There were several issues that I just couldn’t really work my way around and just to plow through. One of them was a company based out of New York that was was originally given this task of recovery and after helping a few, decided it was not worth it. Therefore we had customers who have now spoken to 2 different individuals in 2 different states and now had to decide which one to believe. We returned the customer’s calls, the other company did. It took years but eventually people realized when their sites went down, that because he was not billing them, he was not concerned with their email and site uptime.
The other painful thing was domain names expiring without any contact information. I had no idea if these people were recovering or not. Phone calls went unanswered and we simply had to roll the dice. Is this a domain name that should be renewed because it’s worth something to someone? It always makes me wonder how much money I ever made on renewals because of the countless domains renewed in good faith but never paid, it was gamble that I decided to take and in some cases it paid off, in some other cases, not so much.
There were a few calls that were just priceless. One of them was a Web site and domain for BitchWithStyle.com (site no longer up). I made this call personally and had to ask this nice old lady if she or anyone she knew owned the domain name. She immediately confirmed herself as the owner and I was able to recover her site. Apparently, B.I.T.C.H. was an acronym, for “Being In Total Control Of Herself”. The best I could tell is she was a motivational speaker and consultant with a iconic red hat. I always liked her. She was a hosting and development customer for years before her death.