Speednames lost my domain name

Here is a cautionary tale. For years I'd used Netnames to register my domain names, let's say that one of them is abc.com. Netnames moved it to Speednames, a company they bought, and abc.com renewals were done with Ascio (another company bought I believe by Netnames).

I paid Speednames £34 in December 2018 to renew abc.com. When not renewed soon afterwards I enquired why and was told it would be done. Well, on 10 February 2019 my domain name expired and got an email from Speednames asking if I wanted it renewed! Yes, I did and I then got this email:

On Mon, 25 Feb 2019 at 23:47, Speednames UK Technical Support <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Roger,

Thank you for contacting Speednames UK support.

We are happy to inform you that your domain has been renewed until 2020-02-10. Refer to the logs below:

Domain Name: ABC.COM
Registry Domain ID: 19582071_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.ascio.com
Registrar URL: http://www.ascio.com
Updated Date: 2019-02-18T17:08:58Z
Creation Date: 2000-02-10T17:08:51Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2020-02-10T17:08:51Z

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Regards,

Walter V.
Technical Support Specialist
speednames.uk


I've now discovered that my domain name has been grabbed by SNAPNAMES and is up for sale! The response of Speednames has been the worst I've known in my entire life, they have failed to explain what's happened, have failed to answer my last email demanding to get someone senior to sort this out and have refunded my money!

I could do with some advice here.

If it is a .com you need to contact ICANN, the internet domain central registrars

An update: I have today received an email from Speednames: "We purchased the domain back from the company that snapped it up when it lapsed." This is after I had bitterly complained about their service. Just think what would have happened if my domain name had been of critical importance to my business.

Might be worth a look at some of these tales of woe:
Speednames Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.speednames.com