Beware of el cheapo services!
There was a blissful time when I truly appreciated this Filipino domain registration company, Cheaper Than Cheap Domains (or CTCD). I’ve always believed that we should patronize our own, because doing so would help our economy somehow. But boy, I made a mistake with this one!
When I started using them a year ago for some .com domains and a couple of .ph ones, they were OK. Their customer service was a notch above tolerable, which made up for their lack of value-added domain services (of which Godaddy.com has an abundace). Anyway, all I needed was for them to have my domains resolve to my nameservers (which sometimes took awhile for newly registered domains).
Then, about a few months ago, they lost their credit card payment facility. Renewals had to be done over the counter at a bank! 
That’s when I decided to transfer my expiring domain names to Godaddy. This giant registrar can’t possibly be proud of their customer service — but then again, you rarely need it since they provide you all the necessary tools to effectively manage domain registrations, and then some.
What really ticked me off was when CTCD misrepresented one of the domains I manage to Godaddy. See, I was transferring the last of the domains from CTCD to Godaddy when this spiteful thing happened. I paid Godaddy one year’s worth of registration to have one of my clients’ domain name transferred. The beauty of transferring to Godaddy is, they honor the remainder of a domain name’s remaining “life”, in addition to the new registration period you pay for.
Problem was, my client forgot to pay CTCD for the domain name before I could transfer it, and it expired. According to ICANN, as explained to me by CTCD, expired domain names must be renewed first before they can be legally transferred. Fine. My client finally renewed the domain — i.e., one more year’s worth of payment — over the counter, yes, at the bank, for the account of CTCD.
Meaning, there’s one more year of registration, right? Meaning, once it’s transferred to Godaddy, I could expect two more years of not worrying about this particular domain name’s life. But that wasn’t to be so. When it was finally transferred, I checked the new expiry date, and it was only one year hence. WTF??
Godaddy informed me (after a couple of days) that CTCD had declared to them that that domain name was already expired when it was transferred.
But… I thought it wasn’t possible to transfer expired domains? So why would CTCD say that??
So now what? I demanded for a refund, but CTCD ignored this. It’s only P495, sure, but that’s one year’s worth of registration down the drain.
Cheaper than cheap. Right. How cheap can they get?
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MiGs
Tuesday, 25th November 2008 at 10:54 am
I know you blogs.. you won’t write a negative review if its not worth writing and if you haven’t done all possible means of resolving it…
Ang bastos naman ng CTCD. Bastusan pala ang labanan..
RJ
Tuesday, 25th November 2008 at 11:51 am
Wow, that sucks.
Ron
Tuesday, 25th November 2008 at 3:21 pm
Same goes with Philhosting.net. Don’t be fooled by the cheap startup prices. As they say in the hosting business “you get what you pay for”. So true talaga.
I switched my blog to blue host just a day ago to end my blogs constant downtime with Philhosting. Kahit wala pang 3 months ako sa 1 year hosting service nila.
Ade
Tuesday, 25th November 2008 at 4:49 pm
Arrgh. That sucks.
Kevin Paquet
Tuesday, 25th November 2008 at 10:16 pm
Hmm.. I can’t say much about this, I haven’t been in a situation like this yet, I don’t want to be bias, but I fear incidents like this to happen to me, that’s why I’m choosing hosting, domain registration and any other services outside of the Philippines.
I know, it would be hard to contact the people behind the scene from afar, but if you would end up the way like you did, I don’t think that a service provider from not that far would do any better.
Greetings,
teenph.com
Winston
Wednesday, 26th November 2008 at 7:05 pm
i’ve been telling you before to transfer your domains to godaddy. hehehe
welcome to GD. 
Blogie
Wednesday, 26th November 2008 at 7:08 pm
@Winston — Actually, I’ve long been registering with Godaddy. Kaso, I had just wanted to have a few domains with a Filipino registrar, to show support kung baga. Haaaay…
Mindanaoan
Saturday, 29th November 2008 at 9:40 am
Cheaper Than Cheap…Dyosmio they really lived up to their name.
iceman9
Saturday, 29th November 2008 at 10:37 pm
ouch!! this gotta hurt! lessons learned from cheap domain services, careful planning and paranoid decisions must go hand in hand.. (for a breather..) hehehe..
Blogie
Saturday, 29th November 2008 at 10:39 pm
@iceman9 — It didn’t really hurt… but it was infuriating. Oh and I draw the line at being paranoid.
What do you mean by ‘for a breather’?
iceman9
Sunday, 30th November 2008 at 12:41 pm
@ Blogie
heheheh.. “for a breather” meaning lets laugh at it, we’re too serious here.. hehehe
iceman9
Sunday, 30th November 2008 at 1:46 pm
@ Blogie
it makes me wonder why registering philippine domains with the .ph are quite expensive?? any ideas?
Blogie
Sunday, 30th November 2008 at 5:21 pm
.com domains became very cheap thanks to competition. But ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) have no competition, because for each one there’s only one registrar. It’s not only .ph that’s expensive, you know. The French and Japanese ccTLDs are much more expensive.
I’m not defending the practice, ok? I’m just stating my observations.
iceman9
Sunday, 30th November 2008 at 6:25 pm
@ Blogie
no wonder it’s expensive.. cheers
iceman9
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 11:28 am
@ Blogie
hmmm… ok ba ang hostgator hosting service??
Blogie
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 11:31 am
@iceman9 — Haven’t experienced them yet. Happy na ako sa hosting company ko eh: LiquidWeb.com.
Charles
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 12:29 pm
This is a good information for me I’m very newbie when it comes to looking for a good hosting service.
Blogie
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 12:34 pm
@Charles — Thanks for droppig by! If you do need hosting, drop me a line.
iceman9
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 7:04 pm
@ Blogie
sounds interesting! i’ll try that soon, ill give u buzz.
iceman9
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 7:06 pm
@ Charles
try blogie’s hosting he knows best im sure!
Blogie
Thursday, 4th December 2008 at 7:13 pm
Why thank you, iceman!
iceman9
Friday, 5th December 2008 at 9:17 am
@ Blogie
you’re welcome!
Krjsto
Saturday, 6th December 2008 at 6:43 pm
hi master blogie idol!
I’m from Cagayan de Oro and I stumbled upon you (not sure if it was you) at SM in davao.. I’m one of the people at cdobloggers.com
Anyway, anu ba site ng hosting mo po? Interested in a hosting service from someone I know or will know pretty soon
Blogie
Monday, 8th December 2008 at 12:51 am
@Krjsto — I’m already offering the hosting service, but we haven’t finished the public website yet.
Hey, I hope you’ll be with us at the meet-up in CDO. Chiq says it’ll be tonight at Bigby’s Limketkai.
iceman9
Monday, 8th December 2008 at 11:34 am
@ blogie
cant wait to see the public website of yours re: hosting services? aside from liquidweb?
Blogie
Monday, 8th December 2008 at 11:52 am
@iceman9 — The site will just be an info page for the services, but I’m already offering the hosting packages. If you are interested, just go ahead and send me an email.
Liquid Web is the hosting company that owns my dedicated server.
simoncpu
Tuesday, 16th December 2008 at 8:22 pm
Hello,
I’m having the same problem too. My domain expired because they no longer accept payment via credit card. I was about to transfer it to GoDaddy, but their support personnel advised me to renew my domain with my previous registrar in order to avoid problems. I tried faxing my deposit slip a while ago but no one answered it.
[ simon.cpu ]
vader3
Friday, 13th March 2009 at 1:28 pm
can anybody help me here? how can i obtain authorization code from CTCD? i am transferring to GoDaddy. I emailed CTCD already but no answer, the phone number posted on their website is not already in Service! grrr.