A short while ago I mentioned a company that took over a customer’s domain and web hosting and then phoned me up to get themselves out of a mess.

Well, I say to get themselves out of a mess, but really they probably hadn’t realised they’d messed things up for their newly acquired customer ignorance being a wonderful thing. ;)

So this morning I get a call from a staff member of the ex-customer saying he can’t collect mail from his old email address. Now, what the new “media” company had done was use web-forwarding to point people who went to the old website to the new one they’d developed. No problem with that.

But what about all those contacts of the company who still had the old email address - well tough! No provision had been made to forward on any mail sent to the oold domain address. It wouldn’t have been a big job to sort out, but there you go.

I suggested to the staff member that he ask the new “media” company to set-up the old domain to forward any mail addressed to his old email address so that it was delivered to his new email address. I did point out that I’d got the impression they didn’t really know what they were doing, so not to get his hopes up.

Anyway, I get a call later to say, “No, the other company didn’t have a clue” and how could this person notify all his contacts of his new address. I sorted him out and duly received an email, later, notifying me of his new email details. Now, I wonder how many people will update their records? Or will the company lose business, because the contact can’t get through to the… Sales Manager?

So, the moral of this tale? Make sure you’re dealing with a company that understands simple business issues when it comes to your email otherwise there’s no telling what business you may lose.

I could write pages and pages of stuff about "difficult" domain name registration companies, but I won’t today, because I’m far too busy.

But I do have a smile on my face, because one of the most awkward companies to deal with when it comes to transferring domain names away from them, UK2.NET, has just been side-stepped thus avoiding considerable delays and their ’sour grapes’ transfer fees.

How? By using Nominet to change the IPSTag without involving UK2.NET at all. OK, it cost £15.00 + VAT, but it meant the domain got transferred to our management system in a few days as opposed to the few weeks my client had spent being totally ignored by UK2.NET.

I call that a result.

When I have more time I’ll return to the subject of UK2.NET as they are such a wonderful example of what can go wrong when you deal with a ‘cheap’ company that actually turns out expensive to deal with.