I have been approached by a new client, who wants me to build a new site - so far, so good. She previously had a site built by another designer, using the domain herbusinessname.com, which is registered in the name of her business through a UK registrar. The hosting was arranged by the previous designer and is currently with Hostgator, but the client has no access to this.
The previous designer went out of business, but did not return control of the site to her. The domain now shows a front page which appears to be a legitimate page for her business, but it is not, and all the links from this go to an unrelated domain of dubious reputation.
Naturally, my client wants her domain back. As it is registered to her business, not the designer, my feeling is that she should be able to contact the registrar with proof of her identity and have them help her move the domain to another host. Am I being very naive here?
Before I give her bad advice, I wanted to check whether anyone else has experience of a similar situation and can help out.
I had a client in a similar situation last week, who owned the domain name but didn’t have access to the domain hosting account so that we could redirect it. However, by going to the domain host’s website, I was able to enter the domain name and click a button that sent the password to the email address of the owner.
So it might be worth seeing if that’s a possibility. You can look up the WhoIs database to see where the domain is hosted and who’s name it’s in. That what I did.
I did look up the WhoIs, which is how I found the registrar and hosting company in the first place. (The client was a bit vague about the details!). However, although the registrant is shown as my client’s business, the administrative contact is the UK “Registration Service Provider”, and it’s their e-mail address that’s shown, not my client’s.
I’ve taken your advice and had a look at the Hostgator site, but can’t find anything immediately helpful. I know the previous designer offered reseller hosting, but I don’t know if that’s what this is. In other words, I don’t know whose name and e-mail address the hosting is in, but I’m pretty sure it’s his and not my client’s.
I’ve only ever dealt with one .com domain before - most of my clients use various .uk domains and the technicalities of transferring them are slightly different. The one bit of good news (I think!) is that the domain status is not showing as “Locked”.
It’s certainly worth a try to contact the domain host and tell them the situation. Go Daddy offers to hide the registrant details, so you don’t know if there’s a email pointing to your client, but it would have been negligent for the original designer not to do that, in my view.
Definitely talk to the UK registrar if you or your client needs access to the domain
itself. Your client might be asked to authenticate based on the domain’s records,
but I gather that won’t be a problem?
This is very complicated situation because she is not designated as admin for that domain.
What you can do is to advise her to visit ICANN and request information about her options.
I know ICANN is dealing with identical subjects all the time and I’m sure after she complete
all paper work, she will re-gain back her domain.
And she has case because it looks like registrar is not too eager to help her out.
This is what we do when people who can’t move or transfer their domains to us because of identical circumstances. We give them ICANN certified forms they fax back to us together with their info and picture and 99 times of 100 people succeed to get their domains back but… you have to try.
This is one of the reasons why I am so against designers and web masters holding onto the domains for the client. In this case, proof of ID should do the trick. If not, best you can do is wait out the renewal.
