I've got a client's site ready to go on an S-Drive account, but her previous web host is refusing to give her (the client) any account info (user names, passwords). The host is a one-man operation and refuses to tell her where he even registered the domain names and where the site is actually hosted.
I've gotten some info from whois look-ups, but everything is listed as Locked: Client Transfer Prohibited.

Do we just refuse to pay the hosting on the old site so he'll take it down?

That doesn't help with the domain names, though. One is due to expire next month (the other is good until 2016), and she would like to keep using these domain names (which are also her business name).

Is there anything we can do?

Paintbrush, I guess she obtained at least one of them when setting up the hosting, which may legally belong to the hosting company, I have same issue with a justhost account an acquaintance of mine the chauffeur company website i have put on s drive

Domainmonster.com have a great service that might help you grab them back as they expire, but in meantime are you not even able to get redirects set up

tempting to say lets see the urls

Would this website help?

http://www.bbb.org/

I don't know the location of the hosting provider though, and if he were local, I'd pay him a visit, repeatedly if needed.

Sounds like a pretty devious operator to me. Good luck with it paintbrush.

That's why you always register your own domains. Then you own them.

Can't go back in time. She had all this done a few years ago. Small town, local developer... hosting plan is $25 per month (no maintenance/updates included)

I sent the guy an email asking for some basic info and got a really snarky reply with his hourly rate and Paypal info. Says I should have all the info I need without having to bother him. He did offer to send the client her passwords, etc. – attached to an invoice.

I think the client will be spreading the word about this experience throughout her community. Bren, I will encourage her to share this with the BBB as well

Without actually naming anything... here's a clue (see photo):
http://www.coffeecup.com/forums/shoppin … ategories/

The S-Drive site is coming up in search results, so we need to get rid of the old site ASAP and get her own name on the CC site.

Tom, I had her register all the other versions we could get (.net, .us...).

Hells bells paintbrush, that website is going to do you in.

Maybe we could point a lot of traffic at the site and crash it.

FWIW, complaining to the BBB doesn't do any good unless the offending business is a member. Just sayin...

.co.uk is available for about £3.00 year, you could re set the location to us
and baby version has only got .com taken
interested what i should be searching in google to get it to appear in uk, as i can only find it by using its name
could be a good export product cant find anything similar in uk

I could put a link to your cc site from a high ranking uk site if it helps

Has someone picked up on this thread, theres a block on the .com now showing up in UK