The Register4Less.com Blog

Our support team often gets complimented that we have the best support in the industry, and that our customers tell their friends and colleagues about us all the time.  One of our team has even once been “accused” of cloning himself because he’s always there.

As you can imagine, this is of course nice feedback to hear. Then this….

This morning I had a chat session with a customer that’s been with us for a few years, and he was looking for information on how to transfer the registration and hosting away to another provider.  We have domains that transfer in to us and away from us.

Normally when we get a transfer away I inquire as to the reason for the transfer.  The reason he gave was that he could not get the free basic hosting service to work.  I asked if he’d contacted our support team for help, and his initial reply was yes.  I wanted to check with whom he spoke, and turned out he had not contacted our support team, and that’s a shame.

He’s already got the transfer process underway, and of course we recommend our customers rights to move their domains to another registrar if they so choose.  He’s moving to a registrar that does charge for Whois privacy, so will be paying quite a bit more for the registration service.  Moving the domain’s registration and hosting will also not necessarily solve the issues he’s having with hosting.

So the take away from this is if you are having an issue with an R4L service, please get in touch with our support team.  It’s not really possible for our team to know what customers are having issues with connecting to a mail account, server, or other issue unless we hear from you.  Usually these kinds of issues are pretty quick for us to look into, and once resolved, you can get to using the hosting or mail service.  In the case with this particular customer, not only could we have helped him months ago to get his site online, but he’d still be able to take advantage of the free hosting and Whois privacy we provide with the domain registration.  Where he’s transferring doesn’t provide these free services,  so his cost per year will be going up substantially.

Getting in Touch with the R4L Team

Secure Online Chat

Our newest way to get in touch with the support team is via the secure chat from our website.  Simply go to https://Register4less.com and click on Chat Now – Online.  The chat session between you and the agent that answers your chat is fully encrypted, so if you’re renewing a service with us, it’s safe to provide payment information over the chat.  All chat sessions automatically will create a transcript in our support ticketing system.

Support Ticketing – Email

Our support address is support@Register4Less.com, or support@R4L.com.  All email there gets tracked by a ticketing system.  Tickets can be transferred between agents, be assigned a reminder date, etc.

Toll-Free Phone

You can also reach our team by calling within the US and Canada toll free 1 (877) 905 – 6500.  Outside of North America, call int + 1 (514) 905-6500.  If you are calling outside of our core office hours (9 – 5 Eastern), please leave a voice message and we will call you back as soon as we are able.

Would you post your full address, email & phone number on your facebook wall?  Of course not.  So why would anyone want that information readily available in your domain’s Whois record?

When a domain name is registered, we are required by ICANN’s policy to collect personal/company contact information for the domain. This consists of the owner’s first & last name, company name (if applicable), postal address, email address, phone number and optional fax number. Without Whois privacy, this information would immediately be published in the domain’s Whois record.  The Whois database is an important part of the structure of how domains are registered, but more often than not, they are scanned using computer programs to put together a database of email addresses to be used by marketers, to send spammers, scammers, even identity thieves.

Without Whois privacy, a domain’s Whois record will look like (of course, not actual contact information):

ExampleDomain.com
John Doe, Doe’s Widget Company Inc.
123 Maplewood Drive, Los Angeles, CA, USA
+1.3105551234

With Whois privacy enabled, this same domain would appear:

ExampleDomain.com
Register4Less Privacy Advocate, 3501256 Canada Inc.
5802 Bob Bullock C1 Unit 328C-195, Laredo, TX, USA
+1.5143941150

Why not just have fake contact info?

Some will ask, why not just provide fake information with the domain registration?  There are a number of reasons why that’s not a good idea.

1. Legally, all domain name owners are bound by the registration agreement between you and your domain’s registrar.  ICANN mandates that this registration agreement must include the clause that you will maintain accurate and up to date contact information for your domain.  Under the registration agreement, if you do not keep your information complete and updated, your domain is subject to suspension.
2. With the update 2013 Registrar Registry Agreement, ICANN is now requiring registrars to confirm the email address of the domain owner.  When a domain is registered or a domain is updated with an email address that’s not already confirmed, we send an email out to that address for confirmation.  If the email bounces or is not replied to, we are required to suspend the domain.
3. The contact information you maintain on account with us is what we use to send you reminders for your domain registration or hosting renewal.  If the address is not working, you’ll miss the reminders and may forget to renew your domain.  That can cause downtime, and the potential for a redemption renewal (much more costly due to higher fees from the registry, or worse, loss of the domain.  If that happens and a domain speculator picks it up, you’re at their mercy to buy the domain back.

Protect Your Identity

Identity theft is a crime that is on the rise.  The best way to not have your personal contact information taken is not to make publicly available.  When you register a new domain, choose to have Whois privacy enabled when you submit your order.

Avoid Unwanted Solicitations

Spammers regularly query the Whois servers of domain registrars in order to build a database of working email addresses.  If your domain is not private, you can expect to receive emails with offers to buy your domain, to congratulate you that you’ve been awarded a $15 Million, life and health insurance offers, etc.  You should also ensure never to put your email address in plain text in a website.

Upgrade Now for Free

Register4Less was one of the first registration providers to introduce Whois privacy back in 2002.  At that time, a number of registrars were sending mail to domain owners with what looked confusingly like an invoice for the renewal of their domains (at rates 3 times higher than our fees).  A number of domain owners were tricked by these solicitations, and sent off their payment to these companies.  While we helped customers cancel these transfers and get their money back, we knew we needed to come up with something to help prevent this abuse.

The Whois privacy service we developed has always been provided free of charge to our customers.  We fully intend to keep this service free of charge for our customers.  It’s part of what makes us the non-evil domain registration and web hosting company!

Register4Less.com has been providing free Whois Privacy service to our customers since the we first introduced this service back in 2002.  We were one of the first domain name registration providers to introduce Whois Privacy.  We are one of the few domain name registrars who still provide this essential service at no additional cost to our customers.

MikeandtheSuspects.com (full disclosure, I am the drummer for the band), for example, is a domain name registered with us and is using our free Whois Privacy service.  If you look up the record for the registrant of the domain, you will see:

Registrant Name: Register4Less Privacy Advocate
Registrant Organization: 3501256 Canada, Inc.
Registrant Street: 5802 Bob Bullock C1 Unit 328C-195   
Registrant City: Laredo
Registrant State/Province: Texas
Registrant Postal Code: 78041-8813
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5143941150
Registrant Email: admin@privacyadvocate.org

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