I purchased 25 seperate domain names from Web.com Jan 30 2004.  I went
to renew the names today and there are only 21 listed there.  We
purchased Hipshop.com, Dazzling.com, Travelfree.com, and Bidbay.com
and have the receipts.  The rep said these domains were already taken
before we purchased them and it was our responsibility check them out,
and we should have checked them in a couple  "who is" directories.  Is
this a common situation? Is this legal?  Do we have any legal recourse
to file aginst the Web.com?  False representation, or something
similar to it maybe?  Is "web.com" a trustworthy company?  Please also
advise us on a few nice, big, safe, trustable, and inexpensive
companies to transfere, and renew our domain names with.

Thank you,
Stephen

Unless ot appears in "who is" you are not the legal owner of
domain.For more informations of such  dispute,please visit site
www.icann.org

Hipshop.com, Dazzling.com, Travelfree.com, and Bidbay.com were all
registered prior to Jan 30 2004. So, the only thing you may be able to
do is get refunded the amount you paid to register these domains. I
have had this happen a few times with other registrar companies,
generally the amount is refunded within a few minutes if the
registration fails. Although web.com has a fairly low price, I have
never done business with them.

Visit: http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/registrar-stats-2003.html 
Scroll down a bit on this page to see the registrars which had the
most domains registered in 2003.

Network Solutions was #1. They charge $34.99 for a 1-year
registration, which is expensive. They have names like Amazon.com
registered their and have been around  a long time, so many large
businesses have their domains at NetSol.

Ev1servers.net is low priced ($6.49), but their control panel is a
little difficult to understand. They are a reseller of Tucows (in the
#2 spot), which I have heard is a secure place to keep your domains.

Godaddy (#3) is low priced ($8.95), but not very professional in my
opinon, they have lots of ads for their other services. Not the most
secure. I have heard of several cases where domains were stolen while
registered at godaddy.

Register.com (#4) Overpriced. Read their terms if you are going to
consider them. I've never used them.

Enom.com (#5) is my favourite. I have most of my domains with enom.com
and recommend them the most. I have a $6.95 account with them, you can
probably find one for $8.95 from one of their resellers. It is $29.95
directly from enom. So it may be an obstacle to get an account, but
their control panel is friendly, good customer support. Is secure, as
long as no one gets your account login info, then domains can
easily/immediately be transferred to another user's account. Also,
namecheap.com is a reseller of enom at $8.88 and has a nice control
panel. I haven't heard any complaints about them with security. With
namecheap, you cannot login at enom.com however.

Dotster.com (#10) is easy to use, but $14.95

Moniker.com (#28) is dedicated to security. A little pricy though,
$16.99 to $8.79. I don't have any complaints with their control panel.

Good luck choosing one.

I've used many different companies over the years, but the best place
I've seen to register domains is www.simpledomainregistration.com .
They have fair prices and their customer service is great. They also
have a powerful control panel and offer many free options with your
domains.

As for your particular case, they also check availability before
taking your money, so you won't have to worry about having the problem
you just had.

Regards,
Brett