Moniker has taken its website offline to fix numerous problems with its new system.
[Read this update with responses from Moniker CEO Bonnie Wittenburg]
Domain name registrar Moniker switched its interface to a reseller platform over the weekend. It didn’t go so well, as evidenced by the 100+ comments on my post about the change.
Issues include being billed for renewals on domains set to cancel, incorrect pricing, inability to execute order, domains disappearing from accounts, missing whois information, and an unclear user interface…it goes on and on.
And it just got worse. Moniker has been taken offline.
A notice at Moniker.com explains that the site has been taken offline to fix these issues.
The good news is you don’t have to worry about all of the problems Moniker is having right now…because you can do absolutely nothing about it.
A message at Moniker says “all operations will be resumed at 9:00 am (EDT).” I guess that means tomorrow, since the notice appears to have just been published. I was on the site after 9 EDT this morning and didn’t have any problems.
My problem with Moniker is I have an open Escrow transaction. I received an email that they transferred the Escrow to Snapnames and it will begin on June 5.
And my contact email address returned un-deliverable.
When it rains it pours …
Snapnames does escrow now?
I will cut and paste the notice I received last May 28th.
The moniker support looks died out. I just submit dozens of support request, from june 1, there no one get reply, only ticket created automatic mail.
When I call support 800 phone number, always not one here. looks moniker died. I can’t fund any money to my account.If this situation still kepted a week or more. I have no way but transfer all my domains to another place.
Sorry, not email. It is actually posted to the Moniker Escrow page that states
“May 28th, 2014
Thank you for your interest in our Escrow Services. Over the next week we will be migrating Moniker Escrow to our new and improved SnapNames Escrow. For Buyers and Sellers involved in an open transaction, access will not be available. Please contact us for any questions at [email protected] or [email protected]. Thank you for your patronage and we look forward to assisting you on June 5th, 2014 with your escrow needs at Snapnames.com, a Web.com service.”
I emailed my escrow agent but no reply so far.
I checked Snapnames, the Escrow page looks like the Moniker Escrow. I like it that way. I just hope it works 🙂
I have not accessed my account for 30 hours and my site death with the same time. Now I lost lots clients for this problem from Moniker! The support of Moniker is not acceptable!
4 days pasted. ALL TICKET ARE CREATED BY MACHINE, BUT NOT GET ANY REPLY.
Yes, they suddenly charged me this morning for a renewal on a domain I intentionally let expire in April. The domain does not even show up in my Moniker account and the whois shows it expired April 24. Yesterday I received an email invoice from Moniker for it, to which I replied that the domain was cancelled. Then this morning they charged my Amex for it anyway. I sent an email to support early this morning, but have received no response. I’m glad I don’t hold very many of our domains at Moniker, but I think I’ll be moving the few we have there as soon as I can.
“Snapnames does escrow now?”
@Andrew Allemann,
Yes, it’s coming soon:
https://www.snapnames.com/escrow.jsp
Many are missing domains from their accounts. Can’t renew domains. Ughhhh
Just like U. Can’t renew. So Badly.
I found out some of my names are at network solutions, might have been good to tell the owner that info. I got 6 figures worth of names locked up there, I just need a system up, and running, so I can get out of this mess.
Its A Worry
I preferred the old system. This is unacceptable!
Yes, I’m same.The new system is hard to use, can’t renewal and fund money.No real support. It’s just WORSE system I use. If the system not return, I have no way but transfer out all of my domains to another place.
Very glad to see this was a Technical issue Andrew because i had many domains “Unlocked for transfer” plus — almost no contact with Moniker and an extremely aggressive pop-up that kept popping up saying to “sign in here” and “change password now” about 10 times while i was trying cautiously to lock up the unlocked domains — i canceled the fraudulent pop-up’s out every time — So it started popping up “5” Pop-Ups at the same time leaving almost No Room lock anymore names up…
On the bright side this was a huge undertaking on Moniker’s part — and it does look a really dynamite Domain Website set-up by Moniker…
And also Comparing notes & facts about Website builder’s — President Obama’s Plan — after many month’s of working on his very very long planning and setting up The Obama Health Care Plan — They Still can not get their Website Working Right even after many months of being open for business !!!
When they come back online, this is going to be like a bank run. Everyone will move their domains out because if you don’t, you’ll be one of the few remaining as they navigate the collapse, bankruptcy, and eventual icann takeover.
I received a reply to my support ticket that said, “It had to do with you logging in as a subuser.” Oh, so it was *me* causing the problems!
I just not got any reply yet. from june 1.
I just got a notice from snap names that at least one of our domain names which we have attempted to renew several times is “in action”. Check your domain names at snap names and document everything that you are experiencing with moniker.com.
Reminds me of a little site called RegisterFly
@Justin only old domainers will remember RegisterFly 🙂
well its 902 am and still they are offline. actually just like registerfly fiasco
I’m still getting the site down notice…at 9:23 EDT.
why dont they at least issue a press release or statement being that is is now 9:30?
9:40
DNW –
You seem to be the only Major industry publication covering this.
Seems it deserves a LOT more attention.
Anyway …much appreciated.
I’m going to go out for a run. If Moniker.com comes back up and someone notices the time, please post it here.
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
Moniker’s handling of this event is horrible. We have sat on hold for 30 minutes at a time with a message then coming on saying there is not one to answer our call. ALL of our nameserver/dns/email forwarding info is NOT in affect. . our website goes nowhere, we lost gobs of email, including invoices, plans, statements, etc from our vendors and customers who get nothing but a generic failed address error, so they don’t even realize that it is MONIKER’S problem, not ours. Where is the best place to take my domains???
I haven’t had any problems with forwarding and such. Did you make recent changes?
30 minutes? I just 4 days no one reply any of my request.I just have thousands domains at moniker.
so they are back up but what has changed? i see some of the domains i was missing are back in my account but not all. paypal still doesn’t work and i don’t want to renew using a credit card out of fear i’ll be bombarded with charges…
also, has anyone had any luck transferring out? i can’t even get the domain unlocked.
The second their site came back up I unlocked all my domains and initiated transfers out for everything. I did have trouble unlocking one .us domain, but after 3 attempts and 30 minutes it finally unlocked. Hopefully everything will move out of their safely. No more Moniker for me.
Were you able to get autho codes in bulk?
Yes, all my auth codes came through within about 2 minutes. I only had 8 domains with them though since I keep the majority of our portfolio at Fabulous.
To clarify, I requested the auth codes one by one. I didn’t find a way to request them in bulk.
I can’t believe they don’t allow for instant transfers like every other modern registrar in the world.
Yep, they only let you reject instantly, but not approve. Now we have to wait up to “7 days” for the transfer to complete. That’s another reason I feel good about moving away from them. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when a registrar passively drags their feet.
Has anyone had their Transaction History restored (left-hand Navigation column under User Profile heading) ?
Mine’s missing around 1000 transactions from over a decade at Moniker.
I now have just 4 domain renewals listed there (performed on 2 June) – but even these aren’t right as they are the same 2 domains billed twice on the same day.
No credit adjustment to my account has been received despite a Moniker support form being filled-in and sent advising that they had double-charged.
So I will get the credit card company to issue a Chargeback – it’s quite easy to do – if Moniker get too many of these in a short period they may well put at risk their payment processor account, apart from the penalty fee they have to pay for each chargeback made.
You can’t double charge customers for the same service and get away with it – not if you want to stay in business for the long term !
It’s probably a lot easier to open a support ticket and ask Moniker about the status of the refunds. I know they’re working on them…I got one today.
Andrew – that’s exactly what I did – open a support ticket – but no joy so far.
BTW getting a Credit Card Chargeback issued is probably easier than wasting any further time chasing an organisation whose current claim to fame is masterminding probably the biggest registrar ****-up the internet has ever seen !
Still they say everyone is good at something.
Despite paying them tens of thousands of dollars in registration and renewal fees in recent years – and recommending them to others – I WILL NEVER USE MONIKER AGAIN – they’ve completely blown it !
I WILL NEVER USE MONIKER AGAIN—-Yes, I strong agree your opinion.—unless return the old moniker interface.
Hi domainer friends, as a Moniker client with many domains myself, I understand the situation completely. If you have an important urgent issue and unable to get support, please use the contact form on wifimedia.com and email me. I’ll try to get you in touch with Moniker people and help you sooner. I know every little help counts in solving any urgent issue at this hour. All the best.
Moniker now has a brand new theme song to go with its new site!
Hotel California …”You Can Check Out, But You Can Never Leave”
Haha… SF, you are absolutely right. Part of my comment was:
The problem is even the transfer is a problem. Among other issues, the domains are locked even though they are shown as unlocked, the auth codes are wrong, no bulk operations, etc –
Unfortunately, it is no laughing matter. I had to do very creative ways and do many workarounds for some things to work. When you called the support, which I never do in my life although I owned tens of thousands of domains, the staff are patient and helpful but via email support, replies (if any) take a long time to come by.
an update, in case you don’t know EVERY domain caught by snapnames and placed in moniker over the years is moving to netsol…
Moniker’s CEO responds to botched transition:
https://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/05/moniker-ceo-bonnie-wittenburg-discusses-botched-transition/
what I’m trying to say is that if the transition had been totally smooth and there would have been zero problems,
their system seems designed by sadist german engineers for other german engineers…it’s so totally waco
I just tried to renew 4 domains and the whole convoluted system seems designed by Rube Goldberg! (If you don’t know who he is look it up)…I kid you not…Bonnie, hello Bonnie…I’m moving 3000 domains somewhere else…hellooo…
I think I figured out what happened with Moniker!! They build a perfectly good and usable system–(in German) and then they used Google translate to build their English site and this is what we got! It probably works great if you speak German and use their German version.
I am moving all, over ten thousand domains out!!! The problem is even the transfer is a problem. Among other issues, the domains are locked even though they are shown as unlocked, the auth codes are wrong, no bulk operations, etc.
Imagine managing so many domains in such a system, OMG! Can we sue Bonnie and Moniker.com?
I just wonder if these guys are technically competent. Surely, even if you have a dream and want to change the system to this dream (but nightmarish one) they could have let the two systems run in parallel and users can choose for a limited period of time to use either of the systems, and all this is a no brainer. Even if the new system is great we still need some time to get used to it. Most of the posts here are beginning June, it is coming to end of June and I am still experiencing all kinds of problems. Phew…
It’s August now and nothing has gotten much better with them IMO. I don’t have nearly as many domains as some of you, but I have been doing this stuff for a long time and “incompetency” is an understatement. Class action lawsuit should probably be considered at this point.
Moniker.com has been down all day. Not the 1st time in the last few months. Getting to be very close to impossible to work with them.