally posted by dmaven
I once bought a name that was registered at joker. Not a very friendly user interface. I ended up transferring away

They have definitely improved it over the years. What is there now doesn't look anything like what was there when I was registering domains for $8 a year.

matt

Thanks for the warning sr20deboston. :)

It still is terrible. Their web site is slow, they ask fees and require paper work for the most simple things. I'm trying to get a domain of mine away from there after a web host refused to transfer it, it's really, really terrible. Stay away from Joker.com!