One thing is for sure: it’s going to take a while to get used to this new account interface.
[Read this update with responses from Moniker CEO Bonnie Wittenburg]
Moniker released its upgraded interface over the weekend. The interface is based on the RRPproxy reseller platform.
This isn’t just a modification to Moniker’s interface. It’s a completely new one.
That means a learning curve. Most people hate change, which means the grumbling will begin.
Is it warranted? So far there are things I like about the new interface and things I don’t. I’ll definitely have to spend time learning how to use some features.
When you first log in…
First you’ll see a basic dashboard showing your number of domains, expiration alerts, etc. You have to click a link to see your domains.
I like the basic domain view on the new Moniker. You see all of your domains and various aspects of the domains such as locking status, expiration date, etc. You can easily change which columns show up and customize the view:
It’s nice being able to change the renewal status through a drop down box as well.
Clicking on a domain brings up some options for the domain, but not all. You need to change a drop down box at the top of the page to access certain features such as pushing a domain.
One nifty feature when you click on a domain is the ability to change the Whois text. You can add messages such as a “For Sale” message in your whois.
At first I was dismayed that the search box on the dashboard had disappeared. It’s still there, but you have to click the “Bulk Search” tab at the top.
You’re on a reseller platform now.
One key difference between the old Moniker and the new one is you’re on a reseller platform now.
Perhaps that’s why over the weekend I received two emails from noreply @ expirationwarning.net informing me that my domains were about to expire. At first I thought this was a phishing scam. But it’s not — expirationwarning.net is owned by Key-Systems. I suspect they use it for all of their resellers.
Welcome to Europe.
Another big change is that you’re now on a European domain registration platform. Not American.
My balance is shown in U.S. Dollars. Pricing is listed in USD. But when I clicked the link for pre-payments, I could only add in Euros. Surely this is a glitch that will be fixed.
Missing security.
Much like the old Moniker, the new Moniker doesn’t appear to have two factor authentication. Guys, it’s 2014. This is pretty much a deal killer.
This will take some getting used to.
It’s going to take some getting used to Moniker’s new system. One example is pushing domains from one account to another. Here’s what happened when I click the domain push link:
First of all, what does my account balance have to do with pushing a domain?
Second, what the heck am I supposed to do here?
It turns out the process is simple, but I did have to go look it up.
Moniker had a unique pushing system in which you needed a security code from the receiving account in order to do a push. Now it’s a more traditional system where you initiate a push and the other person has to accept it.
Is this better or worse? I don’t know. But it will take some getting used to.
Just like the rest of the new Moniker.
What do you think so far?
total disappointment.renew does not work.looks like 90’s.and yes why not 2 factor auth???
Thank you for the helpful advice and quality feedback – we appreciate it. We are actively considering all comments throughout this transition and take all feedback very seriously, both positive and negative. We understand the effect undergoing such a significant change has on our customers, and hope to make this transition as smooth as possible.
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the quality of our service and to deliver a better experience for our clients, we felt it necessary to make a dramatic shift to better position us for future upgrades and product enhancements. That said, there will undoubtedly be a few kinks to work out and it is our goal to address each issue as quickly as possible.
We welcome your comments and those of your subscribers. Our support staff is available to aid with any issues our customers may encounter.
Contact Support Email:
[email protected]
Phone:
Toll free in the U.S. and Canada: 800-688-6311
Outside the U.S. and Canada: 954-607-1294
I have been trying to get my login details as when I try to reset my password it says that my email address and account number do not match up. Can someone please help? Its been a week now!
What is this aversion to leaving out the contact info on the help page?
Not to mention that it appears that your renewal function is broken.
Is your company’s primary goal still domain reg/renewal? What purpose does the new platform serve, if you cannot perform such simple operations?
Too late for us, forget the learning curve, we’re jumping ship. Almost completed the migration of 400 domains out of Moniker. Why? Firstly the absolute pain of getting us and our clients logged on last year whenMoniker decided to change everyones login details and sending the new credentials to spam folders that our clients never manage. The main reason though is that nothing is easy on there now. Befor i could just click a few domains, add to basket and pay. Now it seems like some admin in the backend has to approve ‘jobs’. Before I could give Moniker cash instantly. Now I have to submit a ‘job’ and see if they want to accept it and stay pending of the situation until something comes out the other end. Sorry, pain in the neck. Very very very bad to place more admin in the way of getting a cash sale and more stupid admin time for us an a system that is not user friendly. Sorry guys.
How can you like something that is not functional.
If you want to renew a domain, you are unable to see them in your cart, unable to add, edit, delete credit cards. Unable to opt to use paypal for your order. The stupid Verify button at the bottom does not make any sense.
The methodical process of some of the functions of this platform are pretty bad, options for renewal, delete at renewal, or renew at renewal?
So if I hit the wrong button, my domain will be deleted at renewal, and sold on snampnames for in house profits?
As soon as I figure out how to transfer out, I am leaving moniker, no point, sinking ship.
Mark – your support does not answer! This is the worst service I have ever encountered. The new system is full of bugs! I will be moving thousands of domains while I sit here on hold waiting for your support to answer the phone!
I loved the old Moniker System. What they have done now is one of the worst domain registration/ management systems I’ve ever seen. After being with Moniker for 9 years, I’m out ASAP. Absolutely useless!
Christian,
We hope to continue to earn your business. We understand many of the issues being faced, and are looking to rectify them as quickly and painlessly as possible. Your continued patience is appreciated – we value your business.
I am confused about how renewals work. there seems to be only two options, renew at expiration or delete at expiration. does this mean there is no longer ANY renewal grace period?
Does anyone have a phone number to someone who is in charge of customer support? Calling the support number just keeps you on hold and nobody answers. After 45 minutes you are transferred to a voice mail –
James,
Our current wait times are averaging 20 minutes. You may also submit a ticket via our support form and we will respond as quickly as possible.
You too can get an form emails in as little as two days after submitting your problem!
So according to a whois search my renewals were processed. Unfortunately the renewed domains also disappeared from my account. I went from having a dedicated rep I loved to not being able to renew my domains. Ouch.
You’re requiring a voice verification to prove my domain is mind in order to pay renewal??? And then no answers despite repeated phone calls!!! (long distance from EU at that. What gives??
The renewal process needs work. Immediate renewal seems to be unavailable. I’d like to be able to renew immediately in bulk from any domain list as before.
I see no mechanism for immediate renewing my domains that expired over the weekend. Changing to “1 year immediate” seems to have no effect.
The options presented “renew at expiration” “delete at expiration” seem to be designed to prevent the registration expiration grace period from taking effect.
Add to it “no bulk actions” – I want a list of auth codes for hundreds of domains. How do I do that? I can’t go into them one at a time, the old system would send me one email with all my auth codes. Anyone know a way to do this?
I just did a “bulk unlock”, or at least I think I did. But they aren’t unlocked.
I looked at the Authcodes and it appears you’re correct. I can’t find a way to get them in bulk.
eNom only gives you one at a time as well (unless you contact them), which is one of the reasons I don’t use eNom.
While we’re at it, I’d like to see the true expiration date in whois. Domains that expire and are in the recovery period get the expiration bumped out a year automatically and there’s no indication in whois that the domain has expired. So we’re unable to differentiate between renewed domains and recently expired domains using whois tools.
There should be two expiration dates in whois. One is the registry date, which is automatically extended one year. The other is the registrar date, which shouldn’t be extended.
Should be, but no. Take a look at shows2014.com It expired on 04 June.
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2015-06-04T01:34:32.0Z
Last update of WHOIS database: 2014-06-04T22:05:41.0Z
And it’s expired in the Moniker dashboard as it should be.
This is not a new issue. It’s been this way for years.
I’ve checked it from multiple whois clients and the NIC whois has been updated to 2015 as well. Same shows at moniker website whois.
It will stay this way for 30 days, they it will go directly to not found state or to a backorder service.
I gave the new interface a bit of a chance, so I don’t think I started moving our ~3,000 domains until August. I’m about half way through those transfers so far.
James, Andrew — To retrieve the EPP Auth Codes in bulk, use the “Export Authcodes” option in the drop down box that says “Please select” (not the one that says “Please choose”). It’s the same place where you can “Push” a domain to another account (except, unlike the Auth Code, you can’t “push” a domain once you’ve displayed that domain’s detail info).
Don’t ask me why there are _two_ drop down boxes where any sane developer would put all the options in one tag.
The more I play with it the more frustrated I get. I select a few domains, then I unselect them and it says 0 selected. Then I select one other domain and all of them are selected again. Can’t figure out how to clear filters.
Worst system EVER!!!! I tried to renew some of my domains last night and ended up deleting them. Why they didn’t just renew with the funds I had in my account is beyond me. None of the functions work and the only thing I was able to add to a shopping cart was a domain max lock.
Also on hold trying to fix this nightmare atm……:( Sounds like I am not the only one having heartache with this system.
Go back to the old system…..PLEASE!!!!
Put them old system online, snapnames is going to get a hold of some great names next month that is for sure.
Yup this is exactly what happened to me. I didn’t get any expired domain notifications, not 1. Tried to renew it but the whole invoicing thing / charging credit cards did not work. I’ve had the same address in the system for 7 years without one problem and now when the charges failed I though it was because of my new credit card expiry date. I went in and update this then waited for the system to charge my credit card. They don’t tell you exactly what the problem is so you can fix it and pay for what you want. You’re left guessing and when time runs out bye bye, your domain is lost.
Domains are time sensitive and can be lost if time runs out. To use an invoicing system where the user has no control over when charges are put through is totally insane. So I just sat there waiting for the system to put the charges through and lost my domain in the process.
Maybe as others have mentioned I got an expired domain notice from a different company now that moniker is a reseller. If that’s the case then it went straight to the spam folder and was deleted. When you make major changes such as this (I had moniker emails whitelisted and categorized) you need to tell your customers and explain these are major changes. That wasn’t done. I don’t log into my account everyday to check on things, I rely on the system I’ve used for years. In fact I had no idea they even made these changes until today.
Also customers need to be warned. Moniker has a conflict of interest with sending expired domains to snapnames, they are owned by the same parent company. So it’s in the parent companies interest to have a super s*tty renewal system with Moniker so domains can be fed to snapnames. Very scummy.
Yes, the MUST return to the old system asap – this is a JOKE. Moniker.com, I know your listening. If you want to have a chance here you need to revert back to the old system as this one is flawed in a big way!
They aren’t going to go back to the old system, so I recommend pointing out specific things that don’t work well.
they should of just updated the old system with some new features. this complete change isn’t going to sit well with anyone not familiar with it. its kinda lazy really to just take the dd24 platform and stick it on moniker. they might as well of just moved all acconts to dd24 if its all the exact same.
Does anyone know how to renew a domain that has expired over the weekend?
that’s a problem they will need to address. since i have auto renew turned off all domains are set to delete at expiration (uhh what??) so domains that that were there yesterday that expired on June 1st are now gone (and deleted??).
WARNING, the new system started renewing domains on me willy nilly which were not set to renew. I had to freeze my credit cards to stop it. There is no way to delete a credit card on file as far as I can see. I got ahold of someone named David at 7am EST. He told me within 2 hours he will call me back with a solution to at least stop the charges for now. Still no call, check the timestamp of this comment. Now their phone support is endless hold music. I have support tickets in on this and emails in to the powers that be. I will post more on this online in the evening if they havent found a way to stop the charges yet so I can unfreeze my cards. It is realistic that there were gonna be bugs with this but this problem is substantial. Watch your cards online and monitor your emails closely.
Is it me or is there not way possible to “renew a domain now” – I have domains selected that I want to “renew now” – not at expiration but this very moment?
There is no option for this that I see??
there is an option for ‘renew immediately at $…’ i’ve never tried yet though.
I see this option too.
Where do you see this option Andrew?
click the ‘renew/delete domain’ option from the left side and beside the domain there is a drop down box with several options, that being one of them.
TabletHybrid.com & PhoneTabletHybrid.com expired May 29th. They’re missing from my dashboard. The whosis still has my info:
http://moniker.com/service/whois-search?domain=tablethybrid.com
Also, LowSodium.us is missing from my dashboard. The Whosis is correct, and it expires in March 2015.
I received an invoice, a bill, and a confirmation of payment for a domain I allowed drop in March:
DualScreenTablet.net.
But, I don’t want it.
yes, now I see that however I want to pay using my paypal which it will not allow – I do not dare load a credit card based on all the issues everyone else is having with auto renewals they did not want. This entire system is a huge mess. The worst part is you can’t get some one on the phone from Moniker. I have been trying now for 7 hours!
you could try pre-loading some funds via paypal. there is an option for that. if you do, let us know how it goes.
while that looks like it would work, they charge in euros for this…doh!
I was on hold for one hour and then, “sorry, no one here to answer the phone. Good bye”. My names are deleting as I cry and ICANN told me, “sorry, we’re not a regulatory agency. Contact an attorney.”
Nasty . Have to get names out of there, Can’t deal with them anymore
Here is the email reply, when I tried to renew a domain, “immediately:”
Dear Customer,
We hereby confirm, that the following *renewal option* of the following listed domain/s has been selected though your online-webinterface.
The changes came from the following IP address: [delete]
Your current payment method is: creditcard
domains / selected renewal-option:
————————————————-
dualscreenapps.com / renew immediate
The respective renewal options can be undone/changed until 10 days before the domain expires unless you chose “Delete immediately”
This Email is no confirmation of a domain-renewal/deletion , you will receive a *separate* Domain-Renewal-Confirmation when your domain name has been renewed at the registry. Please note that this may take some time, even for an immediate renewal.
If it would renew for the fee offered in the dashboard, $7.67, I would be very happy!
Oh. It subtracts from my account balance.
I kept a balance in the account for emergencies. Moniker rep, how do I select credit card, when I want to maintain my account balance for emergencies?
IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT !
I have kept nnn domains at Moniker for over a decade as it offered the easiest-to-use registrar interface, very intuitive, and very good at bulk actions like assigning domains to DNS IP Templates you have defined, all at a reasonable price.
This new interface is a total disaster !
I tried it out about 15 hours ago, in the early hours of the UK morning, and after persevering was forced to finally give up in total frustration.
Some problems I found (have any of these been fixed in the last 15 hours ?)
1. Couldn’t find a way to renew domains immediately – the Shopping Cart always stayed empty.
2. Couldn’t find the DNS IP Templates I had set up and the domains I had associated with them (the old “Manage Templates” function).
3. My Transaction History (around 1000 transactions) was empty – I tried moving the start date back a few years – still nothing.
4. The list of my domains authorised for immediate transfer on sale by Sedo MLS and Afternic DLS Premium was nowhere to be seen.
5. The default setting of “Delete at Expiration Date” is going to lose people a lot of domains if they’re not careful.
6. I couldn’t find where my subproduct definitions I had set up for “URL Forwarding” and “Email Forwarding” were.
6. And finally – I couldn’t be bothered to waste any more of my valuable time – even the renewal pricing (if you could find a way to achieve this) is wrong – it displays $7.67 instead of over $9 – probably converting to Euros but leaving a dollar sign up !
I have no intention of spending hours poring through help pages and submitting support form and phone calls to sort out this appalling mess !
I shall be moving all of my domains away from Moniker asap – another longstanding customer lost forever !
The renewal pricing is odd – it’s below cost. And you’re right, it doesn’t work.
Change to “renew immediately” and verify changes and nothing happens. FAQ says to hit “submit” after this. Wheres is submit?
Oh, and I take back what I said about the site having a search box. It only pulls up the exact match domain. I like to search by keyword to find all of my related domains.
If anyone knows how to get the domains out of here, please let me know, I can’t renew, I can’t change cc, paypal, this is like a domain nightmare on moniker street.
Are they still asleep over there, is the rep hiding under their desk, when your domain expires, it just goes into some hiding place, before there was an expired domain link. Also some .us I wanted to drop, now renewed, whatever, I will eat the $20, just tell me how to renew on my own into my cart.
Click, Renew/Delete Domains on the left sidebar.
You can filter, at least by keyword and TLD, from the left dropdown menu. For instance, I tried the keywords, app, and mobile, which supplied a list of each of those pretty accurately.
There are some neat features. If Customer Service can address our issues one-by-one, and not lose any domains, I’m in! $7.67 for a dot com – I’m in!
DualScreenApps.com got renewed within the hour that I selected, Renew Immediately:
http://moniker.com/service/whois-search?domain=dualscreenapps.com
$7.67 is below cost. Can’t imagine that staying.
Yes there is going to be a mass exodus from Moniker.com! I am moving thousands. I am sure they will see their numbers drop exponentially in the next 48 hours. If someone would have just answered the damn phone I would have stayed, sad!
I’m sure they expect a lot of people to leave over this, but I’m also sure they weighed that against the cost of maintaining a separate platform.
I hope this gives somebody some peace of mind: I just talked with Moniker and was told the domain names DON’T automatically “Delete Upon Expiration”. There is a certain time period to renew a domain even after it has expired.
Although, most of us are familiar with a 30 day window, the person I spoke to suggested it might be possible that that time frame will change. In his defense, he just couldn’t confirm it one way or another. But, if you’re having a hear attack like I just had this morning, your name didn’t “delete” over the weekend (it that’s when it expired).
Keep an eye on domain changes for all the mass exodus from Moniker. This comment section would be a great place for a competitor to astro-turf.
My domain names:
TabletHybrid.com
PhoneTabletHybrid.com
are missing from my dashboard. They expired May 29th. I just didn’t get to renew them before the overhaul.
LowSodium.us also is missing from my dashboard.
I’m glad of your assurance, because I thought the first two may have auto-deleted!
I am emailing CEO Bonnie Wittenberg and Marti Johnson, and suggesting they honor the low renewal fee, after this transition which caused alot of stress.
It just sucks! Disaster!
Quickly transfer out if you can! I have tens of thousands of domains and I am doing it! You should too!
I don’t think you’ll be doing it too quickly…until you find a way to get auth codes en masse.
We have dozens that expired in the past few days when the system was down for upgrade and they are all gone / missing from the control panel. Hopefully this will be fixed so we can use these names with our websites / email again.
It is a disaster. I have 18 names missing from my account that I know of. GONE. No where to be found. I have names that had already expired and auto renew was off for were renewed today and the money sucked from my paypal account. Yet once renewed, they are not in my account.
Names that I already renewed 2 weeks ago showing as expiring today and in the expiring in the next few days. This is not acceptable on any level.
And no amount of reassurance can make up for this. Someone has to have infiltrated Moniker and sabotaged it. There is no way a company can go from the top of the heap to this mess in just a couple years without someone crafting it from the outside.
It’s a complete disaster. Nothing seems to work well, even nameserver changes are a confusing issue. The old interface was the easiest and best by far of any registrar which is why I kept my names at Moniker over the years. P.S. Anyone know how to get bulk transfer auth codes?
They just charged my card for a number of worthless and long expired names that were marked non-renew. Had to cancel the card to stop all the unauthorized charges.. What idiots designing such a bad system and seemingly not bothering to test it well, .It really sucks!
To All Moniker Customers,
This past weekend we launched a completely new Moniker experience which involved the release of an entirely new Moniker website and customer portal. Our goal is to increase the products and services we offer while at the same time maintaining a robust set of tools that enable clients to effectively manage their Web properties in a single place.
During this migration period unfortunately there appear to be some instances where clients have been charged for renewals they did not authorize, and cases in which domains are not visible in a customer’s account. We want you to know unauthorized charges of domains will be refunded as soon as possible. In addition, if you are missing domains in your account, they are not lost; they are not appearing for technical reasons which should be resolved in the next 24-48 hours.
As you can imagine, these issues have caused a significant increase in call volume to our support staff and we are working diligently to resolve each and every case. We are working around the clock to resolve your questions and concerns expeditiously.
We understand the concerns our customers are facing and want you to know that if you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please contact support at:
Email: [email protected]
Phone:
Toll free in the U.S. and Canada: 800-688-6311
Outside the U.S. and Canada: 954-607-1294
Sincerely,
Moniker Support
Your new system is shockingly bad, read through the comments on this blog. “A completely new experience” Are you having a laugh? You have trashed Moniker’s good name. You scrapped probably the best domain registration/ management system around and replaced it with the worst.
I just now received one of these renewal invoices for domains I had let expire.
Moniker, you’ve just renewed 3 domains that I was letting expire??. I’m not the only one you’re doing this to.
Please please God I’d love to see your company go SKINT, please GOD! Your new system is a shambles.
I should have bailed when Monte left, for sure.
oh my god. what is happening there at moniker?
i started to move my domains out. Had two options: [removed promotion]
i have some domains there with excellent service.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, whatever happened to that train of thought. LONG time customer, many domains, stuck behind them even after Monte left because I never had a security issue and the platform was clean and easy to navigate. Unfortunately this change is disasterous imo, harder to navigate, less functional, change sucks lol If I only knew how Id transfer everything out asap. God only knows if they will all unlock, if Ill get auth codes or if my pending renewals even exist anymore. Whoever or whatever team thought of this deserves firing, sorry but it’s true. If it was a dollars and cents reason they switched over they have shown what their customers are worth to them. No more quick reg’s with paypal, now $25 minimums or a bank wire???? What the hell is that, no way will I give you my credit card, learned that lesson years ago with a lot of rars, double billing and the like. Sad day.
Where are the domains that are expired but in a grace period? I like to go to the wire and only renew those domains I really want – now they’ve all disappeared but I’ve got an invoice – WTF? Does that mean my debit card has been charged for domains I don’t want? ‘Cos if so I’m going to be overdrawn and incurring bank charges. This must be the domain version of Hell! The old system was imperfect but it worked.
That is truly miserable. No way you should incur those fees as a result of this horrid debacle. My only saving grace is I never updated my card once it expired and have used PayPal exclusively. Of course by the sound of it, Moniker will find some way somehow to improperly bill me.
Further to my post at https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/02/the-new-moniker-love-it-or-hate-it/comment-page-1/#comment-2201013 this utter farce goes from bad to worse !
I have just logged in and clicked the link “invoices” under “User Profile”.
This shows 2 separately numbered invoices created from my seemingly futile attempt (no confirmation of success was displayed to me) in trying to renew a couple of domains – both invoices are for the same 2 domains – one a .com being charged at 7.67 USD, the other a .net being charged at 7.35 USD.
The 2 invoices both say my credit card will be charged (if insufficient account balance) – so it looks like I will have to request a chargeback for the second identical invoice that’s been generated – assuming they’ve physically taken payment – I’m just not sure ?
The new procedure doesn’t like before give me the ability to manually authorise a credit card payment for domain renewal via the normal Moniker Shopping Cart checkout process.
Is someone trying to destroy Moniker – if not it’s sheer and utter incompetence !
Tried changing nameservers in bulk or individually many times. The process is quite tedious and confusing. Even after click to verify and then save changes only some change and others always revert back to old nameservers.
Also,when adding a new credit card there appears to be no way to set the new card as a default and instead it stays set to the old card (the same card I needed to cancel over today’s unauthorized charges).. Also tried using the PayPal option but my transaction was under their new $25 minimum. What to do?
Don’t worry, they will charge whatever credit card you have ever used on your account till the transaction processes.. even those that you selected “not to remember”. Once they find a card that works, they will lock that payment in so that you can’t change it and keep automatically renewing them.
BTW, you have to be kidding with no more grace periods. That’s kind of a deal breaker. It’s a shame to see just a great registrar go to crap. Nice job Bonnie.
Name.com anyone? I just joined their free domain Investor’s Club.
Why didn’t Moniker phase in the new interface with a select group of beta testers? These criticisms could have been handled quietly and privately with a select group of loyal customers.
And couldn’t they have rolled out the new system alongside the old interface, allowing customers to toggle between the new and the “legacy” versions? Other websites do that.
It sounds like management skipped the troubleshooting period and didn’t perform adequate risk analysis. Why the rush, Moniker?
Just tried logging into http://www.moniker.com at 22`:52 UK times and I either get a “Site is under maintenance” message or alternatively an error message (tried with both my Windows desktop & Apple Macbook Pro laptop).
I give up – tomorrow it’s transfer-out day – assuming Moniker’s site is up ?
Has anyone checked another whois service on any of their Moniker domains? None of my Moniker domains show any contact info in whois! Can’t transfer out either because the gaining registrar sees [email protected].
It is clear that Key Systems were looking to simplify the management of their new property (Moniker). So an old interface would not come back.
However, those customers who preferred Key Systems interface/pricing/functionality already have their domains with Key Systems. Since Key Systems works with Snapnames, this interface is familiar (domaindiscount24.com). Those customers who preferred Moniker – they did not have domains with Key Systems. Forcing them to use Key Systems interface is not too wise. I checked my upgraded moniker account – not only there is no aftermarket listings like “list the domain for sale on Snapnames” (and on other places), there is no more escrow service offered. I myself used moniker escrow a number of times due to the fact that they used to escrow both the payment and the domain name itself. So what is better – unsuppored “old” moniker or supported “new” moniker which lacks some key features which are important for domainers? None. Hope that autcode retreieval system will work so I’ll transfer away each and every snapnames “catch” from “upgraded” moniker as soon as it becomes eligible for registrar transfer, in exactly the same way I did with “old” moniker
P.S. Those members who have domains missed – if those were old snapnames catches – you will most likely find them in your snap-set Network Solutions account. Snapnames recently pushed ALL domains which were catched by snapnames using their own registrars to Netsol. No more moniker.com for both new and old snapnames catches…
Looks like you can’t log into Moniker.com at this time.
Yes, I’ve also been unable to login.
Here is an example of the site today at: http://www.moniker.com
Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Zend_Session_Exception’ with message ‘session has already been started by session.auto-start or session_start()’ in /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Session.php:451 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/library-www/DD24/DataBroker.php(2893): Zend_Session::start() #1 /var/www/library-www/DD24/Order/Cart.php(387): DD24_DataBroker::getSession() #2 /var/www/library-www/DD24/Order/Cart.php(211): DD24_Order_Cart->initialize() #3 /var/www/library-www/DD24/Order/Cart.php(200): DD24_Order_Cart->__construct() #4 /var/www/library-www/DD24/DataBroker.php(1899): DD24_Order_Cart::getInstance() #5 /var/www/redaxo/redaxo/include/classes/class.rex_article_base.inc.php(388) : eval()’d code(3) : eval()’d code(4): DD24_DataBroker::getCart() #6 /var/www/redaxo/redaxo/include/classes/class.rex_article_base.inc.php(388) : eval()’d code(3): eval() #7 /var/www/redaxo/redaxo/include/classes/class.rex_article_base.inc.php(388): eval() #8 /var/www/redaxo/index.php(61): rex_article_base->getArticleTemplate() #9 {main} t in /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Session.php on line 451 Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘PDOException’ with message ‘SQLSTATE[08S01]: Communication link failure: 1047 WSREP has not yet prepared node for application use’ in /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php:228 Stack trace: #0 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php(228): PDOStatement->execute(Array) #1 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Statement.php(300): Zend_Db_Statement_Pdo->_execute(Array) #2 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php(479): Zend_Db_Statement->execute(Array) #3 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Abstract.php(238): Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->query(Object(Zend_Db_Table_Select), Array) #4 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Table/Abstract.php(1529): Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Abstract->query(Object(Zend_Db_Table_Select)) #5 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Table/Abstract.php(1344): Zend_Db_Table_Abstract->_fetch(Object(Zend_Db_Table_Select)) #6 /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Ta in /usr/share/php/libzend-framework-php/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php on line 234
Very thankful I had started moving mine out earlier, but the several remaining are on my expedite list. Could this be the worst registrar SNAFU ever?
By far the worst of the worst. Total disaster. And now the site is once again down.
When you eventually get back in it’s worthwhile checking the Transaction History link (left-hand nav column, under User Profile heading).
The record of my approx 1,000 Moniker transactions has just disappeared into the ether with this new system !
Aside from all the other issues, my credit card was charged for five renewals but the domains are still showing as about to expire. Definitely can’t trust Moniker any more – I’m getting all my domains out.
There are supposed to be ’72 Comments’ for this post; but I can only see/view 3? I’ve tried clicking the “72 Comments” link just below your (the author’s) name – “BY Andrew Allemann” – but still only see the same 3 comments.
I get the same result using both Firefox & Safari.
~~ The 3 comments I can see: ~~
David says:
June 2, 2014 at 6:38 pm
Mike Seaton says:
June 2, 2014 at 7:48 pm
Reality says:
June 2, 2014 at 8:13 pm
I assume it has something to do with auto-pagination of comments (and that I’m on the 2nd page). But, how do I access the 1st page? There are no “previous” or “older comments” links, nor any pagination choices/menus (e.g. “1,2,3 … last”) that I can see.
Help …
Thanks for letting me know. I’m working on this.
Fixed – thanks for letting me know.
You fixed it! I can now view all (74) comments now.
Cheers.
BTW… check the “creation date” on some of your names… Most of mine are completely wrong now. For example, I have a domain I know was created in 1998 which now shows a creation date of 2007. Pretty messed.
Is that a creation date on the Moniker interface or in whois?
Strange… it was both moniker whois and domaintools whois… though all of my domains are now showing the correct creation date. wtf…
Wait a second… some of them are still messed up. Check creation date in domaintools whois.
Please email me an example domain and I’ll look at the historical whois on it.
DomainTools pulls the whois from Moniker, so it should be the same.
Oh, yea, the completely missing transaction history is a whole other problem. Believe it or not I don’t make an entry in my accounting every single time I click register or renew. I once a month go through and sort all that out using the transaction history. Hadn’t done last month yet. Gonna be tricky now. Also to note that of all the names they have renewed without my authorization (for which I have invoice numbers via email) none of those transactions even show up in the transaction history.
Update-wise at the moment they have finally managed to delete my credit card from file on one of my accounts. If only they could have done as I specifically asked and deleted the card from both of my Moniker accounts then I could call my credit card company and have the hold I placed on the card removed with some confidence that the rampant renewals have stopped. So today’s goal will be to have my card deleted from the other account.
The whole thing is a total mess. Before they started going to town on my credit card I had tried using the system a little bit with a lot of fails. Unlocking domains by the drop down at the top does not work. It only works if you click the pad-lock icon next to each domain, however in my case when I was trying only very few of my domains even had this pad lock icon. Now fortunately it seems all have the pad lock. I also tried to “renew immediately” 2 domains, neither of which actually renewed ever. Funny thing is when you set a name to renew immediately you get an email about it saying that “it might not be immediate, even if you selected immediately lol”. So why would you call it “Immediately” then? I’m sure there were plenty other things they could have chosen to call it. ASAP would have been more appropriate.
I also tried to delete some domains immediately in hopes they would not charge me for unwanted renewals on them. Those names never deleted.
Also forgot to mention that yes some of the names I had acquired through snap are in my NetSol acct now. Not all but some. I think there are still more to move later, hopefully sooner than later.
This is a Catastrophic Failure.
These are Not Bugs.
These are Not Glitches.
These are Not Little Errors.
So many Important Things are broken or don’t work.
So much user account information is missing or incorrect.
The story deserves major media attention!
The fact that Moniker has not put a special team to work round the clock to fix the “broken system” says Volumes about the company and what their customers may be in for in the future.
Even the support system is malfunctioning.
Check your emails.
It only sends support a sentence or two of what you write.
So, they seem to be getting very little of what users are entering into the text box.
I’ll second that!
Wow. It seems I’m screwed! Been with Moniker since they started. In the beginning I could get the founder on the phone for help, special pricing etc. What a waste. They’re circling the drain for sure. Bail out while you can.
The most frustrating thing is that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to renew domains that are expiring!! I uploaded funds via Paypal.. Balance not updated. I uploaded more funds via credit card. Still balance not updated. Meanwhile 5 domains have lapsed and no response from support. I can’t get my domains out, I can’t renew them and it seems the ones that have lapsed get automatically picked up by a name service using Moniker servers. Where’s my money? where’s my domains? Where’s the service? Just awful. They should be ashamed.
Well, they’ve sent me invoices for domains that were NOT on autorenewal (I only had one out of 70 domains on auto-renewal and that was my error) and tried to take money from my debit card. Now they report that that’s not possible, which is great but I’ll have to go down to the bank to see what’s going on. My domains in the grace period have disappeared completely and I have no idea whether or not I’ll ever see them again. I submitted a support request and got a standard email back giving me a user ID but no means of accessing that support request to amend or update it. All I can do it submit another support request with another ID and I don’t want to go down that road ‘cos it’ll all get too confusing.
That initial ‘phishing’ email telling me that they were invoicing me for domains that I didn’t want to renew seems to most accurately reflect this new interface and possibly the new Moniker – second-rate and dodgy looking.
Same with me on renewals, I get charges every other day and then a refund. However, as I’m in the UK I get a foreign transaction charge as well as losing money in exchange rates as refund is processed. For every renewal/refund I am out of pocket by around £2
A deeper issue to be aware of for domains acquired via Snapnames and previously managed through Moniker….
I was notified a few weeks ago that an auto-renewal had failed for a domain I had acquired through Snapnames and always was managed through my Moniker account (the registrar listed was UDOMAINNAME.com but never had any login details for that account, in fact if you visit it it’s just a Snapnames landing page).
I manually renewed the domain and Moniker confirmed the renewal, I did a WHOIS check and realised it hadn’t been renewed. Back and forth with support so I then called a week before the system change and they explained because the domain was acquired via SN, they were contacting them to do a manual renewal. A week and half later I have an email reply telling me the same thing and that I need to contact SN directly to sort it.
Snapnames don’t reply to support tickets, NetworkSolutions deny any knowledge of UDOMAINNAME.com and Web.com won’t get involved. Looks like this domain is lost (cost me $400) 🙁
IMPORTANT: I would login to your Snapnames account right now, look at the purchase history and ensure you still have access to each of these domains (if they were previously with Moniker, they probably aren’t now)!
Site is up now but there seems to be no way to do renewals. When selecting a name to renew the next screen which appears is a screen for only changing the nameservers (why when I never asked to change those nameservers) with nothing at all appearing about processing or paying for the renewal and nothing going to the shopping cart.
Plus, adding funds is broken. It only allows funds to be added in British Pounds (not Dollars) and even if you proceed and add funds in Pounds it doesn’t work anyway. In addition, no way to change the default credit card. Also, adding a new card has no effect and the new card can not be viewed or used.
The complete list of functions I discovered to be non working is so extensive I will not list them all here so not to take up too much room.
Only as an experiment just tried to register a new domain which fails like so many other functions (I actually expected it to fail like most everything else). Next tried a bulk registration (not transfer but new reg) but that also fails since for some odd reason it requires a mysterious new bulk registration authorization code be entered after the names. So we have a system which does not do renewals, or permit funds be added or even new domain registrations. How incredible is that!
I Agree with you at this moment i cant renew any of my domains i always use paypal for purchases but now i cant even find that option i have hundreds of domains an will definitely transfer them all to more functional registrar. Just need to find the way for domain transfers.
The good news is that selecting the “renew immediately” option does work, and you end up paying below cost to renew. It’s weird because you don’t check out or really get a confirmation. You just get a confirmation email some time later.
Oh, I take that back – they’ve fixed the pricing glitch.
Moniker do seem to be getting very confused over what currency they are using !
My invoices (I’ve received duplicate but separately numbered ones for the same domains) in my account clearly show the price being charged for a .com as 7.67 USD.
But when the duplicate invoices are listed in my Transaction History the amount becomes 7.67 EUR not USD.
I haven’t the faintest idea which currency they have charged my credit card – but I have used their support form to advise that I will be issuing a credit card chargeback if they insist on billing me twice (one for each separately numbered but identical invoice).
Merchants hate chargebacks – apart from the cost get too many and you lose your merchant account – but if you bill customers twice for the same thing that is what is going to happen.
My approx 1000 transactions from before the system switch are still missing from my Transaction History – 10+ years of invoices probably gone forever.
I give up with Moniker – now it’s just a damage limitation exercise in getting out as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
I’ve had enough of this appalling self-generated shambles !
No, you rectify them in advance, by doing QA. You didn’t do it. Now you lose another customer. Bye!
Moniker has been taken completely offline now…
https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/03/moniker-is-down/
I think Moniker is down right now! They change and my site dies (http://www.techtiplib.com), sent lots of tickets but not reply. Now I can not access my account, can not use recover password function cause the system can not find my email in database!!!! I dont know how to make my site run again cause wrong nameserver.
This is a fun thread! 99 comments in two days!
Good thing I am an obsessive compulsive hoarder who doesn’t delete emails. I have all my receipts!
“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
Sadly they do not teach that in business school.
The level of incompetence shown in developing this mess is more than matched by the apparent blindness to the depth of the disaster, at least in the two posts management has made here. People have a hell of a lot of money tied up in their domains.
I renewed 4 domains last night, at $7.67 list. I received 3 automatic emails EACH about them, the last saying the domains renewed. Not a mention of the price on any of them. One $7.67 and one $13.56 charge have appeared on my credit card. OK, Deal.
Nobody has yet mentioned the “ICANN WDRP for the domain —-.com” emails Moniker is sending out in bulk. Not only is that waaaay too close looking to a UDRP notice, if they are going to send me a notice for each and every domain they will jam my inbox with junk.
OK, Miss Bonnie, time to see if you are a leader or a check-casher. Your company has made a serious blunder, causing major problems for your customers. Do you pretend everything is fine or do you take this opportunity to show your customers that you want —- no, —- need their business.
DOMAINS HAVE TO BE MANAGED AS EURID DOES.
YOU MUST TO BE ABLE TO TAKE THE AUTH CODE DIRECTLY FROM THE REGISTRY, AS YOU CAN DO WITH EURID FOR .EU DOMAINS.
PERIOD.
Selected 5 domains for immediate renewal and updated last night. Received an email invoice totaling $42.79. Then received an email stating “we hereby acknowledge receipt of your payment in the amount of 39.29 $ by CARD_PAYMENT [20140008305].” Not sure why the amounts don’t match but I’m happy to pay less. Then I received an email for each domain that reads “We hereby confirm that the following domains have been successfully renewed for you: ‘blah, blah, blah'”. The really weird thing here is that my credit card on file is EXPIRED. I figured if these renewals actually happened I’d go ahead and renew everything in my account against the expired card! No, not really, but I’m curious how these names now look in the account. Unfortunately I can’t see how they appear cuz the sites down again. WTF!!! Maybe they’re in the process of rolling back to the old system. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Did you have pre-paid funds with them, perhaps?
I did have prepaid funds – in the amount of $3.00. Since I still can’t login at Moniker I ran a look-up/update in my local domain management database and the 5 domains have indeed been renewed. This whole ordeal will definitely go down as one of the year’s weirdest!
One of our expired names that we’ve attempted to renew several times is now “in auction” at snap names. Keep documentation of your experience and watch snap names closely for your names.
After reaching someone on the phone after a short wait, I was just told more than 60 names were removed from our account and placed in auction at snapnames.
Wtf. Moniker you best start responding and issuing statements. Names going to snap without warning. Site down and unable to renew. Seriously horrible work. We all deserve answers on this as customers
Wake up! You put your domains in serious jeopardy if your card is expired or canceled. Then Moniker has grounds to delete the domains from your account.
I have registered OccupyMoniker.com / org and MonikerWatch.com /org
I hope they get their act together and this doesn’t turn out to be another RegisterFly fiasco in case any of you remember that one. Tens of thousands of name were lost, deleted or vanished. I lost over 300 domains in that mess. Supposedly ICANN has implemented procedures for warehousing whois data so this wouldn’t happen again.
Just to be on the safe side if anyone out there would like to get involved in getting the word out, with enough interest and assistance (as I am not a blogger) i would consider creating a site and spreading the word. You may email to get on list to: [email protected]
Moniker Customer
There’s this explosion happening in one of the biggest registrars and yet no one in the domain name business seems to have noticed. No one seems to notice or care except here. WHAT is wrong with the industry and the endless commentators who babble on about the new gTLDs but can’t see this fire right on their front doorstep?
Wanted to trafers all my names out just now – but they have made it impossible to do a transfers out – even it will not unlock – dos anyone like to do a classs action law suit with me ?
Saturday I received the usual Moniker “Weekly Report of Expiring Domains” email stating domains were set to “imminently expire”. As they were not set to auto renew and were set to expire May 04.
On Monday June 2 two days later they are auto renewed, and I don’t know how. I didn’t get up a 3:30am and renew them and have requested a refund a few times now.
just hate it! its charged my card two times for renewing one domain. how its possible?
Kazi – you’re not the only one – see https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/03/moniker-is-down/comment-page-1/#comment-2201185
Anyone else seeing privacy prices quadrupled from $1 to $4 a year? Not sure if that’s a glitch, but it better is or I’m out of this clusterfuck.
$0.50 to $4 up 700%
Obviously a lot of domainers are verrrrrry frustrated with Moniker. Obviously, they’re right to be. I haven’t had the stomach / time to check my own Moniker domains yet.
At the same time – not that I let anybody off the hook — I sympathize with Moniker management. Right now, they’re in the middle of a crisis. All they can do is damage control, damage control, damage control.
In a hurry, it’s pretty much impossible for them to fix the situation, which continues to collapse left and right as new domains and customers are affected.
I’ve seen a lot of people handle a lot of crises — real and simulated. A lot of times, I was the guy trying to juggle a dozen problems per second. It’s pretty much impossible to make things right again UNLESS management has already trained for customer service / website crises.
They’d need to have processes in place for their employees … and employees familiar with those processes. And they’d need to have clear PR communication going out to every affected person, straight from the very top of the company, right from the beginning and continuously throughout their little disaster. If I were the CEO (God forbid!), I’d be reaching out to every single domain industry blogger with detailed assurances and instructions for Moniker customers.
I don’t see any of this at the moment. So clearly they didn’t just get into a disaster, they also never planned for anything going wrong. Other registrars should be going over their emergency action procedures right now.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to renew domains. There’s an option to renew immediately, which I’ve finally found and which I’ve ticked for four domains (I had set all my domains NOT to auto renew) and it then says ‘Verify’, which I did, and I then got an email for each domain confirming that my renewal option had been changed. Reading between the lines Moniker is now going to try to help themselves to my money. However, I have no confirmation that anything monetary is going through or has gone through. I have no prepaid balance so thinking putting money in there might help I entered ’40’. Instead of 40 dollars (I had a balance of $0) I’m now met with a box with a tick that SEEMS to indicate that I’ve just loaded my balance with 40 euros, roughly 55 dollars). Refreshing the page however shows my balance at $0. This is so sucky – the old system was SOO simple and it worked. You clicked the domains you wanted to renew, it added them to a shopping cart, you then went through a simple checkout where it was obvious what the amount was that was going to be taken from your card, and then you got a confirmatory email saying so much had been taken from your card and these were the domains that were hopefully going to be renewed.
I have a sizable credit sitting at Moniker. Has anyone been able to withdraw their credit?
After lots of wasted time and effort, finding it impossible to renew domains, fund account from credit card, change/add a new credit card, get account credit for PalPal funds deposit, use US Dollars and not oddly default to Euros, stop double billing, stop billing for expired names marked non-renew, change nameservers (ns occasionally works but often fails to change), get transfer auth codes, unlocking, use the portfolio lock as intended, edit/change profile and settings, do bulk work, and several other issues including all past transaction history records gone and spending hours on hold waiting for tech support to answer.
When reached support is of little if any help. In fact, today I discovered support knows next to nothing about the bugs and how to fix them and re Portfolio Lock was wondering what it was and how/why it was setup on my account and why it was used by the old Moniker. Support tickets are auto-responded only but apparently not actually handled or resolved. Even registering a new domain does not work! How could they launch this with obviously bad programming, little or no beta testing and poor staff training? This is insanity.
Oh boy. I had to put a block on my debit card because Moniker had started helping itself to money for domains that were NOT on auto-renew. The block doesn’t take effect until tomorrow, so here’s hoping that not too much money gets taken. This means that I can no longer renew domains. Obviously I’ve sent support requests to get it on all on record (auto confirm emails with ticket IDs) but heard nothing further. I considered trying to fund domain renewals via PayPal but PayPal is not a bank and I can see Moniker helping itself to money from PayPal and me getting into deep trouble with PayPal. I tried telephoning (toll free US, but I’m from UK so pay international rates) but after 10 minutes came to the not altogether cynical conclusion that there was probably nobody on the end of the telephone line. I am now reluctantly expecting to wave goodbye to some domain names ‘cos I don’t see how Moniker can possibly pull itself out of the mess.
For the record, a few weeks ago I tried renewing a .co.uk domain in the old system and it wasn’t possible. It took a week and a lot of emails for them to manually renew it for me. This was a few weeks before expiry date with a domain that pointed to a live site but it was far too close for my liking. With hindsight this was part of the transition to the new system and it didn’t work then.
Please, DomainNameWire and any other high-profile sites that SHOULD be reporting this, get an interview with Moniker and maybe some reassurances that my domain names are not going to be lost.
I talked to Moniker yesterday. Sent a few questions via email to their CEO. Will publish once I get a response.
Perhaps you can ask them why they are not stopping the auctions of our domain names at snapnames when they are well within their right to do so and why they are parking our recently renewed domain names on their own parking pages with adsense links that make Moniker a profit?
so true David – I think it will be very hard to find a manegement team so bad as this – If Bonnie dont get fired for this any seccond, then we know the bad manegement style gos all the way to the top in key systems – But what do I care, im’ transferring out – oh sorry wait – I can’t do that – I cant transfer out, I cant unlock – I cant escape this fucking nightmare.
Had to cancel PayPal card and two debit cards.
Had to leave bids at SnapNames on seven of my domains just in case their renewals did not work; it did not work on one of them! (Always waited until the last minute to renew; liked watching for any interest at SN.)
Have received hundreds upon hundreds of UDRP-ICANN notices, invoices, refunds, “cancelations [sic],” “domain duration changed,” “urgent attention needed,” and “payment problems” (My favorite since nothing is being withdrawn from my existing funds!) since 5: AM (ES) Monday morning!
Reminds me of the launch of HealthCare.gov: Archaic coding and outdated platform design. Truly “German Engineering” at its worst!
Sorry about that. They were ICANN ERRP and ICANN WDRP notices.
Also received loads of “Receipt of payment” and “Confirmation of Domainrenewal.”
I’m moving my 9,000+ out as quickly as I can!
For those of you with lots of names at Moniker that you have transferred out, has Moniker given you a bulk authorization code to transfer them out? By phone?
It’s not possible to get bulk codes through the system, so I think that’s the only way you could request them. How to do that securely is beyond me.
I am hoping someone with 300+ domain names that has been successful in transferring out can let us know how they got the codes – or has no one with larger portfolios been able to do it yet?
We hold 60 domains with Moniker. I have personally trusted and believed in their system, which is why we continued our business with them.
Over the course of this “uprgrade”;
-We were forced to make purchased in EURO’S for domain renewals.
-When those funds were withdrawn, Moniker never added funds to the account.
-Moniker’s support staff told us they would reimburse our account with the appropriate amount in USD.
-They only reimbursed $25 USD.
-After this glitch was fixed, we hand selected a few domains to renew. Instead, the system decided others would be a better choice, and renewed those automatically instead.
-Support tickets are going un-answered for days.
Aside from that, the interface is completely dismal, and does not work as intended. Selections and choices are not clear, and the payment system is an absolute travesty; possibly the worst thing I have experienced from a business on the web since the early nineties.
We’ve sat through 30 minutes on hold for support, before being connected to an answering machine. Sitting through again now…
Looks like it’s time to find another registrar.
Spent half a day transfering all of mine out, even had to disable privacy since the privacy contact emails are broken, too, stuff like [email protected] instead of [email protected] is obviously not a valid email.
No bulk auth code, I tried at the phone, but it looks like too many people had the same idea at the same time.
My special friend if the open lock, it makes you think a domain is unlocked, but their cool new random failure algorithm displays it even if the job failed in the background…so you keep refreshing the “Failed Jobs” page while doing any changes, because at least 10% of all requests fail. It’s not limited to unlocking, nameserver and whois updates fail, authcode requests fail.
It’s really a shame, there was a time when I moved most domains to moniker, because they really rocked. Miserable failures like this one would never have happenend with Monte Cahn, Moniker slowly went down the drain after he left and this “New Moniker” is just the final nail in the coffin…
I am leaving too.. (as soon as they let me unlock my domains.) It’s such a shame. I have been recommending Moniker for years. I can’t use this service w/ no manual renew options. The lack of a shopping cart and not being able to select payment method makes me want to puke. Could they have at least taken the time to change the logo on their mobile version and get rid of DomainDiscount24 logo? (Perhaps that’s the grand plan to rebrand?) I guess this will be a great case study for GUI educators. Sent in a few support tickets… no replies… c’mon Bonnie – this is horrible. Heading to name.com. I contacted [email protected] and got great pricing on the bulk of my domains. The have manual renewal, a beautiful GUI, easy checkout AND someone answers the phone 🙂
Moniker’s CEO responds about botched transition:
https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/05/moniker-ceo-bonnie-wittenburg-discusses-botched-transition/
It was back-and-forth today with my TabletHybrid.com, which expired May 29th . . . With support on the phone, I renewed it in the dashboard, and the Moniker whois was updated with my info, and I received 3 emails attached to the one renewal: (1) Domain duration changed, (2)Invoice, & (3) Receipt of payment. The Moniker WhoIs has updated:
http://www.moniker.com/service/whois-search?domain=tablethybrid.com
and, it’s pointing back to my site:
http://tablethybrid.com
I can’t even renew my domains. Wtf!!! Moniker sucks. When everything starts working again I’m going to transfer all my domains out of there and never use them again!
I am leaving moniker with 80 domains, My god it’s totaly disaster. Moniker most be return old sistem.
2 transfers today failed as domains are supposedly locked despite showing as unlocked in my account.
And I received my first support reply regarding 2 .de names that were renewed in May yet show as expired in my account. Here is the reply:
Hello Teri,
Thanks for contacting Moniker.com
Below you will find a link where you can watch video tutorials as well as see screenshots for what you want to complete.
http://wiki.moniker.com/index.php/Main_Page
Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best regards,
Your Team @ Moniker.com
Moniker Online Services, LLC
2320 NE 9th St.
Ft Lauderdale
Fl 33304
Where is the “how to transfer out” tutorial?
http://wiki.moniker.com/index.php/Faq:whereauthcode
Moniker did reply rather quickly and my .de issue has been resolved. The names show their new expiration date. on to the next.
They went from simple to convoluted. It is a mess, and I may transfer all names out. A pain, but this change was done without the thought of “always do what is right for your customer.”
I’ve waited long enough. I’m giving up. Time to move domain names
https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/11/sorry-moniker-its-over/
This is easily the biggest pile of garbage I have ever seen. It renewed domains I did not want. They may have lost a few domains. They ‘stole’ a balance I had in my account (it was not much, but imaging if they grabbed $5.00 from 10,000 accounts. I now can only use one Credit Card. To renew domains I have to be very careful with the drop down system. I have been with Moniker since it was run properly in the days of Monet Kahn. Now I am looking to move. They do not care and when they lose 100K in domains they will wake up. While I only have 500 domains, a person I recommend Moniker to years ago has 2,300 and he is moving also. The CEO needs to be fired as she is not qualified to run this company.
I am in the process of migrating now.. what a pain.. I contacted name.com and they gave me discounted pricing structure.. where are you moving to?
Have not researched it enough. I am on the phone with my lawyers to see if this move negligence. They feel it does, but my own damages may not be enough. I may look to others to bring a class action suit unless they address issues mow.
I created a twitter timeline here: twitter.com/RecoverName
There is a lively discussion at: https://www.namepros.com/threads/the-new-moniker.825004/page-7
Andrew, I hope you’re okay that I supply this link. I am afraid, as time passes, the discussion is going to be decentralized. It’s like, trying to move forward through the shock.
Please take screenshots and save records, if you think you want to take action, or for your own peace of mind.
A user BOUGHT this name at Snapnames, I think. Whois STILL not updated!
http://moniker.com/service/whois-search?domain=50usd.com
I had domains expiring that I wanted to renew – unfortunately I also had domains expiring that I didn’t want to renew. Once Moniker started helping themselves to money, and having read what others were experiencing, I put a stop on my card. I also had a token balance disappear. I contacted them half a dozen times during the next two weeks. A few days ago I got a reply to my very first contact, basically saying something along the lines of sorry, this specific issue is now resolved. No reply to all the other ‘support’ tickets except my very last one, asking me for a list of the domains I didn’t want renewed. I went and had a look at the invoices in their ‘system’ (which it seems we can’t delete) and worked out which domain names I didn’t want renewed, which invoices I wanted cancelled etc. I simplified it a bit because I thought they wouldn’t cope. In fact there was one domain name in there that I wanted to renew but like I said, I simplified it. II don’t expect anything to happen from their ‘support’. It’s been a couple of days now and nothing. I think I’ve probably lost two domains names that I wanted. In my latest contact with them I suggested that Moniker should at their own expense auto-renew all expiring domain names until they’d sorted out the mess that their CEO created. I also suggested that the money they helped themselves to could be used to renew the two domain names I wanted to renew.
I started migrating to dynadot. The problem with migrating is that we have to pay for a year’s renewal upfront (it didn’t used to be like that). Its difficult for me to get my hands on a large lump sum. I therefore had to make the calculation as to how long Moniker would last. I’m moving my most important domain names first and also the ones closest to expiring. This is within the limitation of my available funds.
For .co.uk domain names all I have to do is go to Nominet and pay a flat rate £10 to transfer them to another registrar, with or without Moniker’s cooperation.
Incidentally Rich Schwartz was light years ahead of the rest of us and moved 4500 domains from Moniker in 2011 citing lack of trustworthiness. Search for ‘Rick Schwartz bye bye birdie’.
Dynadot was OK.. except when I was on vacation and I won an auction via proxy bid and did not pay for it in the 48 hours and the banned me from auctions. I was fairly active in their auctions and thought I was a good customer prior to that incident. So I stopped using them to purchase new domains. I have been giving kudos on here to name.com, as I was actually able to call them, speak to someone and get discounted account level pricing with them. I also think the GUI is nice, the checkout process is easy, .com transfers at $8.25 . (Dynadot has great pricing too.. but a bit crappy checkout process.) Does anyone have any red flags with name.com I should know about?
Beware!!!!! If you push a name you get no record of the push and also the name is deleted form any history that you ever owned it. You will have no proof of a push or that the new owner received it.They have no plans to change this. You will be totally liable and unable to prove you ever owned it or pushed it.
Can anyone please teach me how to renew a domain at Moniker, I have tried clicking everywhere but could not find any way to do it. Thanks
Step 1: Under “User Profile” select “Payment Options”
(define your payment method)
Step 2: Under Domains select “My Domains”
Locate the domain you want to renew. There is a column “Renewal Options” and from this pull down menu, select “1 year immediate” (or however many years you want.) MAKE SURE YOU DON”T ACCIDENTALLY SELECT DELETE IMMEDIATELY.
The system will create a “job”. IMPORTANT: Make sure it was completed successfully under “job status”.
IF> you don’t see the “Renewal Options” column, look in the grey/blue tabs and select the “column select” tab. then check the “renewal option checkbox.
OR > just transfer your domain to name.com, because moniker has a stupid user interface. 🙂
The redesign is abysmal and renewing immediately is completely not intuitive. You can however still renew in the grace period. You need to find the domains that have past the expiration date or have an upcoming expiration and in the drop down to the right side of the screen choose an option for renew immediately for $. Once you hit VERIFY CHANGES with those options chosen, you will immediately be billed. Horrible design in my opinion. Like another poster stated – IF IT AIN’T BROKE – DON’T FIX IT.
And BE CAREFUL – if you set the drop down value to RENEW AT EXPIRATION, verify that, then set it to RENEW IMMEDIATELY and verify that – YOU WILL GET BILLED TWICE…
Just learned that the hard way. Moniker issued me a credit but what good is a credit if you didn’t make the second purchase in the first place? It’s like stealing my money. I want a friggin REFUND.
I rarely would bother with taking time to blast a vendor but the NEW Moniker system is soo bad I had to ring in. Billing is a mess, transfer of domains is a joke, the forced action for each domain is cumbersome and does not allow me to manage names effectively, customer service is slow to respond because they are putting out fires and overall my plans to consolidate all domains to Moniker have have now been postponed.
Steve Hansen
CEO
Wiworks.com
Too problem with Moniker, BAD BAD BAD.
Renewals still don’t work – absolutely pathetic. I’m moving all my domains, good riddance!
I am in talks with a new registrar to have a program to save us from Moniker. My biggest concern is that Icann shuts them down because of illegal conversion.
I am now working with domain.com and their vip.domain.com program. They are part of Endurance Group International. I know the people their and I trust them.
I will let you know the results.
have had over 400 domains for years with Monker ..the new interface is a total disaster !!!!! It is not usable. we lost categories, good luck trying to navigate the new system… I am now cancelling as many domains as possible…and looking to move all my domains to a far friendlier environment. Suggestions please…but not GO Daddy…
Name.com
Contact [email protected] for bulk pricing
ceo should be fired…this is worst than Obamacare…..I have used moniker for many years because of a clean usable it works system…the new interface is horrible, does not work, way too confusing, and has taken away features that made moniker (the original work). My projection.Moniker is going to crash and burn and people move off the platform..rightfully so..and the ceo could could give a damn..should be fired and put on a permanent black list !!!!!!!!! Screw you Moniker…I have been a customer for over 10 years with an average of over 400 domains per year…….KISS MY ASS !!!!!!
After Many years it’s finally time to leave Moniker for good. They do have good pricing if you have a lot of domains, but the new site combined with their awful customer service really leaves me no choice. Renewals are broken and it takes them several days to respond to any service emails. When they finally do I get a form email that does not address my problems.
If you want an introduction to the people at vip.domain.com just email me scott at wolpow dot com.
Moniker has fallen and it can’t get up. Old interface was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better! You “fixed” it, and it WASN’T broke! Dumb move!
Also – the help “button” isn’t even CLICKABLE!! Not kidding!
And… no way to empty cart.
The hits just keep on comin’!
I have started to move my domains. In a bit pf poetic justice the first one to be moved is the first one I registered for free when Monte gave me a coupon. That was 7 years ago. The most expensive part of most businesses is acquiring new customers. I am amazed that Moniker just does not care about a 7 year loyal customer. How will they explain to their board the loss of tens of thousands of domains this year?
And my 37 domains also
I just reset my password, and the confirmation page from Moniker says, “Your password has been reseted.” Yup! Says, “reseted.” Damn foreigners!
Renewal is nightmare. Any idea where to move my domains? Thanks!
Yes vip.domain.com I am not an affiliate or reseller. I have worked with their parent company before in a different capacity.
This is crazy!
I have spent thousands of dollars (each year), but now I cannot stay anymore.
Where should I go?
I would try namecheap. GoDaddy has gone south (even worse than before) ever since they were bought out buy a venture capital firm
It took the losers 1 week to get back to me. Now I am having issues with their auth codes. If one particular of my clients losses their domain, they have the ability and the lawyers to go after them in any country. will go after
Can anyone please teach me the steps on how to disable auto renew? After Moniker changed to new platform, it seems like all the domains have auto renew turned on. Suddenly I received an auto renew email and a domain was auto renewed. I could not seem to find any option to disable auto renew. Thanks
That’s correct, every single domain you set to not renew is now going to renew for you. You have to go in, figure out which domains you had set to not autorenew, and change them again. You can use bulk changes to this.
I am simply baffled as to why Moniker hasn’t notified all of its customers about this particular screwup and formally apologized. I’m also baffled as to why it hasn’t gone back into its original database, figured out which domains should not be autorenewed, and fix this for customers.
Could you tell me the steps to disable auto renew?
I could not find a way to disable auto renew. If I tick the box beside a domain, the drop down box near the top bar only have these options to choose from> [renew at expiration date], [renew immediately], [delete after grace period], [delete immediately]
The best solution is to do what many others are doing. Move elsewhere. Notice not a single comment from Moniker stating how they will fix this.
Moniker is broken. The only solution is to move away. Instead of renewing any domains at Moniker transfer them as their expiration date draws near. It’s more or less the same cost.
Yes, I will transfer them away when it is near to expiration. Just wanted to disable auto renew first but no way to do it. From my experience, 12 days before the expiry date, moniker will auto renew the domain and send email about the renewal. So do transfer the domain earlier than 12 days before expiry date to avoid any auto renewal.
I have to say this is the worst reseller site I have ever experienced. I have dealt with Moniker for the past 10 years and we have over 5k+ domains with them. I have also used GoDaddy, Network Solutions and other major sites. No way has Moniker’s site been this bad. It has been nothing but frustrations and the site doesn’t work half the time. I have sent enough helpdesk tickets and no responses. I have called numerous times and after being on hold for over 30 minutes, then it sends you to voice mail?!? This is unacceptable, seriously. Regardless if you have 1 or thousands of domains, this is not the way to treat a customer. There were nothing wrong with the old site, it was simple, easy and very intuitive. But now, it’s almost as if to make our lives more difficult.
I’m not too sure what to do at this point because no one is responding to my requests ever since the new site.
This was planned very poorly by Moniker. There should have been more research put into place as to see what customers wants. Not what the company or CEO wants. After all, I’m not surprised if they lose customers because of this level of support, if any, they have now.
List how may domains you transfer away from Moniker. I have just started with first ten, but will move all 550. I know a large company that had over 9.000 domains, all of which they are moving.
I am moving 100 to start. I have already moved some, and Moniker is still listing them in my account – and sending me renewal invoices…even though the whois registry indicates they are at name.com.
I disabled auto renew. There’s no way I’m going to mess around with any of the settings to test in case I can’t get them back but at the bottom of ‘renewal options’ column there’s ‘delete after grace period’. I also put a block on my credit card so they can’t screw up there.
Well underway on my weekly migration from Moniker. Triple check on the transfer locks, they often do not hold.
Trying to add some pre-paid funds for the last 3 days, but getting error message “Prepayment failed” all the time 🙁 crap… and still is waiting for support answer (already 48 hours passed)… I can’t believe that… Easy way to loose your domain names on exp. period.
They get back to you in a week or two, and the answer is usually we have issues we are trying to fix.
Hate it! Going to be moving.
You will feel much better as you get away from them. Notice not even a mea culpa from Moniker. It show they do not care.
This is so frustrating.. I’m not sure if this is a shady tactic by Moniker to take over our premium domains, but neither the auto renews or renew immediately features working with new system.. I’ve had 200 plus domains with Moniker for years now, and I’ve already lost one of my domains due to this new interface.. Moniker please fix your new system and give me back my domain or I’m going to quit your service!
They are part of the Internet mafia erronously getting domains and auctioning them. You cannot get hold of them. When you get your domain via an expensive auction they tell you you have to again auction to get your name. No way to fix cause no way to contact anyone
Instead of getting to renew your domain immediately, they send you an email, where you are supposed to send them a WIRE TRANSFER to their bank???!!! This is beyond crazy. I want a SHOPPING CART where I can renew the domain – ok????
I can’t figure out how to modify my Moniker managed DNS zone records. Anybody know?
Move to another registrar. If you like punishment, then stay with Moniker. Click on advanced features in the domain list.
The advanced settings make no damn sense at all and I consider myself a fairly advanced user. Definitely don’t have time for this crap. Much easier to transfer them all. It’s a bummer. Moniker really did have the best interface out there for a while.
Be careful. I noticed my contact info needed verified in the Moniker system so I clicked to do so. Got an email (which went to spam). It contained the verification link which seems to have worked OK but the email also stated:
“Please note that in case you do not validate your email address, we are required to suspend your domain name registration(s) using these contact details no later than:
Thursday September 18. 2014 21:34:09 UTC”
How do you EMPTY / CLEAR (shopping) CART???
never mind. i figured it out.
I have been trying to add the name server for 2 days now. Its just refuse to add my name server. Contacted support and still no reply. Tired of this shit.
Hate it.
Transferred everything to Epik.
This new moniker is the worst thing in domain name registration history.
I never felt so much hate for a provider, tried to transfer out a sold domain name for two weeks now without success.
tried even to transfer it to a good provider of mine, first, no way.
Moniker Support doesn’t answer my mails, only one answer came in the same style as these stupid comments here, without answering any of my problems but sending me their shitty-stupid we-honour-your-opinion-phrases.
Oh if I only could transfer out my domains now, I’d be gone long time ago. BUT I CANT GET MY F*CKING DOMAINS.
Moniker Support if you’re reading this, go and burn in hell you stupid m*fckers!
I hate every single one of you.
As soon as your transfer out system works, you will lose every customer with a brain. Maybe this is the reason they don’t fix it.
Seems like Moniker have really done a ‘Microsoft’ type upgrade. Hey Windows Vista, its great. Everyone will love it….
They actually told me that exact words. “You will learn to like it”
@Jack, But how do you really feel? I am delighting in getting people transferring out of Moniker. They are the worst company in the business. They make 1&1 look helpful.
Please change back to the old system. This is horrible!!! Also, I am tired of hundreds of individual emails about each domain. Group them together!!!
I have $14 on account.Tried to register some new domains to bring down the amount. Could not figure out how it works. Clicked on register new domain, get some STUPID interlace asking me what category I wanted or ext. No place to enter the domain I want.
Moniker is currently literally holding my domain hostage, preventing transfer. The domain is unlocked and they (the moniker site at my request) issue authorization codes for transfer, then deny the transfer request even using the authorization codes. Use them at your peril. I am transferring the domain in the first place for extremely poor customer service. Long hold times, no replies to tickets, changing login names periodically on you so you can’t log in to renew your domains and they expire and you have to bid on your OWN names, etc.
How many domains did you transfer out Moniker so far? We are at almsot 1 year since they screwed us.
prepayment?! I have to pay Moniker $25 minimum to renew my domain registration? that is just really rubbing me the wrong way.