My hair hasn’t been cut since before Olivia’s birth, except for some long bangs and layers I put in it last week out of desperation. It’s now down to my waist, and I want it gone, especially before summer gets here.

The last time I cut off a lot of hair, I donated it to Locks of Love. I just read up on them on Wikipedia and learned that they’ve been under a lot of criticism for selling more hair than they turn into wigs.

According to a 2003 report by the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance, in 2002 alone Locks of Love had raised over $150,000 by selling donated hair and had received another $213,000 in charitable contributions and grants, but provided only 113 human-hair and 39 synthetic wigs.

That handful of wigs must have been damn expensive.

The same Wikipedia article listed two other organizations that accept hair donations. Beautiful Lengths makes wigs for women who have lost their hair from cancer treatments. Wigs for Kids provides wigs for, uh, kids who’ve lost their hair due to various medical reasons.

I really like the idea of donating my hair, especially to help a child, especially since I know a woman who’s had to live with alopecia universalis since she was a young child. But I may not be able to.

According to the Beautiful Lengths and Wigs for Kids sites, they don’t accept hair that has been chemically treated (permed, bleached, or colored). It’s been about 2 1/2 years since I’ve used a permanent color on my hair, but about half of the length I’d remove has been colored (though it faded away long ago). I’ve sent an email to Wigs for Kids asking whether or not they would accept my hair. I hope they will, because it’s coming off regardless, and I’d rather not just throw it away.

Years ago, I began using Registerfly as my domain registrar. I’d always been annoyed by their web site, but they did what I needed for a good price. Until November.

Around Thanksgiving, we got the notice that one of our domains was due for renewal. I took care of it while we were at my parents’ house, then got another notice when we returned home. I tried again to renew, but kept getting errors on their site. I tried again a few days later, and still more errors. I submitted help tickets but didn’t get a response until just before the domain expired. As in, the day of. Then, even though it renewed on time, the site continued to show in their system as expired. And I discovered that they’d charged me repeatedly for the attempted renewals, even though they hadn’t gone through. I had to have about five charges refunded. Then I discovered another charge from the original renewal attempt. This time, instead of refunding me, they renewed the domain for ANOTHER year, then said they couldn’t refund the duplicate charge because it had been applied to a renewal.

It wasn’t until I made an angry phone call to their toll number that they finally refunded the charge. The whole thing took a month to resolve. By then, I had more domains coming up for renewal and decided to find a new registrar. Wanting to get them moved as quickly as possible, I started the process of transferring them to GoDaddy. I’ve heard mixed things about them, but I just wanted to get away from Registerfly without paying an arm and a leg.

The transfer process was simple enough on GoDaddy’s end, but Registerfly made it an ordeal. Some error in their system made me unable to turn off the whois privacy protection for a few of my domains so I couldn’t update my contact info and thus couldn’t confirm the transfer requests. (Registerfly’s system said the domains in question didn’t exist when I tried to update info, but they appeared fine and active elsewhere.) My first trouble ticket got a response of “we’re working on it, try again in a day, or we’ll change it manually for you.” So I waited a day, then several more, and it still didn’t work. And they stopped responding to trouble tickets.

I ended up asking around and got a referral to submit a complaint to ICANN. Unfortunately, they just pass the complaint along and keep a record. They don’t do anything actively, but I figured it was better than nothing. As I was pondering the merits of talking to a lawyer, the next available option, I received a notice that Registerfly had fixed the problem. I was finally able to update my information. By that time, though, the transfer requests had expired with GoDaddy, so I had to restart those, and pay more because I wasn’t able to include them in the previous bulk transfer.

Since I transferred my domains, I still get renewal notices from them, along with their sales pitches. My domains are also still listed in their system as if they’re the registrar of record, and some are even flagged as expired, including the one I renewed in Nov/Dec at the start of this crap. I’ve submitted another trouble ticket, telling them to fix their damn system and stop sending me notices. Of course, I haven’t gotten a response yet.

So, it was with bitter glee that I read this post at King Nomar Dot Com that Registerfly is in danger of losing their ICANN accreditation in 10 days if they don’t get their act together and resolve their internal and customer support issues. Unfortunately, this action comes too late to help many of Registerfly’s 75,000+ victims customers, who’ve already lost their domains or are on the verge of doing so.

And the cause of Registerfly’s woes? According to King Nomar:

A lawsuit filed by RegisterFly’s parent company, Unified Names, blames the meltdown on misuse of company funds by President and CEO Kevin Medina, who was fired by the company’s board. The suit alleges that Medina spent company funds on liposuction surgery and escort services….

…and…

“After his termination, Mr. Medina deleted email accounts, access to support tools, and access for our risk/billing department to issue refunds,” RegisterFly’s Glenn Stansbury said in a statement posted at RegisterFlies, a customer protest site. RegisterFly is also reported to have changed the root password of its web server to prevent sabotage.

Nice.

If you’re a current Registerfly customer, I urge you to find a new registrar as soon as possible. Registerflies, a customer protest site, contains a very helpful FAQ on common issues with Registerfly, how to transfer, and recommendations and some coupons for new registrars. I’m glad I got away when I did and didn’t lose any of my domains.