I have a friend that registered a domain with whois.com a few years ago. Unfortunately, her domain expired before she realized it (2-15-08). It is in the Redemption Period, so I told her to go to her registrar and renew and then she could transfer somewhere more reputable later.

Here is the problem... Apparently, whois.com is a reseller and they switched to a new registrar recently. Therefore there is no option to renew, only to transfer. When I log into her account, her domain details are listed, but when I go to the Transfer/Renew section nothing is available.

Does anyone know if there is a way around this?

The way around is to contact whois.com and ask them what to do. Only they can help you.

I forgot to mention that she already has tried contacting them with no luck. They are based on Singapore, so she can't call.

It looks like we'll have to wait and see if she can get it back when it drops.

i am from singapore.....

It's not impossible to make a phone call to Singapore, and with VoIP it's very cheap

Good Luck with that!

Is this a cautionary tale about choosing our registrars carefully?

Are certain registrars "safer" than others? (I'd really like to know.)

A friend of mine had a domain and website registered through someone owned by Yahoo. He thought they were paying his annual renewal fee as long as he paid the monthly hosting fee. (I'm sure this was the original arrangement, but they may have changed rules on him.)

Anyroad, he called me when he could not find his site on the web.

My research revealed it had lapsed a year ago! He had his business up there. It looked like it was picked up and parked and was expiring again.

So, it comes out of redemption in a few days. NameJet will handle an auction for it. I have gotten him registered in the auction. Hopefully, he will follow through and get his name back!

The REAL cautionary tale is to pay more attention to your website, I suppose.

Best,

Toria