We started out with webspace on Mindspring (before it became Earthlink), but like Topsy, the pages "just growed." My Remember WENN page was getting a tremendous number of hits at that time and, while I was still good on webspace, I was growing short on bandwidth (transfer limits) because Mindspring then limited you to 450MG.

James asked me what I wanted for my birthday that year and I said, "A Simplenet membership." For a small setup fee, I got unlimited webspace and unlimited bandwidth for $10/month. Now WENN and my ever-expanding Lassie site could grow.

Then Simplenet got absorbed by Yahoo. Some of my other friends on Simplenet went off to other providers, but I took advantage of a Yahoo deal. They told me that if I stayed with them I would have to get a domain name. But, if I remained with them, they would pay my yearly domain fee. They were offering enough webspace and bandwidth, so I took it.

In the last few months, I've been looking at other hosting providers, but being desultory about it.

As usual this year, I got notices from Network Solutions about it being time to renew my domain. The first time this happened I got nervous and contacted Yahoo. They assured me that as long as I kept my account with them, they would pay my domain registration. Since then I've gotten used to it. Yahoo evidently waits until the last minute to pay (like Kaiser Permanente after a hospital stay).

Then I got a notice from Network Solutions saying that this was my final notice and that they had contacted my Billing Contact (Yahoo) and not received a response, so I would be responsible for paying the registration or lose the domain. I contacted Yahoo posthaste and got a polite note back saying that he [the tech] had done a "Whois" on the account and said I was responsible for paying the domain registration.

Say what? I went to Network Solutions site and looked up my account information; sure enough, the Whois still says Yahoo is the billing contact. So I sent them a note with that information in it, as well as a copy of the letter—I still have it—saying that Yahoo would pay my domain registration while I remained a customer.

So far the response has been crickets chirping.

So I'm probably going to have to pony up for the domain fee, since right now I don't have time to transfer the domain to a new hosting company (it takes 7-10 days to transfer, according to my research, and the domain registration will be up by then). We've got the holidays and the house "in the fire," so to speak, so this really isn't the time anyway.

But I said once they quit paying for my domain registration, I was outta there. And I will be.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:59:00 PM

Comments:

1and1.Com does my hosting. $10 a month, three domain names, email like crazy. (You might be able to get by with the $3 a month plan if you just have simple HTML stuff. I use MT for my blogs, that required I went to their business plan for $9.99 a month.)

They've been pretty trouble-free. You might want to check them out.

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/HostingOverview;jsessionid=65CEC425F2B11DD23462B1F2BC693E91.TC62b?__frame=_top&__lf=Static

J.

# posted by  Jerry : 2:42:00 PM

 

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