Mr Site witholding my domain name

[landscope]

Hi Guys,

Please help. I am a mr site member for a couple of years now and They wanted £39.99 to renew for the year. I forund the pro version of their web site/hosting service for just £25 and not the £100 that they want so have bought it. They will not allow me to move my own domain name to the new site. Can anyone help me please as I feel this is unfair.

Please see my corrispondance below, I am in red and the mr site guy is in lime.

Hi There,

I have bought a copy of mr site pro and as my current subscription has expired I would like to move my Domain on to my new Account but it will not let me do it. Can you please help me and let me know how I should do this. Every time I try to register it to my new Mr Site Pro account it tells me that landscope.me.uk is already in use.

thanks in advance

Hi,

Thank you for writing us.

Your domain name: landscope.me.uk is still active and for it renewal date is 09-Feb-2012 that is way you are not able to activate your new account with this domain name and it can not be done by the end of this and and even after 09-Feb-2012 it will take around 60-90 days(not fixed) to get it available for use.
You can activate any other domain(new domain) with this activation code and if you want same domain then please renew your account. You get 30 days for renewal after renewal date. Renewal date was 09-Feb-2011 for your Mrsite account and you have time to renew your account. To know how to renew please visit this link - deleted
You can also pay by Paypal for renewal. To do this login to your PayPal account and send payment to paypal@mrsite.co.uk (make sure to send your SiteID and purpose of payment while sending the amount)


Please let us know if you require any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Guru Rajdeep
Customer Service


Hi Rajdeep,

Am I wrong in thinking that I am unable to move my domain to my new mr site
account. I was under the impression that as I was currently listed in the
nominet whois that I could move it to either another service provider or
indeed keep it with yourself but on another account. This is surly not an
issue by nominet but to me it looks more like an issue with MR SITE. can you
confirm to me that you will be able to move the domain name currently
registered to myself to the new MR SITE PRO account that I have bought. I am
not interested in spending £39.99 on the standard version when I have bought
the Pro version for just £24.99.

So please once again can you sort out the domain name and move it over to my
legitimately bought version of mr site.

Thanks in advance


Hi,

Thank you for writing us.

I sincerely apologize but we would not be able to move your existing domain to your new Mrsite account. You can activate your account with any new domain name.
For old domain as I earlier wrote you, you need to renew but as you don't want to renew then please accept my apologies because technically it is not possible to move your domain to your new Mrsite account. I hope you will understand it and co-operate with us.


Please let us know if you require any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Guru Rajdeep
Customer Service


Hi there,

Can you please explain why it cannot be done? I do not understand why it is
not technically possible. Surly it is a matter of moving it as you would
move it if I was moving to another service provider.

I can understand that you would like to make the most money possible, but I
am not prepared to pay £99 for something that sells at £25.

Thanks in advance


Please can someone help me as I am new to all this.

Thanks in advance

Brian

[landscope]

Hi,

Thank you for writing us.

I mentioned earlier "technically it is not possible" because your account is still our database and it does not allow to activate again a new account with the existing domain name. It would not be possible even if you move away to another provider and then try to activate it with new package until your old account is in our data base.
We do not delete your account manually. It happens automatically and that is way I have told you two possible solutions for it. You can use new domain name for activating account or you can renew your old account. I can understand it would be annoying for you but please accept my apologies as there is no other procedure for it.


Please let us know if you require any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Guru Rajdeep
Customer Service

[SogoSeven]

You could involve Nominet in order to resolve the domain ownership and take control of it away from Mr Site though this could take time and money.

Personally, let the domain expire and see if you can buy it back later when it becomes available using 123.reg or similiar registrar service provider. Then have them redirect traffic to Google Free hosting as this essentally offers the same type of limited site builder..


In the meantime something to ponder ..
UK residents can get a free .co.uk domain name (for the first two years) and free web hosting space at Google : see Getting British Business Online

Googles's free hosting comes with site building tools that are fairly similiar to Mr Site and 250Mb of web space (though you can have a number of sites on one account) plenty of extra functions such as email and slideshows are available through the Google Apps engine and javascript widgets.

[Harry]

@landscope
Right, you should take help of Nominet in this regards. Also check their(Mr Site) TOS in this regards before you claim anything, you can also inform Mr Site that you may take this to your solicitor

Hi SogoSeven,
Thanks for sharing Google's FREE domain and Hosting services Unfortunately they have not disclose renewal charges

"after that you'll only have to pay a few pounds to renew your domain name for a further 2 years"

but certainly it's an very attractive offer for all UK startups looking to have online presence.

[SogoSeven]

GBBO are playing the renewal price close to chest..
buried in their terms and conditions are the following clauses.

"at the retail price offered by BT at the time" (GBBO clause 5(b)(ii) "

and my personal pet hate

"BT may modify these Conditions from time to time and you are therefore advised to keep up to date with any changes by regularly reviewing these Conditions."

Hopefully the domain renewal cost should be around the current pricing of £3 / year. Bearing in mind that the government is involved somewhere behind this initiative should curb BT's need for greed.

Sure it's a gamble, but two years is a long time for many startups.