Hosting Company Issues

maglite

Hi All,

Looking for a bit of advice. During my college days I was asked to set up a couple of websites for various people. Recently one of these people "Ted" approached me with an issue with his site. He had lost access to his domains and the associated hosting. He had entered into an operation with a group of individuals and apparently there was some disagreement (alleged financial irregularities etc) so they went their separate ways.

Now the Hosting and domain names werre purchased with me sitting next to him using this personal credit card. (we use my email and phone, his personal address and name). The account creation asked for an account name and with my understanding at the time for a .ie we needed a company name. So one of the individuals involved, who had experience in setting up companies, set one up and provided my with the company details. (lets say ABC.ltd)

I used the name of this company as the account name, all the other details related to Ted, his name, address payment details etc.

So I contact the Hosting company to see what was going on. The person who had set up the ltd company has decided to go it alone and has asked the hosting company for access to the site. I'm now locked out the the sites, the emails and the whois information has been changed. All of this without any consultation with me or Ted.

Now we have exchanged emails at length and have gotten to the stage of the hosting company claiming they have followed all thier procedures (no indication of what these are) and are now refusing to engage with me, threatening me with legal action if i continue with this) I'm at a total loss how the hosting company has just given away the domains and the hosting that Ted has paid for.


Has anyone experience of this issue before or advice on how I can resolve this matter. I have a limited understanding of these but my understanding was there are dispute procedures and you cant just kick someone off a set of domains and their hosting account.

krd

What you have there is a legal issue.

You might need a lawyer to go after them. And there's no guarantee that you'll have any joy. Legally, I believe whoever paid for the domain, has a legal claim to it. But the company, also have a claim to the domain. And you may have a more complicated issue - more or less a battle for who owns the company.


I've worked for a few companies who handled domains,

For transferring a domain, I'd ask for a lot of paperwork. (I made the rules up myself). Usually if someone is chancing their arm, they're not going to post paperwork in. If I had company headed note paper, and other info to confirm the company, I would do a transfer.

One thing that would happen regularly enough, is there would be some dispute with a web designer. If the domain was registered to the designer, but in the name of the company the domain was for, we could easily get the designer off, and hand over the ownership to the company.

If the domain was registered to the web designers company, then we'd tell people they'd have to resolve the dispute with the web designer. In truth though, if it was a domain we were hosting, we could easily boot the designer off with a few clicks of the keyboard. The designer is unlikely to sue, but you don't want to tempt fate

I believe, if push came to shove, it would be the web designer who would ultimately lose out. But usually it's just cheaper to pay them.

Freddio

Is the domain a dot ie and related directly to what you trade as. If so you can prove ownership.

Trojan

This is a very messy situation. There's a big difference between .IE's and any other TLD in this situation.

I'd suggest that you advise Ted to get legal advice.

maglite

I think I'm on a looser with the .ie .We used a company number to register that and as Ted is not down as a director of that company I would find it difficult to put much of a claim on that without resorting to courts.

It’s the other TLD's I have the issue with, .com, .net and the actual hosting itself. I'm actually disgusted with the hosting company, who I had such respect for previously. I didn’t think any supposedly reputable company would just hand over your hosting in this manner.

The legal route is out as Ted had a very good understanding of the fiscal state of the operation and it just wouldn’t be cost effective to go legal, he would just sink money into a dead venture.


Are there any "regulatory" bodies I can appeal this to? I see ICANN has a procedure but I'm not sure what that would involve?