I found a generic overlooked in Sunrise and Landrush as a result of a name I saw
in a post at this forum - it's out of the area on which I concentrated - and "registered"
it, not realising that Afilias was in "maintenance mode". Then I saw a forum
post advising about October 3 resumption, contacted the registrar to see if they
had received word from Afilias on resumption time, then slept on it, cursing Afilias
again.Next morning swapped several mails with good registrars and the penny dropped
- we were back in "lottery mode".
With my first "registration" almost 36 hours
old I spent the last hours before Afilias rebooted, searching for registrars still
taking applications, or is that preregistrations - several registrars telling me
that they were at their wits end with changing advice from Afilias and not accepting
new applications.
Managed to buy five "tickets" - spend several hundred bucks -
and went to bed again thinking that I had done about everything I could in the circumstances
- but cursing Afilias again that it was forcing customers into large expenditures
with no guarantee that the time, effort and money would amount to anything other
than more frustration and disappointment.
With trepidation I went to the whois
about an hour ago to find the name had been registered but with one of the registrar's
data in every field.
WOW - red line fury - incandescent (one of Richy's words),
three deep breaths before a call to the registrar - don't accuse them of theft before
you get their story - "yeah, you got it, yours is one of the registrations we have
to fix."
The winning ticket - number four of five.
I am grateful to all five
registrars, but why is Afilias still making the lives of their customers and their
registrars hell?
Landrushers deserved better!!!!!!! Real-timers deserve better!!!!!!