Avoid P4Host -- Domain Hijacker

E

Eric!

New member
I just wanted to relay my experiences with using P4Host.com. I had a website with them for almost 5 years. While traveling out of the country my domain name registration expired (friends alerted me to the problem). I was unable to get to internet access to renew my domain name. Kevin Vu the owner of P4Host (the one and only time I had been able to reach them by phone in 8 years of service) volunteered to relay my credit card information and get it taken care of. He just wanted a faxed letter authorizing him to renew it for me addressed to my domain registrar.

Lo and behold! He transfered the domain into his name. After 2 more years of degrading service and spammers using his servers (causing my mail server to get blacklisted several times) I decided to change hosts. This is when I found out he had put my domain (sailsarana.com) into his name. He refused to respond for over 1 year to my requests to give me the Auth Code to transfer my domain and change the name server locations because he knew I was leaving P4Host.

Finally I abandoned my domain name. I tried to contact him probably 20 times and filed 2 complaints with the BBB (that went unanswered). I had to take out a new domain name and wait for my old one to expire. After another year of waiting for my original name to expire, I was going to buy it back. But just to be spiteful, Kevin RENEWED it! Incredible!

So if you go to my old domain sailsarana.com you'll get an account suspended message (which isn't quite true because I paid every bill). He has been hosting my suspended account for over 2 years now and collecting any incoming email to that domain. Since I had that domain for almost 8 years there is no telling what personal email he might be getting.

Kevin at P4Host still refuses to respond to any tickets, emails, or phone calls. He also refuses to respond to any BBB complaints (and there are several).

I'm not the only one who has had their domain taken by this shady character. See these other reviews of this HORRIBLE business:

http://www.hostsearch.com/review/p4host_review.asp
http://www.hostingdiscussion.com/web-hosting-reviews/8866-p4host-fraud.html
http://www.000 webhost/directory/reviews/p4host.com
 
Questions 1: Where/how did you register your domain name in the first place?

Eric! said:
He transfered the domain into his name. After 2 more years of degrading service...
Click to expand...

Question 2: Eric, why did it take you 2 years to even notice it? Was the domain name not important to you? Certainly, from the way you tried to renew it, it was, so I am just really surprised you didn't ask for the domain to get pushed back to your own name after your came back home. If the bills were all paid, the company had no reason not to transfer the name back to you.

Giving someone your billing information does not give them access to your domain registrar, so the person wouldn't be able to renew it in your name.
 
Artashes said:
Questions 1: Where/how did you register your domain name in the first place?

Question 2: Eric, why did it take you 2 years to even notice it? Was the domain name not important to you? Certainly, from the way you tried to renew it, it was, so I am just really surprised you didn't ask for the domain to get pushed back to your own name after your came back home. If the bills were all paid, the company had no reason not to transfer the name back to you.
Click to expand...

A1: I registered it with Tucows.com on a 2 year basis and renewed it as needed.

A2: It sounds unusual, I know. But the verbal agreement was for him to renew it for me for 2 years because I could not get internet access for several more weeks and my site was down (we sell on-line guide books so this was a big issue for me). It was another month before I could get internet access again to verify things were ok. The FAX authorization I sent him included a copy of my passport page (as he requested to verify I was the domain holder), I had no idea he could have changed the ownership. I did not authorize the change of ownership. Kevin told me to pay P4host with my CC and he would renew it on my behalf. So I didn't do a domain lookup, I had no reason to suspect foul play. When I started having my fill of problems with P4Host I looked at moving to a new host and found he had pw0nd my domain name. When I tried to fix the problem tucows contacted the owner (Kevin) who ignored them. Tucows politely told me it wasn't their problem since I no longer owned the domain.

Why would a guy running a low end hosting company want to control my personal domain name about sailing? But he did. He won't respond to any requests, I even offered to pay him for it and to make me an offer, but nothing. When I saw he went to the step of RENEWING again it was just too much for me. Now I'm speaking out about his fraudulent company because I can't afford to take legal action.

As background information you can see the whois for yourself and his recent renewal. And see the "suspended site" too. The name "sailsarana" comes from our boat name sarana. If you are curious you can see the site under the new name and host. I've completely given up on the domain name now even though it has been referenced in several other sailing guide books...which go to the suspended page now.

nigelb said:
People get irate and see red not instructions.
Click to expand...
Actually this happened almost 2 years ago, so I'm over it. This was posted more a warning to others than a review. If would like a review I can write something using the template.
 
Last edited:
Sadly, those things happen. Giving someone an authorization to any account, control panel or domain panel holds the risks of the other person changing the administrative information. Mostly we hear about angry developers/webmasters hijacking site files but sometimes people seem to do it without any proper reasoning, just to gain some value from the act. You said it yourself, this was your first contact with him, maybe you were a little too trusting in this case. Don't get me wrong, such acts are immoral and people should be punished by eternal poking with a sharp stick but still...that won't bring you back the domain. If he did get some revenue from this, I don't know but this should be a hard-earned lesson for you about sharing personal details.
 
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