What's going on? A lot of my domains are saying:

Domain is suspended.

This domain owner, Mr. Denny Tang, owes his previous hosting service provider
two months dedicated server rental and excessive bandwidth fees in January and
February 2006.

Domain is not be released until outstanding balance is paid in full.

Mr. Denny Tang has to email our Administration department for resolution of
this matter.

Case number MECHSJ67440


I had a problem with ehosting.ca and them inflating my bandwidth usage. I paid it in full and left the company and they charged me the exact amount again the next month (feb). I was able to get a credit back from my credit card company for the 2nd month (feb) but not the 1st month (jan).

What can I do about this? I never even got a single email about this.

Are you sure it's an actual message from GoDaddy and not something your previous webhost slapped on your old account? It seems highly unlikely that GoDaddy would care about your bills with your previous webhost. See if you can change the DNS servers through GoDaddy.

What's the domain name?

One of them is lightroomtutorials.com

whois.sc says that the domain is locked. The domain is pointing to my own DNS server hosted by another hosting company.

One of them is lightroomtutorials.com

whois.sc says that the domain is locked. The domain is pointing to my own DNS server hosted by another hosting company.

If you're referring to "Registrar Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK", that doesn't mean they've locked your domain. It's an option you choose when logged in to prevent people from making unauthorized DNS changes. All my domains show up the same way.

Try logging in and pointing the DNS records elsewhere and see what happens. There's no way a webhost company could persuade GoDaddy to lock someone's domain for personal bills.

It's not that. I tried to forward my domain & disable the domain on my server and it's doing nothing.

It's not that. I tried to forward my domain & disable the domain on my server and it's doing nothing.

That's just weird. All you can really do is contact GoDaddy and ask them what's going on. It makes no sense at all for them to cancel it on behalf of a company they have no affiliation with, it's not their business.

No where is GoDaddy mentioned in that message, nor do they have ANYTHING to do with this.

The website (lightroomtutorials.com) has an IP address of 216.187.94.178. The IP address resolves to ns1.i-mecca.net.

I-Mecca.net is also located in Vancouver, BC (Canada) just as the owner of Lightroomtutorials... I'm sure you can figure out the rest. :D

OMG I might have an idea of what's happening.

My DNS domain was registered by the same company. Could they have possibly did something?

I think the login for the domain hosted by them is not working too!

You can also wait for the domain to exspire (has to exspire eventualy). Then register it again. If you want someone cheaper go with omnis.com they are cheap for domains. Alot of times, cheaper then godaddy unless they running a special.

omg they changed the admin email to
admin@mecca.ca

Now I cant even transfer the domain.

And now you see what happens when you register your domain through the same company you host with. I think you might be needing to pay your bill or paying a goodly sum of cash for arbitration but you might want to check with GoDaddy first.

KGIII

isn't that illegal? What do you suggest I do? I'm going to contact them first thing tommorow. You think contacting tucows (where ehosting gets thier domains from) will help?

Okay what you can do is you can try to contact tucows and talk to them if not. Look here: http://icann.org/registries/listing.html it gives you the listing of what company is the one that controls the domains like .com is controlled by versign as the actual provider. so if contacting tucows fails, contact versign if that fails, contact icann for how to procede.

isn't that illegal? What do you suggest I do? I'm going to contact them first thing tommorow. You think contacting tucows (where ehosting gets thier domains from) will help?

The domain is registered with GoDaddy, not Tucows.

The administrative email address on file appears to be yours. Submit a lost password request and they should email you the info. If not, speak to a GoDaddy representative. Your information is still on the registration, should be easy to recover.

isn't that illegal? What do you suggest I do? I'm going to contact them first thing tommorow. You think contacting tucows (where ehosting gets thier domains from) will help?

Well, did you sign up with them and pay for a domain from them? Did the terms and conditions state anything about how they retained ownership of the domain so long as you were in debt to them? Do you owe them money perhaps? That's what it looks like - legality is then subjected to the terms of service you agreed to when purchasing the account and domain name.

KGIII

How odd, it's the fotofects.com domain (from lightroomtutorials' DNS) that's giving
the weird suspended message the OP posted.

Well, did you sign up with them and pay for a domain from them? Did the terms and conditions state anything about how they retained ownership of the domain so long as you were in debt to them? Do you owe them money perhaps? That's what it looks like - legality is then subjected to the terms of service you agreed to when purchasing the account and domain name.

KGIII

The domain is his: http://www.ehosting.ca/faq/faq.php?display=faq&nr=151&catnr=3&prog=1&lang=en&onlynewfaq=1

The domain name is yours completely. If you switch hosting providers or start using your own web server, you can transfer your domain with you anytime.


Threaten legal action. You paid for your domain name, they're attempting to steal it.

fotofects.com is also my domain. It is the domain registered by ehosting.ca.
lightroomtutorials.com DNS is ns1.fotofects.com

Wow I got an email back from them.

Dear Mr. Denny Tang,

Case number MECHSJ67440

Fotofects.com is suspended.

This domain owner, Mr. Denny Tang, owes his previous hosting service provider two months dedicated server rental and excessive bandwidth fees in January and February 2006.

Fotofects.com will not be released until outstanding balance is paid in full.

Mr. Denny Tang accused us that we made up the MRTG bandwidth usage data.
Please note that our company does not have this kind of time nor knowledge to make up MRTG data and deceive your money. When you signed our dedicated hosting agreement, you agreed to be charged based on MRTG usage.

Fotofects.com is registered through our company and we have every right to suspend this domain should this client is scamming our company with invalid credit card number.

Since you are being so dishonest and I am not going to be easy on you. You now have to pay $3800 (including the amount you owe to us + NSF fee + bad debt collection fee) dollars or kiss your fotofects.com domain goodbye. If you could a bit more polite, perhaps we could work out for a lower settlement amount.

And since you are such a fraud, we won't accept any more phony credit cards from you. You have to settle this within 5 business days with bank draft or money order.

If you are not going to pay, do not bother to reply me. The resolution for you is either to pay the outstanding balance or see you in court.

Time to learn some responsibilities, Mr Denny Tang. We only charged you the service that you really consumed.

Best regards,
Albert Cheung
On the behalf of
Mecca Internet Solutions Ltd.


Now they're accusing me of credit card fraud too.. and I still use that credit card number. Even the credit card name is mine.

If you want to know what happened, you can refer to a post I made in the past:
http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=3758582#post3758582

Well, did you sign up with them and pay for a domain from them? Did the terms and conditions state anything about how they retained ownership of the domain so long as you were in debt to them? Do you owe them money perhaps? That's what it looks like - legality is then subjected to the terms of service you agreed to when purchasing the account and domain name.

KGIII

I can't find anythign in their T&C about this.
http://www.i-mecca.net/en/service/exhibita.html

Hmm...

They state, clearly, that the domain belongs to you when you buy it from them.

Another oddity... They claim Vancouver but, well, the English is awful and I realize that there are two languages spoken in Canada (I pretty much live on the border) the vast majority of grammar errors are pluralizations or slipping back into Canadian French for words like "the." They don't generally involve stuff like:

"deceive your money"

(I get odd images of some freaky, acne covered, future most wanted fugitive for heinous crimes against nature trying to play the shell game with a $5.00 bill...)

It does appear that you'll want to go contact Tucows:


Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 28-May-2006.
Record expires on 23-Sep-2006.
Record created on 23-Sep-2004.


Additionally you might want to screen shot that rule (or ask me for my copy that I've grabbed just in case) and hold on to it.

KGIII

Thanks for the replies and help.

It would really help of a few people would save the web pages as evidence just incase they change it. I will contact my lawyer about this and see what I can do.

But first thing tommorow, I'm going to contact Tucows by telephone.

Well I finally got through the automated telephone system to a real person who was able to direct me to someone from the compliance department. He asked to have his email CC (carbon copied) so that he's able to monitor what the company is trying to do.

wow this is horrible, I hope you get your domain back.

They replied back and offered a settlement agreement of $250. What do you guys think? Should I just pay the $250 and get it over with or should I do something about their unethical conduct?

They replied back and offered a settlement agreement of $250. What do you guys think? Should I just pay the $250 and get it over with or should I do something about their unethical conduct?

What they're doing is illegal and you have no obligation to pay. You bought the domain and according to their terms, you own 100% of it. What they're attempting is theft.

Thanks for the replies and help.

It would really help of a few people would save the web pages as evidence just incase they change it. I will contact my lawyer about this and see what I can do.

But first thing tommorow, I'm going to contact Tucows by telephone.

I don't know about your other domains but lightroomtutorials.com was registered through GoDaddy, not Tucows.

So it appears the domain name and website hosting were signed up together with
the same provider in question. Classic mistake, but understandable since not too
many people are aware of this.

Since you're listed as the registrant, that means you're its legal owner. But keep
WHOIS screenshots and copy the provider's legal fine prints as reference.

Next, contact Tucows about this. Legal agreements currently force the registrar to
refer the end user to the reseller first, but do state you've "exhausted" all means
of dealing with the reseller and will have no further interest.

Tucows should have a mechanism to move the domain over to another account.
But the catch here is how they handle such issues.

I read the other thread, don't do a chargeback just yet! If the registrar is notified
of such, they'll suspend the domain name access and possibly fine you for it.

On the other hand, it seems the OP really owe the host money. The bandwidth usage is what PRTG or MRTG of the switch shows, not whatever log analysis software shows, because the log software doesn't count the packet overhead, and may not show the bandwidth if the server got hacked and used for other than OP's domains.

On one hand, the host should not have held the OP's domain names hostage. On the other hand, the OP should pay up.

Contact Tucows, they're very easy to work with. Inform them that your domain was stolen and transferred to them.

They'll need you to send them proof of identity and look up the prior WHOIS records most likely.

We are just temporarily suspending the domain name that he has with us so that he is aware that he is owing us money.

This client is owing us over CDN$3800. He was our dedicated server client for 11 months and consumed so much bandwidth during the last two months of the service and walked away without paying anything.

Originally he agreed to pay the amount (we have a signed letter from him saying that he is willing to pay) however a month later, he disputed the transactions with Visa. Now we have no choice but to suspend his domain name as this is the only active service he remains with us. He also accused us that the MRTG graphs and data were made up by us which simply was not the case. Our MRTG data was collected electronically every 5 minutes from our managed switches without human intervention.

Today we have communicated with Tucows and we have done what is considered to be legal under ICAN regulations.

We have also reached a settlement with the client in question later this afternoon and we consider this issue is fully resolved.

Hmm...

They state, clearly, that the domain belongs to you when you buy it from them.

Another oddity... They claim Vancouver but, well, the English is awful and I realize that there are two languages spoken in Canada (I pretty much live on the border) the vast majority of grammar errors are pluralizations or slipping back into Canadian French for words like "the." They don't generally involve stuff like:

"deceive your money"

(I get odd images of some freaky, acne covered, future most wanted fugitive for heinous crimes against nature trying to play the shell game with a $5.00 bill...)

It does appear that you'll want to go contact Tucows:



Additionally you might want to screen shot that rule (or ask me for my copy that I've grabbed just in case) and hold on to it.

KGIII

Just because a company is from an English as primary language country doesn't mean that English is their staff's primary language.

Note: I am not supporting either party here, simply making a comment on someone's assumptions.

They replied back and offered a settlement agreement of $250. What do you guys think? Should I just pay the $250 and get it over with or should I do something about their unethical conduct?

$250 settlement for a $3800 bill sounds like a good deal, that is, if $3800 was what you were obligated to pay.