soledad penadés

It has taken longer than it should have done, but at last I can say that my domain (soledadpenades.com) is registered and managed in a good place - that is: CDmon!

I registered it for the first time around seven years ago. By that time, I hardly knew anything about domain registrars and so just went for the first one that someone recommended me - directnic. It was also the "it doesn't matter if it's hard to use" times, so even if the interface was a bit clunky to use, it didn't make any difference. At the end, it was a place which you just visited once a couple of years, for renewing the domain.

I also didn't even have my own hosting, I depended completely on free hostings like geocities first, and the nice hosting provided by scenesp later, so my domain acted basically as a redirection to whichever my current hosting was.

But then I moved to textdrive and started learning a lot more about server side configuration and tweaking. Directnic didn't provide much functionality, so I decided to switch to cdmon as soon as possible, since they have been giving me an absolutely excellent service for domain registrations and hosting (see xplsv.tv for an example of cdmon-hosted site).

I went to directnic and modified the contact details for my domain, since they were still using my old university account (which was cancelled some years ago). I clicked update and began all the procedures for transferring the domain.

CDmon warned that I should pay special attention to a confirmation e-mail that I should click for beginning the transferring process. Days passed, nothing ever reached my inbox. I was like crazy scanning all the folders, just in case it had gone to the junk folder. Where was my e-mail? Almost one month later I wrote to cdmon. For some reason they had sent the confirmation e-mail to my old university account. How come? Hadn't I just updated it in directnic prior to beginning the process? Weird...

I apologised to cdmon (since it was none of their fault) and went back to directnic control panel. Shockingly, my old university e-mail was still there. What's going on here?!, I asked myself. I repeated the process, entered the data again. But before asking cdmon to request the transfer again, I checked again the data. Guess what: the old e-mail was still there. I was beginning to get angry. Quite angry actually. But I managed to control my anger and opened a ticket in directnic. Enter the absurd world of directnic:

Me:

I'm trying to modify the contact details in order to have a working e-mail address in it, but each time I try to update it, it just rejects the changes and shows the old values in the form, without giving any error whatsoever. Since this is really urgent, I'd really appreciate help in this topic. Thanks!

Answer:

To modify your Account Information, please follow these directions: 1. Log into your directNIC account at https://secure.directnic.com/myaccount/ 2. Select the 'Customer Settings' tab on your main menu. 3. Click on the 'Account Information' link 4. Enter the changes in the Account information that apply 5. Click on the 'Update' orange radio button toward the bottom of the page [...]

At this point I felt like: Ok, did they really read my question? Ok ok ok... let's calm down, they aren't assuming that I know how to use a form, maybe they have really clumsy tickets to solve, or whatever... let's explain them the problem again, more wordily:

Me:

Sorry, this does not solve my problem. What I can't change are the contact details for my domain soledadpenades.com If from here (https://url1) I click on "Modify contacts" and then proceed to modify the contact Soledad Penades (at https://url2), no matter what I do, it doesn't get updated. I click the orange button at the bottom which is labelled as "Edit Contact", the form appears again with the newly entered data but if I repeat the process, I still get the same OLD data which was at the beginning. There's something wrong in your system which is rejecting my data, I don't know why, since I removed all "strange" characters like accents and so on from the inputs. If you need any further information I'll be glad to help you in order to solve this issue. Thanks!

Answer again:

Hello Try removing the "+" out of the phone number. Often the change will be rejected because of a strange character or the system cannot recognize the number format (like a phone number). Also where you changed your name, I see a "?" where an "e" should be in your last name. The system is functioning properly because it shows an attempt to modify, unfortunately, it is rejecting the strange characters or the format of the phone number. Hope this helps, please don;t hesitate to reopen the ticket if you are still having issues and we can revisit the problem.

Hold on! Read that one again: The system is functioning properly because it shows an attempt to modify, unfortunately, it is rejecting the strange characters or the format of the phone number.

At this side of the world, a system does not work properly when it can't do what it's expected to do and even worse, it doesn't give any feedback at all. If I was the developer for that back-end my cheeks would be flushing in red just by reading at this ticket.

First they change their encoding so that my surname mutates from Penadés to Penad?s, and then they decide that +'s in the phone numbers (which are international phone numbers) aren't going to be acceptable anymore, all of this, without giving any note of warning whatsoever.

I couldn't believe it.

I really mean it, I read their answer like three times, thinking: they are an internet company, they do not sell any physical goods, they may have lots of international clients, they may know there are things like accents, they may know that there are more countries other than USA, or was I expecting too much from them? This can't be happening but it is indeed happening, so let's try again.

After removing all "strange" characters and leaving it all with just plain alphanumeric characters, I could finally save the data and get them really updated. Funnily enough, it did confirm that the changes had been saved.

Wrote them again:

Hi, seems that it worked. But I really think you should consider to give at least a note of warning. Something like "Hey, could you please remove what are not numbers from the phone field?", instead of just returning to the form again, which is not what I would label as "functioning properly". I couldn't change my "?" because your system was rejecting any single change I did, but wasn't able to tell me what was wrong (which was the + in the phone number). It would really help people in this situation, since it's not weird to enter the number with a +, specially for this type of international businesses. Thanks for your help!

Never got any response.

Yesterday was supposed to be the D-day, my domain was going to be at its new home (cdmon) definitely and so it showed in the control panel. There it was! my sweet little domain... I could modify it and block it again, using cdmon's interface. But then I thought: will it still show at directnic?

I logged in again at directnic. Guess what: the domain still appeared there. And it might have stayed there forever if it hadn't been because I have sent them a ticket asking why was it still there if I had transferred it to another registrar, then they have deleted it.

Conclusion: CDmon rules. If you need domains or hosting, buy them there. They are professional and they care about their clients.