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One thing that has become apparent, especially to those who have .tel domains at different registrars, is the wide gap in utility and ease of use among their respective backend control panels. Each registrar is demonstrating their "commitment" to the extension by the products and services they are providing domain owners.

Let's start a very simple registrar scorecard based on 5 levels of overall satisfaction and using the smilies as markers thusly:

= very happy overall; would recommend to a friend

= generally satisfied; not thinking of moving come renewal time

= meh, I gotta have a registrar; guess this is as good as any

= more than a few problems; NOT a happy camper

= That's it! I'm going postal!

First out of the block:

Moniker: . A bit biased as I have been with them for 100 years and know their system well. I like the the fact that all of my .tel domains are in one account and can be easily accessed by a drop down menu. Very helpful when managing hundreds of domains.

Cheers,

I'm with Dynadot. First time I ever tried them and registered some .tels.
Very happy, after charging my account, the names appeared immediately in my dynadot account and then telhosting account

i recommended a friend to dynadot and he signed up a .tel through them as well

name.com: at overall because the support is not that good, I had to wait about 2 days to receive the answer of a question about .tel

name.com --- has all the features I want, and I haven't needed to file a support issue with them, so I guess their slow turnaround hasn't affected me.

webnames.ca --- about a 2-day support response time which was annoying when my .tel's wouldn't resolve for about a week following launch. Also have gotten responses from support on multiple occasions that are just false (I think I've read the Telnic pdfs more carefully than their support reps). Will be transferring away from here once 60 days expires.

domainmonster.com --- not going to give it a vote because I don't actually have any domains here, but I wanted to mention that a support request to them regarding a possible transfer was answered (accurately) within a few hours.

Webnames -
In some regards they fall into the lower category since their pricing sucks, but they are a solid provider. They were successful in my highly coveted landrush acquisition, so that made me happy. I only have one dot-tel with them and if their pricing doesn't improve, I'll probably relocate before my 3 years is up. I have had no problems with their customer support and their response time was decent when I did use it (during landrunsh).

TelCartel -
Although we have some advertising for TelCartel here, we are supporting them because they offer quality service and good prices. I have been using them for my own regs with great success. Searching is easy and their telhosting CP is as good as any. Any domains I add info to resolve quickly and their zone creation time has improved significantly recently. I have had the chance to deal with their customer support on a fairly deep level and they are very responsive.

bump...

"shock" but smilies not working?

is how I feel about my current registrar's handling of .tel, but considering we have about 100 other domains with them, i'll wait a little longer before updating our NEXT MOVE and blasting them or praising.

"shock"

I registered some .tels with www.MyDomain.com and some with DomainMonster.com... now that they are close to renewal I have decided to move all the names to DomainMonster.com... the main reason was because MyDomains has a 1000 record limit and DomainMonster has NO LIMIT...

So I start the process and get to the point where I need an authorization code from MyDomain.ccom.. so I log in and follow the steps and it says my code will be emailed to me... nothing.. so two days later I call and they tell me that I can't get the code myself, they have to create a support ticket and that they will send me the code in less than 48 hours...

So right now I am on hold with MyDomain.com for the second time today.. the first time was 11 minutes then someone picked up and humg up... so far this time its been 24 minutes holding without ever talking to anyone yet...

I thought 48 hours was ridiculous, but now this? I HIGHLY reccomend not using MyDomain.com for ANY service after this!

Steve

Follow-up.. after several more calls over the next week I was finally able to get my domains moved from MyDomains.com... Every step of the way I complained about the delays and lack of customer service and I was told over and over that they were short on staff... anyway even after I have moved all the .tels I continue to get emails from MyDomains telling me that my .tel names are expiring (or now expired)... crazy