Domain expired - account holder gone bust

[chilluk7]

I look after the website (code) of company A. They used to use company B for all their web stuff, including domain name registration / renewals / DNS etc - company B did all this through TSOHost, and between them they have never transferred anything away (I have asked them to).

Today I get an urgent call from company A - our site is down - well lo and behold the domain name has expired.

When I try and get in touch with company B to kick them, they have fairly recently gone into administration!

What on earth can I do to help! I have tried to speak to TSOHost, who quite rightly won't give me the time of day.

To make matters worse it is an ecommerce site so effectively the shop is currently closed.

[FurtiveFreddy]

Is their email hosted on the same server? Can you set up a temporary domain to host the site and get an email sent out to the customer database at least?

If they are on social media you can get the word out there too.

[chilluk7]

Email is on Office 365 so not sure how we can change that, I guess would have to link to new domain also?

I guess a temp domain is an option but it's going to be very quiet as none of the established links / search results will lead anywhere.

[mw88]

If it's a .co.uk domain you can get in touch with Nominet who should be able to help.

There's a charge for their service, but without the other company I don't think there's another way

[scrw.]

who is the registered contact of the domain with nominet?

[chilluk7]

It is a .co.uk so trying Nominet now.

The owner of the company that is the "rightful owner" should be listed as the organistaion contact - I think it's been marked as private though as can't see anything on the WHOIS listing.

[chilluk7]

Nominet actually quite helpful. Apparently the domain was transferred from the rightful owners name to another personal name associated with Company B about 3 weeks before they went pop. Hoping that was just a way to retain control rather than anything dubious, although they are proving elusive so far.

[Redarress]

Get on to company B's administrators (you can check who they are by searching insolvency section of The London Gazette.)
Contact them.. and frankly be very very very persistant. Do not expect them to ring you back. Get a email address of the relevant adminstrator who is handling the insolvency. Write them a email stating your company webshop is not trading due to administartion and you are loosing ££££ per day due to this issue. If you are not upto date with payments offer them to the administrator in exchange for log-in access codes to gain access to the site etc.
You need to consider how much you are loosing per day compaired to how much you are prepaired to pay to get your site back. In my experience Administrators very rarly help with these issues unless there is a money advantage to them. They have a Legal obligation to return as much cash to the companies creditors so they have to act.
Do not pay anything until you have proof the log in details work and you ahve full access.

You could get someone to knock up a quick alternative webshop in Shopwired,Shopify or someother and use historic data of customers to contact and point them to the new website as an addition to the above.

[buggalugs]

^^^ This, getting the administrators to sell it to you quickly is about the only option other than giving up and getting a new domain. Domain dispute will take too long. If you do the right biz in the Google search console you might keep some racking. However in a month or two someone will drop catch the old domain and put dodgy ads all over it.

[Mr Pointy]

What good are the administrators going to be? Control of the domain has already been transferred away from the failed company so it wasn't even an asset when the company went down. All contacting them will achieve is to alert them there's a possible asset they could be chasing which may have been wrongfully transferred out of the failed company. That's not what the OP wants at all - he's much better off hoping Nominet come through with the transfer.

[buggalugs]

I read it as the domain is still in the failed companies TSO account. Usually it will still be in there available to pay the renewal on for a while after expiry.

Nominet will be no use. It takes ages. The current holder gets time to respond and the domain has already expired and will get dropcatched soon. Dropcatchers will usually sell the domain back to you for a fee, last one I did was £500 in the end. All this time the shop will be closed.

[Redarress]

Mr Pointy has a point
Contact the person who the domain was transferred too.
Either they have transferred it.for good or bad intentions you will only know that when you have contacted them !
If the person was a director of the failed company you MAY find their contact address If you look through the companies filing history

Edited by Redarress on Thursday 4th February 20:20

[loafer123]

chilluk7 said:

Nominet actually quite helpful. Apparently the domain was transferred from the rightful owners name to another personal name associated with Company B about 3 weeks before they went pop. Hoping that was just a way to retain control rather than anything dubious, although they are proving elusive so far.

Somewhat surprising this was possible. Who authorised it?

Surely TSO Host shouldn’t have allowed this?

[chilluk7]

Thanks all for the above advice.

The rightful owner did approach the administrators - coincidence or not we then managed to establish contact with the new temporary "owner" of the domain who renewed the registration so at least they are back up and running, and can now work to get the domain transferred properly.

A salutary lesson I think.