Need help... stupid registrar...

Long story short a former client forgot their domain credentials for a site I built 2 years ago

the domain is registered with namecheap (who i will never use again)

now because we forgot the account information the domain was associated with, we made a new account and purchased 5 years of domain holding

this purchase doesn't let us edit any domain settings or give us renewal updates. namecheap is convinced we are not the original owners and won't give us access to the domain

i tried explaining this entire situation is because the client lost all the information, so we have nothing to give them. They want the names associated with the old domain but they say the names i gave them don't match.

The domain has only ever had 1 registrant (us) and now we bought it for 5 years so we need access to it

namecheap refuses and now they are saying they can only do it if we get a "valid U.S. court order and/or subpoena." wtf??? this is what happens when you forget your account information with namecheap?

namecheap also will not stop holding the domain unless we pay them $200 so i can't even register it with a normal company

all we want is access to the domain and to get renewal updates, am i crazy for thinking this should be simple?

does anyone have any suggestions? i'm not paying the $200 , i already paid namecheap for 5 years, dont see why i cant access the domain. they straight up don't believe that we are the owners, even tho the domain has only ever been registered once and i told them we lost the account info

i dont know what to do and i really want to wash my hands of this client haha. i shouldn't even help them because they obviously passed on the maintenance offer i made them, but run to me for help. any suggestions would be welcomed!

is domain privacy protected?

How did they pay for the Domain originally? If you can provide a credit card statement or PayPal transaction number it should help.
Have you checked WHOIS? Did it have WHOIS privacy? If it did then send an email to the WHOIS email and it might show in one of the clients email accounts.

How did you renew the domain for 5 years if it's in another account ? The domain was expired ? Also unless that client has 100s of mails it shouldn't be hard to find the right mail address by forgotten password option. It's a the domain registrar account so he must had used one of his main mail accounts.

I guess the problem is how can you prove you are the owner of domain ? You will need some kind of proof about the domain. Like WILSON said money trail might work.

iblackhatseo said:

is domain privacy protected?

Click to expand...

Asif WILSON Khan said:

How did they pay for the Domain originally? If you can provide a credit card statement or PayPal transaction number it should help.
Have you checked WHOIS? Did it have WHOIS privacy? If it did then send an email to the WHOIS email and it might show in one of the clients email accounts.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion guys, unfortunately the domain is .ca so it has privacy by default. ill try and see if i can hunt down the original payment method but that might be a short in the dark

JabbaTheHutt said:

How did you renew the domain for 5 years if it's in another account ? The domain was expired ? Also unless that client has 100s of mails it shouldn't be hard to find the right mail address by forgotten password option. It's a the domain registrar account so he must had used one of his main mail accounts.

I guess the problem is how can you prove you are the owner of domain ? You will need some kind of proof about the domain. Like WILSON said money trail might work.

Click to expand...

namecheaps policy allows us to renew the domain if no one else is using it, but they won't acknowledge our ownership of it.

the client is pretty unfamiliar with computers and only has 2 emails, both of which have no trace of the domain.

as Wilson said ill try and look for a paper trial

I just got a response back from namecheap, they are saying they can't do anything unless its through legal channels. the site is up, we purchased the registration and it's been hosted with the same host forever

This is the reason you need to put real details on the who is.

Sombrero said:

This is the reason you need to put real details on the who is.

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i'm pretty sure we did, this was a site for a foundation so nothing sketchy was done

So there's no reason to deny access. Just remember the right credentials.

Sombrero said:

So there's no reason to deny access. Just remember the right credentials.

Click to expand...

Thats helpful! i'll just remember!

Maybe the client had used foundations name as owner and it's location as contact details ? Also I don't know about Namecheap but with Godaddy you must add a phone number. If your client had done that then you guys can ask Namecheap to verify the ownership through phone. There must be something to connect you guys with the domain owner contact details, admin contact details, phone, credit cards etc. If I'm a Namecheap support representative even I would start wondering why you guys can't provide anything at all.

Honestly mate your client is the stupid one here if there is no way to figure which name, mail or phone he/she used for the account, Not Namecheap. They are just following standard procedure. There are plenty of scums out there who try to steal domains and I'm sure they deal with those daily basis. Since you haven't couldn't come up with any proper proof they must had put you guys in that basket too.

Anyway since the domain is renewed for 5 years so you guys have plenty of time to find some solution. Usually I keep clients domain details with me just because of this kind of situations. Not passwords but email / contact details they used and also usually I asked to put my details as admin.