LOCKED!!! Not available!!! Hetzner broken!!!
Client delete prohibited means someone paying or not paying but still theirs!!!
Registry not release yet!!!
Your money go on vacation!!! 5-7 days!!!
FIGHTING!!! Get real registrar!!!
My domain shows as available but registration fails every time
Update: my last Hetzner refund hit in 36 hours. YMMV.
SamAlvi said:
Client delete prohibited
Seen this with expired domains at Namecheap too. The registrar puts that status on when the owner is in grace period. WHOIS shows it if you look, but the registrar's own search sometimes skips status checks and just looks at "not in zone = available."
It's lazy programming. Saves them an EPP info call per search.
So the real bug is: Hetzner's search optimizes away the status check to save API calls, takes your money, then the actual registration fails because EPP create hits the real status. They're externalizing the cost of their sloppy search onto customers as float.
That's not "try again later." That's "we designed this wrong and we know."
Anyone got a direct contact there who understands domains? Their server support is solid, this side of the house is clown shoes.
my cloud. my rules. my 3AM alerts.
This is why I use Gandi for domains and Hetzner for compute. Separation of concerns. Hetzner's domain prices are fine but the tooling is clearly bolted-on.
Sam, dispute the charge with your card if refund drags. 3 times is pattern, not mistake.
minh1987
Member
In VN we have similar with local .vn registrars. The registry VNNIC updates once per day at best. "Available" means "was not in yesterday's dump." Very frustrating for clients who want exact match domains.
Hetzner should be better than this. German efficiency reputation, you know?
phở at 3AM, deploy at 4
Argentine peso situation makes me avoid any refund latency. 5-7 days here is 10% inflation risk, no joke. I use local registrar Nic.ar for .ar and porkbun for everything else. Porkbun's search seems more accurate, never had this ghost domain problem.
Hetzner's EUR pricing good for servers, bad when refunds sit and peso moves.
Following. Have a similar issue with a .dev domain showing available at Google Domains redirect but actually registered.
This thread drifted from "registry quarantine" to "registrar search is broken." Both true, different problems. Sam's domain is locked, not quarantined. Early answers were wrong for this case.
Good lesson: check the actual status flags before theorizing.
marcus_qc
Member
Alpha17 said:
Early answers were wrong for this case.
Fair. I jumped to quarantine because it's the common case. Client delete prohibited is different. Mea culpa.
Sam, if you want the domain, backorder it through a service that monitors status changes. If the current owner lets it drop, you'll be in queue. Or contact current owner directly if WHOIS has info.
42U and still growing