we purchased a domain and constantly had problems. they state on their website that they are 24/7 support, but when we called them today (05/16/2020) they stated they aren't fulfilling calls and directed us to a worthless ticketing process.

their website chat is even less helpful. we had a representative named Suma who refused to escalate to their manager.

they are a scammy reseller of domain.com. they don't even provide a unique service.

our domain and website are still down, despite us having paid for their service.

they are crooks. stay away. go with namecheap or godaddy instead.

If you want to be abused, lose money, lose countless hours with their awful IT support and then have to do it all over again - then this is the company for you! With a F*CK YOU Attitude and incompetent IT support this company wins the internet award for WORST COMPANY EVER! Their ineptitude caused my gmail account to be gone for an entire week (all of the emails that were sent to my business account lost) no backups, nothing. And their sorry - simply does not cover it. They they had the audacity to make charges to my credit card for services that were not ordered and never used. And their IT support - where does one begin. And then the ICANN issues. The many countless hours of trying to get that resolved because Dotsters back end does not allow for changed to the primary email account that was set up - many years ago. But hey when it comes time to asking me to continue with paying their services - those records are fine. But ICANN - not a chance! I hate this company!

I've just learned that this company of which I never heard charged my CC without my permission last year and this month again. Apparently for "domain protection" or so, not really clarified by the rep. However, my only provider has been a different company for years now. A clear case of hacking. I've tried to solve the matter with their (outsourced) customer service and after 1h+ of out-of-this world debates in pidgin English (I was asked to provide info that was either private or unknown) in this case of HACKING, a "supervisor' confirmed he'd refund me the most recent charge. An annoying waste of time and money with an IT firm that has no proper service to solve hacking cases via its system.

I have been using Dotster since 2010. Small issues over the years but were promptly fixed....until this year (2019).

I purchased 2 new domain names in January and at checkout I got an error message that my transaction could not be completed and that my account has been suspended. I immediately called Dotster's support. They had no idea why my account was suspended and lifted that. I found out that despite the "your transaction could not be completed" error message, Dotster did indeed charge my PayPay account. 3 TIMES for the one domain and overcharged by $20 on the other domain. After 6 1/2 hours (yes HOURS) over 3 days on the phone with supposed supervisors, my account is still not corrected.

I had to file a dispute with PayPal, which PayPal did resolve, but Dotster says they cancelled the one domain for non-payment. It shows paid and active for one year on my dashboard and as of 2 days ago, Dotster was supposed to send an email confirming that domain was paid, active and OK. Still waiting for that email. And they don't respond to my reply on THEIR email saying they'll have it corrected in 24 hours.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT USE DOTSTER! Why do I have to give them any stars????????????????

Awful service and customer support. I have opened 2 cases with them just so I can transfer a domain. They were unable to resolve the cases!

And after a week I called them to find out what was going on, and it seemed that they had forgotten about them! Awful customer support.

They don't treat customer right, they have an awful customer support service and when I asked for a complaints email, they said they didn't have one!

Our domain is parked with Dotster (domain registrar only) and they deleted the account without warning, even though the domain is still current (registered through 12/2019). Their response was that the account was moved to "deleted accounts" because of unknown reasons, and that it would take 48-72 hours to restore service. We had to go through the domain proof of ownership at the last billing interval, and now we are forced to go through it again because of their internal errors.

This company is completely unreliable and unprofessional. The tech support is outsourced to overseas call centers and the action teams (e.g. billing, development, etc) are never available to the phone tech support personnel. Their boilerplate answer is that they will open a support ticket and someone will return the call in 24-48 hours. However, they never return the call... you are forced to call tech support again and work through the same incompetence and inefficiencies again and again.

I have used many registrars over the past 20+ years, and I currently manage 100+ active domains across other registrars. Dotster is simply the WORST and most unreliable I have ever encountered.

--
AaronB, Houston, TX, USA

*** UPDATE 2018-06-21 ***
Dotster took over 10 days to resolve this issue (account deleted on 2018-06-10, just resolved today). We were forced to go through proof of domain ownership again, and we sent 9 different rounds of documentation to verify ownership (e.g. business lease, incorporation papers, drivers licenses, notarized letter of intent, bank statements, ISP and phone bills, etc, etc). Keep in mind that this is a business domain for a corporation that has been registered through Dotster for 10+ years. They were refusing to process the proof of domain ownership because the "government issued ID's" and drivers' licenses of the company owners didn't match the business address. WHAT?!? Who lives at their business address?!!! We called their tech support and had online tech chats 4+ times/day and sent documentation by email for 10 days. Finally, we had to enlist the help of an attorney because Dotster was refusing to acknowledge any/all of our efforts to reinstate the domain.

After all of this chaos and a demand letter from our attorney, here was Dotster's resolution: We were forced to create a new Dotster account and pay for additional services that we don't want or need, and then they attached our EXISTING PAID domain to the new account. The real issue now is that they have the 60-day domain registrar lock enabled, so we can't even transfer the domain out to another registrar until that lock expires. Hopefully, we won't have another clerical errors on their part that forces us to relive the past 10 days all over again.

When your domain registrar hijacks your domain, who can you call? Who is the authority that can compel the registrar to comply? The official answer is ICANN. The practical answer is NOBODY. The registrar is the first link in the chain to your Internet presence. So, do yourself a favor and stay far, far away from Dotster.com. They are a one-stop-shop for extortion, inefficiency, and incompetence. Is there any way to rate lower than 2.0 stars... how about -2.0.

AaronB, Houston, TX, USA

I have been using Dotster for Domain name purchasing and hosting. Over the last year I have had more and more issues with a crappy interface, difficult renewal process and continuous account suspensions. The price of hosting has doubled and coupons are misleading.