Moniker Provides Update

I ran into a login issues at Moniker this weekend, and I was fortunate to call them first thing this morning and have it resolved (as far as I can tell) by technical support. Based on what I read in the comment section of yesterday’s blog post as well as comments on Domain Name Wire and OnlineDomain.com, others seem to be having issues with Moniker as well. The company upgraded and updated its platform over the weekend.

For my company, the timing on this issue is not good, and I hope my issue is really resolved and doesn’t impact my account beyond the login trouble I faced. I am in the middle of a sale involving a domain name at Moniker, and the payment should clear by tomorrow. I had requested the authorization code and unlocked the domain name last week, but for some reason the name was locked when I logged in, and I was assigned a new EPP auth code for the transfer out. Luckily, the customer support person was very nice and she guided me through the process of unlocking the name and requesting the authorization code.

This afternoon, Moniker posted an update on its Facebook page, which I have shared below in its entirety. Hopefully, the issues that have been impacting customers will be resolved ASAP.

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: getsupport@moniker.com

Phone:

Toll free in the U.S. and Canada: 800-688-6311
Outside the U.S. and Canada: 954-607-1294

Sincerely,

Moniker Support

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

42 COMMENTS

  1. It seems that there is still at least on “ghost record” in my account. I sold a real estate domain name last month, and the buyer transferred it to GoDaddy. It is showing up in my Moniker account still, despite the fact that it is actually now registered to someone else at GoDaddy.

  2. It’s chaos at Moniker. They should not interrupt clients’ business to such a significant degree while they change to a new platform.

  3. I’m precisely at the point in a $xxx,xxx domain sale where the buyer’s funds are now in Escrow.com, and I need to transfer the domain to the buyer from my Moniker account, immediately…

    But, I can’t access Moniker to transfer the domain, and all I get from telephone support is ‘We don’t know when the Moniker site will be up again…”!!!

    Christ!

    This is appalling….My whole deal depends on transferring that domain – NOW!

    WAKE UP, Moniker…!!

    • I was fortunate to unlock the name I am selling and get the EPP code already. I am hopeful that this new downtime doesn’t relock the name, as I expect the funds to clear tomorrow. Hopefully this is resolved sometime this evening.

      Keep me posted on how your transaction goes. Mine wasn’t 6 figures but it was substantial.

  4. The window was actually longer. It’s already down when I tried to log in on May 31 during the day. Now lots more clients will be upset because they can’t even transfer out of Moniker today or do anything at all.

  5. Have you guys tried to look up any of your Moniker domains via whois? All of my domains show no contact info… which makes it impossible to transfer anything out of Moniker because there is no email address for the auth to go to…

  6. What a mess. If folks start losing domains over this, a class-action lawsuit will be in order; one I’d be willing to join and help pay for.

    The most critical, immediate step Moniker/Key Systems could publically announce and take is this:

    “We will not allow any expired domains of any of our clients drop until we have fixed these problems.”

  7. Moniker’s site is back up, as of now…But…

    …I can’t unlock a domain for a Push to another Moniker account…I tried to Push the domain using the Buyer’s old CustomerID, but nothing happened.

    ….and, Moniker support is NOT answering….Says its closed ‘cos it ‘After Hours…’!?!

    HOW can Moniker support NOT be working 24/7, at a time like this!!??

    .

  8. I’ve noticed that the “Creation date” of many of my domains is completely wrong now too. For instance, I have a domain that I know was created in 1998 and it now shows a creation date of 2007!

  9. I have a sale going on with a Moniker domain name and it’s no where to be seen in my account. Some of my domains transferred to NetworkSolutions automatically the other day without me even receiving an email about it, I had to put the puzzle pieces together, but one of them which is in the middle of a sale via Escrow is just gone from my account.

    The whois information is correct, but I can’t find it anywhere and no one at Moniker knows what is happening and I can’t even get a response back at the moment.

    I understand they are going through a change, but this really undermines my confidence in snapnames/moniker and said parent company.

  10. I’m about to lose a domain acquired through Snapnames for $400 due to this.

    The domain was acquired a year ago and the registrar is UDOMAINNAME.com – I was never sent login details for this registrar but it appeared in my Moniker account and I could manage everything there (until just before the system change).

    Moniker charge me every few days for the renewal of this domain but it is no longer in my account. They say I need to contact Snapnames (even though they took payment to renew).

    Snapnames do not reply to my support requests. If I go to UDOMAINNAME.com it forwards to a Snapnames landing page which has a link to Network Solutions support. NS deny any involvement or knowledge of UDOMAINNAME.com (If I look in the SN dashboard, U DOMAIN NAME even links to NetworkSolutions.com)

    I contacted Web.com who say they can’t do anything (even as the owners of Snapnames). I told them Snapnames are not replying and they’ve said they can’t do anything (they own the company but can’t do anything??).

    So, looks like I’ve just lost a $400 domain name thanks to a combination of poor support from Moniker and Snapnames – unless anyone has any advice how to rescue it before it expires next week?

  11. They should have offered to keep the old system until the transition . After 14 years with them I’m gone. There stuff is in euros, you can’t renew domains , especially in bulk and just nothing about this chane over is good. Now I have to find a way sooner then later getting them out and renewed. Bad moe and they are kissing likely over 100k confirmed names already. Ps. Was on support for over an hr and got no one.

  12. I have several domains at Moniker and tried to transfer one out yesterday. The new system makes it almost impossible to find the info on how to transfer OUT.

    You have to look under “how to get an authorization code” in their new “wiki” help system.

    Once I unlocked it and GoDaddy got started on the transfer, GO Daddy could not verify my email with Moniker… it shows as: nocontactsfound@secureserver.net

    I went back to Moniker and updated everything. Only time will tell about how the transfer goes. It is still in limbo

    Domain Tools is showing the registrar as “DOMAININTHEHOLE”

    While inside my account at Moniker, I started looking around at how the renewal works…. the tab only allows you to set it to auto renew or delete…. there does not seem to be a manual renew function, if there is, I cannot find it.

    It seems like they are trying to force you into renewing or deleting your domain name. Not to mention hiding the ability to transfer a domain name.

    Moniker has never had 24/7 telephone support which is really ridiculous.

    Talk about poor planning for both the change over and the design. SAD!

  13. 1) The cutover at Moniker is an epic fail.
    2) The design of the new system is an epic fail.

    I lost domains in the transfer, and they have been trying for two days to get them back. They have not. They are not in my account. They were well within the grace period, but after expiration. I tried to renew domains when the cutover was “complete” including domains that haven’t yet expired. The renewal process is literally impossible.
    a) For each name, you have to select a click box as before, but you also have to change a little drop down box for each domain. The default in that drop down box mentions delete at expiration, and also includes Delete immediately. One little mistake and you’ve lost your domain forever. Who decided to put Delete on the renewal screen?!!!
    b) Once you’ve done both of these activities for each name, there is no way to actually renew. You have to click a button at the bottom of the page to “process these changes” and then another screen comes up (with no confirmation of what you did) and you have to click “Submit” again.
    c) Then, you get nothing. No total. No receipt. No email. Nothing. It apparently then is cued for some nightly Invoice batch. But the invoice batch is just an invoice, it doesn’t process the renewal.
    d) The invoices didn’t happen. But a few partial invoices were generated, including duplicates. And I got dozens – okay, over a hundred – of emails about one step of the process at a time, but not a full invoice or receipt, and then they hammered my debit account one at a time, in some cases, and a small cluster at a time, in other cases, and shut down my banking, and then another bank which froze that account too.
    e) The charges that actually went through were clustered in amounts of $### and $## and were totally unrelated to any of any of the invoices, nor the other one at a time emails I got, except for two. There were only two matches of the invoice to charges on my accounts. 7 other charges to my accounts had absolutely no correlation to any invoice, and no correlation to any domains.
    f) Meanwhile, the domains I tried to renew were not renewed, and 10 dropped out of my account just in the last 36 hours, although they were only a couple days past expiration. The ones that were in the grace period when the transition happened, haven’t been restored back to my account yet either. They did manage to renew some domains that I didn’t ask to be renewed, however, that weren’t near expiration.
    d) Two days later, with me trying to renew, and a staff person trying to renew, and then Sean trying to renew, I have nothing, no resolution, a couple of bank accounts at different banks in lock down, no restoration of my domains that were lost in the transition, and a disappearance of some of the domains that were “renewed” for me Sunday when the system wouldn’t do it. This has been more than traumatic for me and has consumed all my time trying to reconstruct domains lost, renewed, not renewed, etc. and track the disparate emails I got and try to match them with bank charges, no charges, charges with no relationship to domains, etc. Traumatic doesn’t even begin to cover it. These aren’t words to me, they are domains I’ve labored over and my family has sacrificed for years.

    Of the ones that were supposedly renewed for me Sunday, when they were in my account (with me trying once, a staff member trying, and then Sean trying), they weren’t renewed, they apparently had to now submit a trouble ticket because they were taken out of my account and flagged for auction. Still gone.

    As far as design I told them they need to restore the instant renewal/shopping cart/verification/receipt option, and stop separating transactions into nightly batch routines, etc. It’s pretty much commerce 101 from a decade ago. Hopefully they are working on that, and on restoring my domains that should have been there.

    On my domains, missing domains, and renewals, there is still no resolution today, although I did get this email 3 hours ago:

    “Our techs are going to lock the system down for maintenance within 2 hours. I have been assured that the issues were are having will be resolved once the system is back up.

    Your issue is one that I have had them personally look into and they have used this as a base to resolve the system. I will keep you posted on the progress.”

    Anyway, to me, Epic Fail doesn’t even cover it. I’m sorry for all you other people who are having a transaction messed up, and more. These people are nice, and while I appreciate that, this is something so mission critical that it’s clear that due diligence was not done, in any respect. With some competence and due diligence, this never would have happened. I hope they can make it right, but in the meantime, Trauma has set in.

  14. Yeah, it doesn’t matter if it’s 9am or 9pm, or tomorrow at all.

    Let’s set the bar really, really low: can I renew my domains and will all of my domains be in my account when the site returns? And a quick way to get AUTH codes would be dandy.

    I have to say, multiple people warned me to get out of Moniker. Starting a few years ago. I was just too lazy to take it seriously.

    What a mess.

  15. Maybe the same company that designed the Federal Health Insurance website built this new Moniker “platform”. eh?

    All kidding aside, so many mistakes, poor planning, no beta testing, no backup system and no contingent plan for roll out snafus…..

    sounds like to me the CEO and those that managed this mess should be fired.

    I am beginning to think there is a plan to implode Moniker….

  16. Almost 3 days in now, and I STILL haven’t been able to transfer my sold domain to the Buyer on my $xxx,xxx Escrow.com deal!! The money is at Escrow.com, but I can’t transfer the domain!!!

    Even worse, for me, I’m in Australia….Moniker seems to be down for ‘maintenance’ all night, every night, US time – This means that, with the timezone difference, Moniker is off the air completely during my daytime!!…Since they are working Banker’s Hours even through this crisis, it also means their support staff are closed during my daytime, too. Just rubs salt into the wound.

    This is a complete shambles.

    – Why didn’t they build the new site offline, and only go live after every conceivable test, and all bugs identified & removed???

    – Why don’t they have 24/7 live support to handle the inevitable ‘glitches’ with customer issues??

    – Why didn’t they beta test the site??

    – Why didn’t they run the old, working, site in parallel until they were certain all was perfect with the re-designed site??

    – Why don’t they have a CEO that has a CLUE????

    – Why don’t they have a Software Engineer & Cyber Designers that have a CLUE??

    – Why aren’t their customers the absolutely most important people in their lives???

    …Why??…Why??….Why…??

    .

  17. Well it is 9:15 eastern time. Who really believed Moniker would be up and running this morning?

    They have destroyed their credibility and trust. Who now will stay with them?

    By the way, who is running the ship over at Moniker? Who’s idea was it to change things?

    • I’d rather them be late but fixed rather than stick to the deadline and still be flawed.

      That said, they should have given an update.

      I am not an easy person to get upset, but this is really trying my patience considering the large deal I have pending with a name at Moniker. Needless to say, I will probably not be a Moniker customer much longer.

    • Agree!

      A terrible situation that has been poorly managed…Timely updates and factual information do help.

      Sad indeed.

  18. 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: jaymiany99@gmail.com

    Moniker Customer

    • Up for me, too… 🙂

      I’ve just completed the steps to Push the domain to the Buyer – ie the domain that has been trapped in Moniker, preventing my delivering it to the Buyer to close a big deal…

      Here’s hoping the Buyer can ‘Accept Domain’ in Moniker, and complete the deal.

      What a saga…

      .

  19. 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.

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