What contact info did you use? My partner is the author of this blog post, and neither of us has been contacted by Cloudflare that we know of.
My original ticket number was 3029706 but it seems to have disappeared after the support platform migration.
Thanks. I just looked at your situation, and you're right, that was our mistake. I took action and replied to your ticket with details; hope that helps.
I'm not Alexis, but we just looked over your ticket together. I think the initial place where this became more complicated was the assumption made during the first reply to your ticket, which was that you had already exhausted the password reset attempts. You mentioned (here, not in the ticket) not receiving them; maybe we should have tried harder to figure out why the password reset option wasn't working for you.
At any rate, once that point is reached, we act with the security of the domain in mind. If the handle in question belongs to an individual and you have access to the email associated with the account, it's as easy as sending a copy of your ID. In this case it was a company handle, which requires some proof that you're authorized to act on behalf of the company.
This kind of situation is exactly why we offer reseller-type accounts (free of charge), which allow you to control your clients' domains and handles from one place, while leaving the domains in their name.
Given that there may have been an easier solution available, I'm sorry this went down the way it did. But at the same time, we don't think it's unreasonable to ask for proof of ID when you're trying to gain access to an account: We don't have access to any payment information that could reliably identify you, as it all goes directly through our payment processor. We understand when you explain the situation, but such explanations are all too often indistinguishable from social engineering, and so we take it a step further--for the sake of the security of people's domains.
We are humans, but we're paranoid humans, and a great deal of our customers appreciate that.
If you ever decide to give us another chance, you can reach me at aj (at) gandi.net. I can help you set up a reseller account (and do my best to restore your faith in us).
[Speaking for myself, not Gandi, and IANAL]
To answer your question, I'd probably read the contracts of the other dealers, find their clause saying they reserve the right to take the car back for whatever reason they damn well please, sigh in helpless frustration at the state of contract law, and make my decision based on all available factors, including the actual experience of other people who purchased cars from that dealer.
Hello from Gandi! Thanks for the recommendation. You should contact our corporate services team, as they might be able to make this happen for you :)
gandi.net/corporate
Hi, if you were paying through our international payment processor, you should give it another try, as we have a payment processor in the US now.
And if you were paying through our US processor, I'd love to have the support ticket number to look into it, as we're really working to eliminate such payment issues.
Hi, AJ from Gandi. That sounds terrible, and not like us at all. Do you think you could provide the ticket number from the subject line of the support email so we can investigate further?
For the record: we can provide a callback upon request, and we have live chat support as well.
Hi, AJ from Gandi here. Do you have the ticket number from the subject line of the support email? If we made a mistake like that, we should make it right.
Not sure what you mean by "holding them hostage," but we don't take down domains without a good reason. In the rare case that we do suspend a domain, we always tell you why. If that's not what happened in your case, please contact us or reply here with your ticket number so we can look into it.
For the record, we found out about tld-list.com via this thread. We don't pay for advertising as a matter of principle. We don't even have an affiliate program (though we get so many requests for it that we're considering it).
@timbowhite: Nice work on the site. Feel free to contact us, we'd love to send you some swag! Is the code open source, by the way?
Our legal team says:
"You have obviously cut a big part of the article of Gandi's contract. Many registries which operate new gTLD's are entitled to cancel domain names at their own discretion in the light of their national laws (many German registries retain the right to suspend domain names if they do not comply with the laws of the Republic)."
Anyone can write to our legal department directly at legal [at] gandi [dot] net; we're happy to answer any questions.