Standard Operating Procedures

I find that your thoughts on this are completely reasonable, but unfortunately not many work like this. I completely agree with you, as I think that's how they should work.

 

You should encourage your client to inform this scenario to the management team of Telco. I hope they will take required steps to improve their customer services.

 

Might sound reasonable, but a little far fetched. Domains are sold for just a few dollars with tiny tiny profit margins and larger domain registrars have millions of domains with many being renewed at the appropriate time and a large number never being renewed again. The cost of a telephone call and the time it might take someone to make the call and find an appropriate person to check whether they wanted the domain renewed would wipe-out any profit made - actually, it would end up costing the company money.....that's why the process is automated so prices are kept low.

Domain renewal is automated with reminder messages being sent at regular intervals to the client. It's not the domain registrars job to pre-guess their clients intentions on whether they will want to renew their domain or not, or whether the client has mismanaged their own domain renewal because a single person was responsible for managing it and that person has now left. The fact that the registrar will hold onto the domain for a few days after expiry and immediately re-enable the domain for a client when they realize what has happened (usually when their site and email stops working) seems to me to be reasonable and fair. To expect more is probably asking too much.

Smaller companies may operate like you want when they have a personal relationship with their clients and know they are still in business when the domain is due to expire and may contact someone else in the company to prompt them, but for big registrars it's a numbers game, and personal service and micromanagement like that isn't going to happen.

 

I dealt with a problem similar to this before with another large company. I now require all of my new clients to use my server, mail server, and dns server as I setup and manage all of them myself. I then have full control of everything and don't rely on any hosting providers, to mess something up.

Stuff falls through the cracks occasionally especially with large companies, it's all about minimizing issues down the road.

 

Generally you are correct, however there are some reasons which make this unreasonable for both parts.

First of all, with the hosting company there is a mixture of client types:
Client A buys hosting+free domain -> when renewal comes and hosting is paid for, domain is automatically renewed
Client B buys hosting but keeps domain with previous registrar -> company not responsible for domain
Client C buys hosting and later transfers domain too -> domain and hosting have different expiration dates and notifications are needed for both

So what most decent hosts do is send a few automated emails before renewal is due, so the customer has enough time to react. However, apart from that, the clients have an Account where all products and their expiration dates should be displayed. Now if you add phone calls to that equation, apart from the few happy and grateful clients you will get a lot of not-so-happy responses because:

- if I am a respected businessman I would certainly be keeping an eye on my renewals
- I already saw the emails and Account but I am just waiting for the last possible minute, so those constant reminders start to annoy me
- if I have decided to drop it I would get irritated that I am constantly being contacted even when I am ignoring the reminders

Of course those are just possible scenarios I've all experienced during my work with many webhosts. Now, for your case, the best idea would've been whenever ANY employee with any kind of admin access leaves, all usernames and passwords should be retrieved beforehand. And from what I understood you did not have access to the admin emails, but did you not have access to the hosting account at all? Because if that is the case you probably should've alerted the host beforehand and find a way to change ownership of the account itself.

In any ways, there are a LOT of webhosting companies, all with different policies and procedures. I am all up for constant communication with clients and building not only work relations but genuine trust and friendship. I have the pleasure of working for a company like that, but sadly I do seem to live in a romantic and untarnished world and many players out there don't seem to think the same way

 

Ah yes, you would be surprised how many times the case of the "Disappearing Webmaster" happens in the hosting world, its quite the master trick
Your recommendation is absolutely valid, though if the host is trusted, professional and they provide client area for better management, there is no reason not to put those eggs in one basket, still it will be easier to manage if all is in one place.