A year and a half ago, I made the stupid mistake of trying out a cut-rate domain registar/hosting provider: Host Department. For the low price of something like $80, I got my domain registered plus hosting, and it was far less expensive than the host I've been with for years. What did I learn? You get what you pay for.

After a couple of unexplained outages and a slower-than-molasses-in-January server, I decided my experiment had failed, and that's when the fun began. First, I wanted to simply continue with my domains registered there, but hosted at my regular host. Oops; they cancelled my whole account, and I lost my business domain (fourlittlebees.com). It was being held for $30, during which time I could pay $200 to get it back. Who's squatting on it and has been since the second they "deleted" my account? ENOM.

Once I saw that mess, I started the process to transfer my remaining three domains out of there. Six months later, I got one domain, but the .com domain? The one I've PAID to transfer TWICE because Host Department has failed to release it each time? Now squatted on. By ENOM.

At what point is ICANN going to grow a pair and force registrars to abide by the terms they agree to as registrars? If I look on the control panel for my "new" registrar, you can see the transfer, still active. Still waiting for the EPP key that never comes. ICANN is nothing but a toothless figurehead setting out policies that never seem to be followed with no repercussions. Complain to them? They send you back to the registrar who tells you they can't "fix" it since the domain was sold. TO THEMSELVES.

As long as Google continues to allow squatters to run Adsense (and why shouldn't they... they make money on them, right?) and ICANN continues to turn a blind eye to predatory squatting by registrars, the practice will continue. But I'd avoid Host Department like the plague. The money I thought I would save didn't even come close to paying for my time and aggravation.