Where have you been

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.