A domain name I registered last year with Netfirms will expire on June/30/2006. About a week ago (that is, a month before its expiry date), they sent me an e-mail reminding me that it was about to expire and would be renewed automatically by them.

As I'm not satisfied with the technical features they offer (or the lack of some of them, as a matter of fact), I replied to that e-mail just requesting them not to renew my domain, because it would be transfered to another registrar. Just that.

As a result, they sent me a reply, asking me to confirm the "cancellation". I then replied back, confirming the "cancellation" (of course, I was refering to the cancellation of the automatic renewal of the domain, simply because this was the only request I had made).

The surprise came in their next message, when they informed me that they had cancelled *my account*. Additionally, they shut down the website associated with my domain, that is, they ERASED the HTML and image files of my website without my authorization (it was hosted in their webservers). It also seems that the e-mail forwarding feature of the domain is not working anymore, too.

I then sent them a complaint, stating that I didn't request the cancellation of my account or the anticipated deactivation of my domain before its expiry date. They answered me and said: "In cancelled the renewal it caused the site to go offline"! God, it's pretty obvious that, in requesting the cancellation of the *renewal* of the domain, it should just not be renewed (period), but still should be left activated until its natural expiration date or until they received its transfer request from the new registrar - whichever came first!

I kept on complaining, and later they said "once an account is cancelled we can not restart it again". But after I sent a complaint to ICANN, they changed their speech and told me that my account was "up" and "set to cancel at expiration" (!). Whatever, if the account is still up and if the domain was not deactivated (since it expires in Jun/30/2006), its website should still be on air!

They're still alleging that I requested the cancellation of *my account* and didn't put my website back online yet (what I believe they won't be able to do). Tests regarding the e-mail forwarding feature of the domain are still failing. That is, I still have a domain, but can't to anything with it anymore (no website, no e-mail).

All this hassle just because I didn't want to renew my domain name with them. My advice? Stay away from them!


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