Over the years I’ve heard from many business owners of their bad experiences online. From being sold a website that never happens (or isn’t what they expected) to being scared into buying multiple domain names that they don’t need. Another common horror story is when you request your registration company transfers your domain to another provider and you are informed you must pay quite a few £s for it to be released. Sound familiar?
I recently had dealings with EMS Internet on behalf of a local small business. After receiving an invoice for renewal of the domain names and hosting he decided he wanted to move his website to another host and transfer his domain back to his own registration account. What should have been a painless and straightforward task turned into a very strained telephone conversation with an EMS Internet representative. She said because I had told her we were moving to another provider she was going to switch the website off immediately (even though no money was owed) and she also went on to say that the domain name would not be released without payment of their transfer fee (equivalent to their annual hosting charge of £99).
What if, instead of it being me at the other end of the phone it was the business owner being told he either pays up or his website is switched off? He wouldn’t know what else to do and will probably pay. In this instance a quick call to Nominet was all it took to get the domain name safely back in the posession of my client. I had already set up the mail boxes and website on the new server so it was simply a case of changing the nameservers. It really is that simple (if you know what you are doing of course!)
The message I want to get across here is that you CANNOT be held to ransom over your UK domain name. If you are being asked to pay an extortionate amount in order to release YOUR domain name then you need to get in touch with Nominet and they will walk you through it. It’s painless.
- When you register a UK domain you also get access to a Nominet domain admin area
- Your Nominet admin area gives you access to make the necessary changes so the domain can be transferred
- To change the tag direct with Nominet it costs £10+VAT
- Nominet has strict rules about charging for transfers (it should be reasonable)
- Nominet requires that it’s members do not hold clients to ransom for a domain name (and you can report a company for doing this)
On the other hand I would also advise any business to think long and hard about their reasons for switching their domain to another service provider. If the only purpose is to save a few pennies, even for a small static website it might not be worth the time and effort. Try to understand exactly what you are paying for and what it would cost at the alternative provider before making a switch.
I would also like to add that while a domain registrar is NOT charged by Nominet to carry out an IPS tag change it is reasonable to request a small fee to do this on your behalf (however long it may take them – minutes add up to hours and they are still a business afterall). What’s a reasonable charge? Well, Nominet will charge you £10+Vat, so if you are looking at anything higher than £20 I would personally consider that to be unreasonable. In addition, you should be prepared to allow the company reasonable time to make the change (they can’t be expected to do it immediately, if they do that’s good service!). I think it’s reasonable to expect them to make the change within 24 hours (take into account hours of operation too).
Keep in mind that Nominet requires it’s registrars to be reasonable when dealing with domain change requests from registrants. See below for more info.
- Registrant – You (ie the person who ‘owns’ the domain name
Change Registrar – advice from Nominet on how to go about changing your domain name registration provider
- Registrar – The company or organisation who ‘registers’ the name on your behalf.
Registrar Agreement – the contract between Nominet and the domain registration company
Feedback is Welcome!
- Are you a registrar who doesn’t charge for an IPS tag change or a registrar who charges more than £20 and considers it reasonable?
- Have you been bullied into paying a high fee for a domain name change or ended up having to change your website domain as a result of a registrar not playing fair?
- Have you had a pleasant experience when switching to a new registration provider?
I welcome any comments on this post from all sides. In particular it would be nice to know of nice registrars who have a ‘hassle free’ policy when it comes to releasing domains.
Hi there, I came across your blog today and found it extremely useful. I too am having the same issue with EMS who are being most unhelpful about releasing my friends domain name. Hopefully I will get a result from your advise and through Nominet.
Most registrars people deal with in the UK stick to the appropriate rules laid down to them by Nominet.
I find the massive problem is with Joe Blog resellers (designers, random IT acquaintances, etc etc) who register domains for people through a registrar like fasthosts but then won’t transfer the domain when the actual customer asks them to.
The customer has no link with the registrar, only the reseller and the reseller is either ignorant or morally corrupt demanding £2000 to transfer a domain they registered on behalf of someone.
It sickens me that these con artists get away with it because a lot of people don’t know they don’t have to pay off these charlatans.
I’ve seen this many times. I’ve also seen the other method first hand. The client has a site done, you’ve spent hours and hours sorting out the changes they ask for, then at the last minute, they want to transfer it away.
Now technically, the copyright of the site remains with the author, not the client. Thats how copyright works. If the client hasn’t or isn’t willing to pay for the work, then the site simply isn’t theirs to have.
I’ve had sites ‘stolen’ this way by the client going to Nominet and switching the Tags, and I do register in their names, which makes it easy for them to do so. Of course, I’ve been left with no payment for the work done.
Now, when it comes to .com domains, thats a whole new ball game. One of my clients wanted to transfer out from EMS Internet his .com and they demanded £100+vat to do so. He paid it. What happened? EMS purposely ignored the transfer request emails from the new registrar to put the domain closer to its renewal date. If it goes past the safe zone for transfer, youre left with little option to renew with them or lose the domain in the system. It takes 90 days for a .com to come back available to the market, then you hope some company hasn’t bought it to sell it on (which also happens a lot!)
Its nice for people to realise a few things here. Not all ‘one man bands’ are dishonest, and many of us are ripped off by the client through legal technical tweaks such as taking their domain via Nominet. And yes – many have been known to take the site with them too.
EMS in this case is just an upload to a template company that make you feel like theyve done a good job with your website, but actually you built it yourself for the silly amount of money they charge per year – yes per year – for work youve done yourself. If youre daft enough to go with them in the first place, then I guess you get what you deserve.
Thanks for your comments ‘T’ and for highlighting the other side of the coin. It is important that both sides use safeguards to protect themselves, I’m aware it is not uncommon for web designers to do a lot of work on trust and get left high and dry.
I don’t quite understand how sites can be ‘stolen’ with a domain tag switch since the domain name and the physical hosting of actual content are two seperate things. I can only guess this happens when you have worked on a website hosted externally to your own servers, in which case I would suggest that you always build sites and apply changes on your own test server and agree a payment stucture, for example:
Deposit before any work is started
Further payment when work is signed off prior to applying changes/work done on test server to live website
Final payment upon work going live
For larger projects you could introduce additional stages for payment.
I too have had a very similar experience with EMS. Have a read of http://www.web-design-talk.co.uk/331/ems-internet – £100 for a simple website backup, £100 for an IPS TAG change.
Hey Rob, I feel for you, I could related to everything you experienced even down to the change of attitude of the sales woman. Good for you for posting about it
Unfortunately, I decided to remove that post – after quite a bit of pressure from EMS Internet – the post had become quite popular and worked it’s way up to postion 5 when you searched for “ems internet” or “ems internet reviews”. There is now a huge thread about ems internet on a very big web design forum – that is currently sitting in position #2 when you search for “ems internet” in google – EMS have also threatened the forum owners too. Quite scary. They researched me online and called me at work – very in appropriate imo! The lady was very nice on the phone, but the general message was “if you don’t take this down we will take things further legally”. I decided to take it down as I couldn’t be bothered with the agro at the time. I have actually had 9 direct emsils from different people asking for a copy of it – I have of course declined
It’s all quite a bit of a saga over the little review I originally left
Hi Rob, if you said something defamatory that wasn’t true and couldn’t be proved e.g. “XXX is a thief” or “XXX tells lies” they might have a case but if you are merely reporting on facts that you can prove it would be difficult to bring a case against you. Did you consider rewriting your initial post instead of removing it?
I’ve just fallen foul of ‘a slightly dirtier side of the coin’ …
This morning two emails drop into my inbox from Nominet notifying me that one of my clients has gone direct to them and changed admin contacts and the IPSTAG.
A couple of weeks prior the client’s new provider had emailed us asking to transfer the domain and I notified them that once the client cleared their outstanding account (they never advised they were transferring and owed XX months hosting) I would gladly change the contact details and IPSTAG. We exchanged a few further emails and I was informed the client would be in touch.
Fast forward to present day and it appears that provider instead guided the client through the process of transferring the domain direct through Nominet.
Now, I would never dream of doing this to another web professional, but do I want the rules changed? I’m not sure as for all I am really upset at losing money for services provided in good faith (and had provided to this client for over 5 years) I know there are so many charlatans out there who do hold onto domains or change for them to be transferred for no good reason.
Hmmmmph!
Thanks for your comments Paul. There is no way of knowing what motivated the other provider to assist in the transfer knowing money was owed to you – but if it was motivated by greed then perhaps Karma will be biting them on the rear at some point.
I must say I was VERY surprised at how simple the process was when I assisted my client as I thought there would be some sort of mediation involved. Perhaps it comes down to the judgement of the Nominet staff taking the call?
Some would say you should go through the small claims court to get your money back but I suspect the time and effort it would take probably wouldn’t be justified.
Best of luck!
K
P.S. forgot to explicitly say that I do offer a completely hassle free transfer policy. As long as a client has paid for the services they requested, their domain is theirs to move where they wish.
It’s a 1 minute job to transfer a domain name so why charge for it? Also, I believe it’s always best to deal with outgoing clients and their new providers in a polite manner as the bad press is just not worth it.
I cannot believe the way ems-internet have treated me…These are the FACTS:
1)They do not allow enough time from the “renew” date for you to cancel and transfer your domain.
2)They auto renew contracts, even ofcom have banned these now as they are illegal.
3)Their fees are the highest I could find anywhere on the internet, by a LONG way.
4)The member of staff that spoke to me had no interest of solving my problem, they simply wanted my money.
5)Bring it on ems-internet, you and the way you do business needs to be stopped, in my opinion. You are rude, aggressive, do not make it clear how customers can cancel and to top it it all you post fake reviews of your own company on the internet. Take me to court and I will have all your computers and those of your employees examined to prove this.
I offer a completely hassle free and free of charge transfer of any domain I host. On the other hand, when clients are transferring their domains to me, I find many tag holders try every delaying tactic in the book to hang on to a domain, maybe so they can continue to charge renewals even if not hosting.
Knowing that all it takes to change a tag on a .co.uk is to enter the new tag into a form online, I find it hard to justify a charge of any kind – any tiny cost surely comes out of the profit I’ve made from the customer over the years. Nor can I understand why some tag holders email back a form to be completed and submitted along with photo ID or a utility bill or even (horrifyingly) a bank statement to “prove” the identity of the owner.
A client recently logged into his secure control panel at his old host, requested a tag change and it has taken a week to get the form demanding all the above. I think this is unforgivable. The client is exasperated, and annoyed that he has to spend his valuable time filling in a pointless form and hunting for the required ID. He knows it’s all unnecessary because when he asked me several years ago to change the tag to theirs, I did it instantly while he was still on the phone… and I was on holiday in Greece at the time too. He’s pleased to be coming back to me.
R
i had to hire a solicitor because ems put my real name on the listings for my escort website, they were really not interested in my website at all. they eventually put it live after i visited them, but a week later my name was up there, and i received an email to say “thank you for purchasing the google indexing package” (which i hadnt ). the website has been taken down and apparently the domain name is “mine” but i wont be using it. apparently ems have their new office opening tomorrow friday 3rd feb .!!