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  1. !!! TL;DR ALERT !!! In a thread I started, I believe yesterday, I mentioned that I had purchased a domain -- two, actually (a .com and a .net) -- for which the company had yet to reply with an email indicating receipt of payment, and that yesterday they emailed me asking what DNS servers I wanted for my domain. I responded in turn, expecting that someone would at least acknowledge they got the email about DNS, but no one did. Thinking maybe it was my own error or some glitch in the system, I also cc'ed a copy to other addresses, one for Billing, one for Accounts, one for General Info, and another for Orders. No reply has yet come into my email, and I'm getting a little apprehensive -- especially after reading some reports about this company online. The company is called Katz Global Media, and reportedly is run out of some fellow's trailer park in Arizona, named Gordon Hayes aka Scott Morgan. (The first email was signed by a "Paris Hayes," either a family member/spouse or pseudonym, I can't be sure.) A legal battle ensued over a possible cybersquatter case involving a family-owned restaurant in California for which the owner, a man named Tom, had neglected to renew the domain TomsFamilyRestaurants.com (which is now unreachable), and saw it snapped up by an anonymous registrant who bought it with Katz and was accused of using it for "bad faith" purposes. This Tom's Family Restaurants case was back in 2005, I believe, and there's another (archived) thread at a forum called Web Hosting Talk dated from the same year or thereabouts discussing the allegedly dubious merits of Katz as a webhost and registrar. The thread mentions another site known as CattyShaq.com (via Internet Archive), on which a series of threads (not readable, only viewable via the Wayback Machine) issuing complaints was deleted when the owner of Katz threatened legal action for "defamation of character." CattyShaq appears to no longer exist in the form it once existed, and is now some other site written entirely in what appears to be Japanese. But this was, of course, seven years ago, and this being 2012, Like Mulder (or was it Scully?) said on The X-Files, "I want to believe" -- I want to give Katz the benefit of the doubt in terms of processing my account, so I am going to wait until at least Friday of next week, since Monday is a holiday in the United States and Katz, as mentioned above, is located in Arizona. I also don't know how long it will take for the payment to even get to Arizona from where I mailed it (the East Coast, so cross-country), especially considering the sadly ever-decreasing staff and schedule of the once stalwart U.S. Postal delivery. Several surreptitious fly-by-night sites operating in the MLM, HYIP and "discount RX" realms (99% of these from countries like China, India and various former Soviet republics) are hosted and/or registered with Katz, and it has been speculated that the owner is either involved somehow in some of these, or intentionally denies knowledge of the websites under the Katz trust, "pleading the Fifth" but with dubious merit. Just to point out, I am NOT running any of these kinds of services. I simply registered my own name (well, a pseudonym), not for illegitimate purposes but because I do not want certain people in my past/private life to be aware of my personal blog/website. I have suffered threats and harassment from personal acquaintances in the past, and hoped "anonymous registration" would have allowed me to make a "fresh start." Unfortunately, I feel as though I'm one of the gullible honest folks caught up in something screwy, one of the few golden eggs out of a rotten dozen all broken in the same spoiled omelette. (You kind of get what I'm saying here, right?) I went through Katz because I do need something like they purport to provide -- completely anonymous registration that not only masks your personal information in Whois records, but doesn't even ask you for it when you sign up. I also do not have a credit card or checking account and would have needed to pay by paper currency, which I (foolishly?) did. I am also boycotting Go Daddy because of Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons' abhorrent passion for elephant hunting and his company's stance on the recent SOPA initiative (I also am patently disgusted by the Danica Patrick ads). Katz promises that Whois anonymity is bundled with registration and is not subject to an extra fee, like other hosting providers and registrars, another aspect that attracted me because of my extremely limited budget. Now, however, I am unsure the status of my domain registration and what to do regarding contacting customer service. I cannot claim copyright infringement because the name I registered is one that would be applied to a person and not a company. I am posting here, for advice, after asking a similar question on Yahoo! Answers about the situation (a few days after asking another one about how long mailing takes from NY to AZ). The responder of that last one said it would take no more than 3 days. It is now Friday, 5 days after mailing, and I'm still waiting on an email to confirm they got my DNS request. I know it's a desert out there, hence no water, but something smells fishy out in Tucson, Arizona. So should I wait until Friday of next week to contact them, which is what I intend to do, to either call up their line, email the "emergency" address, or IM via their ICQ #? If so, what should my next course of action be if (1) my DNS is not ready, (2) they haven't received the payment or (3) they don't get back to me? How can I make sure I can still use my domains? As I said, I'm on not even a shoestring budget -- more like a frayed thread -- and obviously can't afford legal fees if there is a legit red flag. My whole purpose for going with Katz was to avoid paperwork and identity requests in the first place. Does it cost money to file for an investigation with the BBB? Is it possible to request help from ICANN if something goes wrong?
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