A twisty maze of web forms

A while back I signed up for a free basic account with Microsoft Office Live. I did it so I could test out the functionality and see if it would work for a small business I do some IT consulting for. Initially I was hopeful, but after a while I realized that the web user interface was really just bad. It was really typically of a pre-web 2.0 interface trying to do the most it could to be like a "real" application but ultimately failing.

Part of creating that account was that I had to register a domain so I picked a name I'd been contemplating the registration of but couldn't be bothered to add another $10 a year to actually do it. Since the basic account with Office Live gave free registration too it was a no brainer. However the consequence was my domain ended up being registered with a company called MelbourneIT down under. Now I'm sure they are big in Australia and there abouts, but I'd certainly never heard of them. I got to wondering what would ever happen if I wanted to get the domain away from them.

So last week I decided it was time to cancel my Office Live account and reclaim my domain. To cut a long story short lets just say it was "difficult". In fact, even as a seasoned IT veteran I would say it was one of the most complicated and arduous transfers of a domain I've yet to experience and I'm actually still waiting because MelbourneIT actually wont do a transfer until a 4 day period has expired - they sent me a confirmation email that the transfer had been requested but during that 4 day period my only option is to cancel the transfer, there is no option to confirm the transfer and get it over with. So I have to wait...

Before that it took me a long time to figure, well actually guess, that I had to just terminate my Office Live account to get the process under way. Doing that took several non-intuitive steps including going to an unrelated web site to request termination. After that I eventually got an email from Microsoft saying they had examined my request and deemed it okay. Then there was information about how to go to MelbourneIT and create an account and manage my domain from there. They were giving me 90 days free registration after the cancellation which I think is lucky because if I was a lessor or less patient mortal I would have required every days worth.

It then took me an hour or more to figure out how to associate my newly dissociated Office Live domain with a newly created MelbourneIT account. Then I had to unlock it, find the link to get a domain transfer key and initiated a transfer from my usual hosting company DreamHost. The first time around that failed because the contact details for my domain were wrong and the email went to the wrong place. I had to cancel the transfer, correct the contact details and wait for MelbourneIT to push the updates to Internic.net so DreamHost would see them. That took another day to happen and finally the destination registrar side of things went smoothly although I had to wait another half a day to get any confirmation from MelbourneIT that they had received the transfer request. Then I got that nasty "if you want to cancel click here - otherwise wait four days" email. I feel like after all this effort I'm now being treated like a potential felon buying a handgun...

So lets just say I wont be registering any more domains via Office Live any time soon. I'm looking forward to getting all my eggs back in one basket!