Zencore Takedown II

An interesting sequence of events - and the moral of the story (always best up front) is: If you use a DNS host, do not use one of the domains they host for you for the email address you register with.

I use 123-reg.co.uk, who are based in the UK. I am in Australia. My website is hosted in Florida I think. So cogent in Florida got their routing mixed up and the IP address my sites are on went dark. Cogent apparently were going to take their time fixing the problem, so my web hosts gave the servers a new address.

So all I need to do is repoint my dns at the new address and viola. So I go to log into 123-reg, and hmmm... what is the password?

No problem, I forget every time, and all that needs to happen is I go through the lost password routine and they reset it and email it to me. I probably had the old one in an old email somewhere, but it was on another machine.

I realised my blunder as I clicked submit. Because now they have changed the password from something I had recorded somewhere, to a new random password and they have emailed it to my domain. The one that is broken.

Damn. Ok, so now I have to leave them a support call. The half a quid a minute phone line is out, as it cannot be called internationally. So I use the webform.

Days pass. Nothing happens.

Damn... try the fax number! Nope. Nothing happens.

Email has been down for several days now. So time to get creative. First I try skyping the 0900 number - perhaps skype can break out to pstn locally, so it isn't an international call. But no - barred.

So 123reg is a part of pipex, so I call one of the other pipex companies. Lots of hold music later, I get a guy who cannot help, but gives me the number for "123reg" that can be dialled internationally.

Of course it isn't really, it is another pipex company that still isn't 123reg. Their tech people tell me the only support provided to international customers is via email. I explain that I have already sent an email and got no response, so actually, there isn't any email support to speak of. And then I point out I sent a fax too.

He repeatedly tells me there is nothing he can do - even though when asked said he had a number for 123reg, but couldn't give it to me.

He said try customer support. Fine. Whatever.

With customer support things got better. The woman tried to divert me a couple of times, but I stood my ground, and finally she capitulated and put an email together to 123reg. She took all my details, and I had the new password minutes later.

I am finding it amusing in hindsight that the best way to get responsive support from 123-reg is to actually phone a different company entirely.