To save you reading the long posting below, my question is, can I urgently transfer my domain without the UDAI code to another provider to resume my mail services?
Right now, being Sunday afternoon, I have no email service as Hosting Direct have just deleted all my domain records including the MX ones. -And being Sunday, they are not open for contact.
This posting is to purely inform you in your decision about using Hosting Direct as your domain provider.
For the past year or more I have been spending $30 per month on email and web hosting with Hosting Direct. Last month I decided to migrate all my business to Google Apps. Sounds easy.
I set up Google Apps for my domain -q1.co.nz, and migrated all my email accounts across from Hosting Direct to Google. I then deleted all emails messages from hosting direct, and asked if they could please reduce my account services (at the end of my billing period) to a domain only account because all I need is to access the domain records. This is where the fun began.
I was told by a very Rude guy I think was called Ben, (didn't introduce himself or his company until I asked who and which company I was speaking to), to just cancel my web hosting via the web portal, and my domain services would still remain.
They didn't, I lost all records and services from 2pm to 9pm Friday.
When I rang on Friday arvo after many failed attempts, they told me that I would still need a hosting package from them to use my domain, WTF, but ok. So I moved onto the free package, (50Mb storage, 1Gb month bandwidth) after they naturally tried to convince me otherwise to use the $8mth package. First they had to delete all my account information including domain records , and then recreate them when the new free service comes back online.
Finally, on Friday night, my service became live and I reinstated my domain records to point to google.
On Saturday morning, I received an invoice for the October month, (i was not on a contract), and I email them asking to credit the invoice as I no longer used that service. I also asked for my UDAI number as I was thinking about taking my services elsewhere because of the customer service I had received.
Sunday morning came, received two emails, one saying the UDAI number is available via button on web site under my domains, which it appears to be broken, and the other saying the invoice was credited. I also noted I hadn't recieved any emails in the last couple of hours, so I checked my domain settings and the free hosting service.
Free hosting is now terminated and therefore no domain control/email services.