Face of Chaos

So, there I was, midway through the afternoon, midway through today’s “Getting Things Done” list of stuff needs doing, when the phone rings.  It’s a fellow I haven’t talked to in several years….a good guy, but our paths haven’t crossed since the Environmental/Activism group we both belonged to folded its tents back in….oh, 2006.  Back then, he was the organization’s president and I was the combination Webgeek and Secretary.  As webgeek, I’d registered our domain (conservationcouncil.org) with Network Solutions for a whopping DECADE.  (Later I found the reimbursement form in which I’d noted that we wouldn’t have to pay another dime until February of 2010!

That was several email addresses ago, but I’ve got a couple other non-profit domains registered at Network Solutions and they must have run some sort of database/compare routine because early in January they sent me a message asking if I wanted to renew conservationcouncil.org.  Personally, I didn’t, but I sent out a bunch of emails and left a bunch of phone messages with the good guy.  When I didn’t hear anything from him, I figured the Lake County Conservation Council had been truly and deeply consigned to the dust-bin of history.

Not so fast….

The good guy *had* gotten my messages, but had assumed that he had until the end of March to renew the domain.  (Organization is clearly not something that either he or I excel at…which may account for why the LCCC went down with the sun.)

I screen my phone calls, meaning I listened for a while, as he explained that the domain had expired and that I was the only one who could renew it…etc…etc…

I picked up the phone and agreed that I would call Network Solutions.  My plan was to tell them to turn the domain over to the one person who was still interested in it.

Ha.

Now, I’ve dealt with Network Solutions before…when I first registered conservationcouncil.org and more recently when I had to extricate sunregionEGA.org from the rubble of Geocities.  I knew from that debacle that they could be obtuse, but I really wasn’t prepared for a swift descent into the realms of Kafka.

It seems that over the past decade, the domain’s primary contact has morphed into Lake (last name), County Conservation Council (first name), of no known digital or physical address.  Lynn Abbey had been reduced to being merely the technical contact.  Technical contacts lack the authority to change domain ownership, so, even if I had remembered what I’d given myself as a userid and password back in 2000, I wouldn’t have been able to get to the actual account manager.

Ah…but Network Solutions has a procedure in place to resurrect abandoned domains.  While we were talking, the tech sent me an email (to my current email address), with links to the resurrection process!  GREAT!!!  I hung up, clicked the link, and blanched… Yes….abandoned domains can be resurrected….all you have to do is fax them a copy of my driver’s license or passport, a copy of a recent utility bill or other such financial statement showing that LCCC was still at its 2000 address (if it had moved there was another page of instructions and requirements), and they then would send the next round of instructions/requirements to the email address on file—which is my very old, very defunct iag.net address.

So, I called Network Solutions again…and I gotta say, as automated menus go, theirs has to be the most annoying, worthless waste of time I’ve ever dealt with.  You can’t press a number until the robot takes a virtual breath; #, *, and Operator are flagged as invalid keys, which starts the menu recitation over…. FROM THE TOP! and none—absolutely NONE — of the options made any sense.  (Ultimately I found a couple different 800 numbers for Network Solutions, but they all dumped me into the same menu-hell.)  So I guessed…about three times, until I got the “we’re experiencing high call volume….please wait” hold queue

And, once again, I was talking to someone who wasn’t in India or some other location.  I mean, these people KNEW English….they just didn’t make any sense.  While I tried to explain my problem, they sent me EXACTLY the same email, with EXACTLY the same links to EXACTLY the same page and EXACTLY the same dead-end.  I make my living describing things that don’t exist in the real world….but I made no headway with them.  I’d say, the labbey@iag.net email is defunct, and they’d ask for my current email and send me the same verdamnt form and links.

I called the good guy and said words to the effect that maybe he should just register a whole new domain and leave conservationcouncil.org in limbo.  But, for some reason, he really wants to resurrect the old domain.  So I emailed a copy of the forms to HIM.

And about a half hour later he called…gibbering slightly.  He had, however, determined one useful thing: while Network Solutions wouldn’t let either one of us CHANGE anything, they would let me pay to renew the verdamnt thing….but only me…so I had to call again (I couldn’t renew via the website ‘cause…well, they needed to confirm the email address of records…and, funny thing, it wouldn’t validate)….navigating menu-hell by pressing random buttons until I reached the hold queue….  One notes that never, when I actually reached a human being and explained my situation, did anyone say that I’d connected myself to the WRONG department or offer to transfer me to the RIGHT department.  Nope, every time, they asked me for the account number (which I had) and if I knew where I’d been born (I remember) and then conversed with me on a (correct) first-name basis!

I said, Look, I’m just going to pay to renew/resurrect the domain and the guy asked me if I wanted the twenty-year renewal option!

Good thing I was sitting down.

I said, No—how about something shorter and I don’t suppose you’d accept something other than *my* credit card number…and explained that the good guy had boldly given me his info.  The tech said…No Problem…in fact, the tech had the good guy’s name and phone number already….How did a three-way conference call sound?

I suppose it all makes a certain amount of sense…it *shouldn’t* be easy to change the master domain contact information…but really.

I hung up, leaving the good guy and Network Solutions exchanging numbers.

My brain is still vibrating.