For the better part of the last two months, this blog has been missing in action. It all started when I had to renew my domain name. I had contracted with Google to have this happen. Google had handled the task for a couple of years and I was confident that they could get it right. Sometime in July they sent me a email saying that my card on file had changed and I needed to update it to renew my domain name. I updated the card.
I got another notice and and updated it again. Then no contact. The renewal date came and went and the web page plugged along without issue. Then about a month later, no web page. This began my saga. I discovered that Godaddy was the actual registrant and that Google was just the collector of the fees. But I could not go to Godaddy to solve the problem, I had to go to Google. To complicate matters even more, Godaddy and Google were on the out with this program.
After speaking with Godaddy further I learned that they could redeem the name but I needed the account number from my Google account to plug into the request to redeem the name. So I tried several time to log into the admin account get this number I needed. Google would not let me log in. I kept getting error message after error message. I would write Google and they would respond. There was never a direct answer. They would say I needed to go here and do this, but they never said what I was missing or doing wrong in the process.
After about a hundred emails I got a phone number that I called and spoke to a real person at Google. Yes I said I spoke to a real person at Google. I don't believe it either. They kept telling me that I needed to log into my admin account and I could get the information. I kept doing it and kept getting error messages.
Then I got the bright idea to take screen shots of the process and errors and send them along with my emails. After this I got the message that I have to sign into my Google account for the domain name. Finally I guessed that I had another Google account that I did not know that I had. I got someone on the phone and they confirmed that I was indeed trying to log into the wrong account. Of course they would not tell me the name of correct account.
After much effort I was able to get into the account, find this mysterious number, pay an outrageous fee and redeem the web name.
And so I'm back.
