July 12, 2004

Andy P.I. - The Case of the Company with No Phone Number

Tiffany ordered a present for Caleb’s birthday (on behalf of her mom) through a website. It was by far the best deal on a Little Tikes work bench that she had found. She placed the order with her MasterCard. That was two weeks ago. As of today, we still have not received it. She tries to lookup the phone number to give them a call just to see what was taking so long. Of course, the website only has an email address, fax number, and physical address. No phone number anywhere. If there is a downfall to ordering things online, usually it is the customier service, especially when there is no phone number.

In desperation she put me, Andy, P.I., on the case. I dispensed with the small talk and went right to work. I was determined to find the info that Tiffany needed and would stop at nothing to get it (Well, of course there are things I actually would have stopped for, but it sounds more dramatic to say I would stop at nothing). All the usual avenues turned up nothing: Yellowpages.com had no listing. Switchboard.com was no help.

Most would have given up at this point, but I knew of one other trick that until now, has been a well-kept secret to those in the Internet profession. I peeked into the global "whois" domain name registry database and found the exact info I needed. I passed along the phone number to Tiffany. She made the call.The call was answered by the owner of the company in question…on his personal cell phone no less. I would have loved to know what he was thinking. He looked up the Fed-Ex tracking number, and told her that it was in Fort Worth scheduled to be delivered today. He thought he was completely safe from customer service concerns. It’s so tacky to run an e-commerce website and have no contact information available.

The secret revealed: Go to www.whois.net, type in the domain name (which in this case was familyfirstdirect.com) into the WHOIS lookup box, click "Go." And voila, what appeared was the information of the person who registered that domain name.

So the next time you get stuck by that website that has no phone number listed, don’t call me. Call upon WHOIS.