Wow, buying a .ca domain name has never been easier, more fun to do, and more rewarding. OK, here we go...
My business partner and I recently decided to purchase another domain name to house and showcase some of our more experimental work. We've been excited about it (and the many possibilities) for some time, so I thought: let's do this.
So, I took a stroll down to "domainsatcost.ca" (where we've done the majority of our domain name purchasing as-of-late), and proudly bought our new domain...
Here's where the all the fun begins: when I clicked "buy domain" (or whatever the button said), I didn't realize that this domain registrar was holding and saving the last credit card used by us. In this case, a client's credit card. Nice. The new domain was now proudly owned by... a client of ours?? "Oh shit, no good", I thought. "This'll be no problem to fix, I'll just call them", I told myself.
So, I got on the horn, and called. First thing I was told I had to do was send them a form via their website stating that I wanted to cancel the domain purchase, and then re-purchase with my credit card. "No problem", said domainsatcost.ca, "That'll be an extra $25 for that service, but we can do it". I was then instructed that now all I had to do was send another message via the web form, stating that it was A-OK that they charge my credit card for the domain name. Done. It looked like all had been resolved...
Today seemed like a good day to point the domain name to our hosting company, and get the ball rolling. When I logged into my domainsatcost.ca account I noticed that our recently purchased and transferred domain was proudly STILL owned by our client. Once again: Nice!—and, once again, I called domainsatcost.ca. Here was the response from them: "You'll have to renew it for another year (translation: pay for it all over again), and then request that the ownership be changed via your client". "The client will get an email from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), and your client will have to respond to that email stating that they are willing to legally transfer the ownership of the domain to you". This is exactly what this particular client wants to do. I can feel it. Awesome!
Has anyone seen these CIRA forms and documents? Confusing? To say the least. Imagine the phone call I would have had to make if I had decided to go through with it: "Hi buddy, how's it going? Great! Glad all is well. Listen, you are going to get a few emails from this thing called CIRA, stating that (due to a seemingly unusable domainsatcost.ca admin system) I recently bought a personal domain name with your credit card. Yeah... sorry about that, it's really not my fault." To him, it IS my fault.
What the $#@% is CIRA here for? CIRA is so typically Canadian it's scary. Why are we forced to have this governing body oversee all our Canadian domain names? It's retarded. Plain-and-simple...
Fellow Canadians: buy a .com domain whenever possible, just to side-step these guys. TRUST ME.
In the end, I told them (domainsatcost.ca) to cancel the domain, and we would purchase another one (from someone who wants our business). A grand total of $40 to find this out.
I'll be frank: domainsatcost.ca really doesn't care, they made that quite apparent. Whomever took my calls sounded like he would have rather been clipping his toenails. Avoid them like the plague.
