I had a free Geocities account and saw the Yahoo advertisement about getting my own domain. I didn't do any research, just clicked the button to sign up since it looked so easy. About the day after my new domain was up, I got the email that they were discontinuing POP access to email. Tech support is impossible, but when I did finally get an answer, they told me that I'd have to upgrade and pay $20 a month instead of $12 if I wanted POP access for each Yahoo account that had an email address at my domain. I immediately started shopping around for a new web host. The first problem I ran into was that Geocities did not give me a registry key when they registered my domain. Repeated emails didn't get answered for days. There is no phone number for support. The company they used to register was in Australia so there was no way I could call them. I finally was able to get my registry key information from them so that I could change the name servers to my new hosting company. I would not recommend Geocities. Your domain is practically held hostage while you wait for the almost non-existant tech support.

I'm not surprised. Yahoo-Geocities are deceiving customers and abusing the trust of people who are relatively new to the net (not saying you are). I'm sorry to hear about your experience, I'm sure it'll be quite easy for you to find a host with better support & features for a lower price :). Good luck.

this type of stuff is very frustrating......and I too often get angered by the treatment of these larger companies.........

but one thing I am confused about, is why did they use a company in Australia for the registration...(was it a .com.au domain)??

It was a regular .com domain. I have no clue why they used a company in Australia. Maybe it was just the cheapest price they could negotiate.

I actually wrote an email to that company asking them for my registry key when Yahoo wasn't cooperating at first. They ended up eventually changing the key for me and said they changed my account to take Yahoo Geocities off of it completely.

That's too bad. Yahoo is desperately trying everything under the sun to increase revenue, while what they really should be doing is concentrating on improving existing paid services such as Yahoo Geocities. What's the point of turning on the tap when you're leaving the sink hole open? ;)

I don't know how they did it but MerbourneIT has been a big name in the domain registration field for a long time. Full credit to their sales team as Yahoo uses them, as well as Quicken, as well as quite a few other major name companies.

And from someone who has dealt with them before, the phone call will be worth it. Waiting for an answer via e-mail is a painful experience.

Greg Moore

Lesson 1 - never, but never, register your domain name via your host

Lesson 2 - stay away from Yahoo/Geocities. I haven't used them myself, but I've been seeing a lot of really bad stories about them lately

Lesson 3 - research everything before jumping in. Check out your domain registrar, check out your host, etc

The day is soon approaching when Yahoo will charge for all services.

It's either that or good-bye Yahoo. They no longer have the promise of advertising revenue to offer their investors.

Yahoo does need to work on their customer service. It may not be too late if they can understand that customers are human beings, not numbers.

Geocites has been pretty lowsy for years and continues to get worse like a lot of yahoos other services. I wonder how long they got till they go belly up and whether they will manage survive by some miracle of brute force and crazy investors throwing money at them. Its really to bad, I've liked some of the services they have.

>Lesson 1 - never, but never, register your domain name via your >host

With all respect, I think this is an unfair generalization. I have personally experienced domain registers (not hosts) that have resisted domain changes as yahoo.com seems have done. I am also sure that many hosts (including mine) respect the rights of all domain registrants in controlling thier domains. I have had clients decide to leave our hosting service for various reasons, and do not try in any way to prevent them from modifying their records in any way. The key is the honesty and quality of a company, not the type.