I hate to bitch. And I hate to appear as if I am drumming up business or trying to screw other businesses. I am just trying to call it as I see it as a public service.

We get maybe 3-4 clients a week transfer to us from a very prominent and large Chinese domain registrar and hoster, I won’t say the name. But your guess is probably correct.

Apart from the issues mentioned above, the latest fiasco involves again transferring domain names AND DNS.

Issue One:

Anyone who has worked in IT for a while and manages IT, or at least has half a brain, can understand the confusion that a lower case “L” and the numeral “One” and and upper case “I” can cause. l1I in some fonts.

I have had a domain transfer request reject THREE TIMES because no matter how clear I write down the authorisation codes, that are issued by said registrar – when they eventually get the transfer request from my new registrar they reject the very same code! :-\

C’mon already, think people! Or at the very least set your random number generator to exclude those characters. God knows when I get a password failure, I take 2 mins and check for things like the above or even a six “6″ and a lower case B “b” too, before I go back whinging that the code “didn’t work…”

It reminds me of people that when you call a wrong number, just say, sorry wrong number and hang up! Thus requiring me to call them back AGAIN to see if it was indeed the wrong number (as given to me) or if I just dialled it wrong. How hard is it to get the logic of checking what number the wrong caller was trying to call before hanging up??

Issue Two:

DNS server re-delegation. I won’t go into the details here. If you are in the business, you will get the subtleties of it. The dance that involves old and new mail servers, old and new DNS servers, propagation times, TTL values, client usage, abandoned/orphaned email, etc..

Point is, you need to plan it right.

We do.

So after the usual 500 pages of chopped and stamped paper that has gone through the usual 500 people of whom no one can take responsibility to make a decision, they (aforementioned very large and famous Chinese registrar and hoster) agree to a 9PM Friday night change.

So what do they do come 9PM Friday night?

Nothing.

Then to make it worse – hey at least we could have rescheduled. They just assumed it would be OK to go ahead and change it anyway on Monday morning.  More likely they would not want to admit to an error so as to not “lose face” and in the process lose much more face by turning things into a dog’s breakfast.   FUBAR!

The lesson to be learned? One of the very largest and most famous Chinese registrars and hosters, does not even know themselves the intricacies of their products and services and the importance of the correct and attendant management of them.

As I mentioned before, don’t risk you company’s DNS or domain name by letting them manage it. If someone can’t take DNS and registration seriously – then they are a serious risk to your business continuity.

In any case the Ministry of Science and Technology has cracked down on many of these dodgy providers of late. However even some of the large ones – who also show ICANN logo’s are just as dodgy.

I had some domains that the registrar did not allow me to move until I paid them for a year of renewals – even though the expiry date was a good 3 months away. Subsequent transfers that involved lots of faxes and lots of pieces of paper and no automation whatsoever (Seriously Network Solutions has been a great help, but they are given the run around too!) were ultimately denied.

Some were transfered (all need a pass code to be issued with a copy of passport and business licence) and some were not – until – yup – I paid some money!

So what is the moral of this story? DO NOT USE CHINESE REGISTRARS, PERIOD! There are many overseas that sell .CN names and have excellent customer service, transparent policies and 100% adherence to the .CN TLD rules as laid out, rightfully so by China.

Right about now I will go off on a slight tangent about local resellers of some international tech products that take advantage of the fact that many Chinese citizens and business have restrictions on access to and use of, foreign currency. The number of times I have just said “Get stuffed, I’ll buy it direct from Hong Kong or Australia” and not from you, the local supplier, are quite numerous.

Technology has always been a bit more forward than the laws in many countries around the world and even people’s understanding of said technology. This makes it hard at times to regulate and control trade and consumer protection. Add to that, that China is a developing country that is experiencing massive cultural, political, social and economic change – and tech maybe gets an even longer leash here at times. Unfortunately, as all too often here in China, some purveyors of tech are not interested in sustained growth of the wider industry as a whole, yet more so the quick buck and hell with the flavour that is left in consumers mouths.

During dinner with the China CEO of a large open source tech company back in 2003. He lamented, “The local providers do such a bad job and rip off customers left, right and centre, that this family of technology in general is given a bad name, so much so that we can’t even sell our superior packages either! I wish we could buy them to protect the future of this technology in the Chinese commercial marketplace.”

Well as for domain names, I don’t have to wish, I just do the overseas thing now. I moved around 30 key domains for my company and I will now be advising and helping all clients to move theirs as well. DNS and domains are too important and fundamental to the internet and all the services that rely on it for it to be exposed to such operational risks. A rough count now puts this at around 400 domains, so that means a lot of passport flashing, paper printing and faxing will be needed!

哎呀！