who owns a domain?

[#1]

hi folks
your advice please
When i joned plusnet in may 2011 I transferred my domain and associated e-mail from F2S to 000webhost and ipage.
I recently got a bill from Talk Talk (who took over F2S and was my reason for leaving them). They say they still own the domain and I have to continue paying them.
I would love to stuff it to them. your help please 

[#2]

What does this say about your domain http://mxtoolbox.com/Whois.aspx

[#3]

Well for a start no-one really "owns" a domain, it is "registered". To comment more we'd need to know "where" it is, e.g. .com, .co.uk etc. and who the registrar is.
Various companies can charge you for it, e.g.:
a "renewal fee" to extend the registration period, every year or so depending....
a "management/admin fee" (which would normally be covered by a contract between you and them) to manage the registration and other aspects
a hosting fee, to provide services such as DNS, email, web site, storage space etc. etc. (again a contract would apply)
So you need to know what contracts you have/had in relation to all those and possibly other services relating to it. And who provides those services now.
A "whois" will tell a fair bit, but not everything.

[#4]

@strat
Domain name:
loftusyorks.me.uk
Registrant:
Peter Loftus
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
xx Primrose Valley Road
Filey
North Yorkshire

[#5]

The relevant bits are:

Registrar:
    Register.com Inc [Tag = REGISTER]
    URL: http://www.register.com

This shows who the domain is registered with, who you have to pay renewal fees to.

Relevant dates:
    Registered on: 20-Mar-2004
    Expiry date:  20-Mar-2015
    Last updated:  06-Mar-2014

This shows when the fees are generally due, which in your case isn't until next year now.

Name servers:
    ns1.ipage.com
    ns2.ipage.com

This shows that the hosting has been set to iPage.com

[#6]

Quote from: avatastic

This shows who the domain is registered with, who you have to pay renewal fees to.

Except that it's quite common to pay those fees via an agent of some sort.
So you need to determine who you have contracted with to do that. Maybe you have conflicting/overlapping contracts?
I have a number of domains and I use one single hosting company to supply hosting space, email services, DNS and management including processing renewals for me.
But you can split those functions.

[#7]

But what the agent at talk talk appeared to be saying to me was they "owned" the domain and Whatever I did I would always have to pay them to use it. If they chose they could discontinue it 

[#8]

We had a similar issue but  with a registrar suddenly becoming "uncontactable" - we had to get a couple of domains quickly moved. Personally I'd find a decent registrar who could get your domain moved. We used host-it.co.uk for the business ones we needed. The .co.uk was a piece of cake to snatch back but the .com was a bit of a long drawn out process but we got there in the end.

[#9]

@DomS
thanks for the reply but the issue is that I thought I had severed all links with Talk Talk my domain is registered through 000webhost and my website and email is hosted with iPage. But Talk Talk think they can invoice me for I know not what? have they any justification?

[#10]

000webhost is not a registrar in their own right.
Register.com who are the registrars could be acting as agents for either webhost or TalkTalk.
I suggest you need to contact 000webhost to get clarification.

[#11]

@Jelv hits the point. You need to review any and all relevant contracts as you would not deal with the registrar directly.
Who did the last renewal for you? Surely you have a bill for that?

[#12]

Hmm. Man from Talk Talk, he speak with terminological inexactitude.
The domain is registered in your name, so you own the rights to it (in the absence of a trademark dispute or similar).
It looks like you've moved the name servers to ipage.com, but the registrar (tag holder) is still F2S's agent, register.com. If you have a contract with F2S to renew your domain automatically, then you'll still have to pay them for the recent renewal, but you should be able to terminate that contract and have your IPSTAG transferred to another registrar of your choice. Talk Talk should play nicely, but if they don't, Nominet can sort it out for a small fee.
Gabe

[#13]

Quote from: Gabe

the registrar (tag holder) is still F2S's agent, register.com.

Out of interest how did you find out that F2S is definitely the active agent here? Presumably Register.com deal with loads of agents.
That said, if correct it's a standard process to change agent - normally to the company who provide hosting/DNS etc. services. In fact it's odd that hasn't been done. 

[#14]

When I looked on Nominet, register.com acts for a number of different companies so I'm not sure how this conclusion was reached. Also Peter said he'd moved the registration.

[#15]

Quote from: HPsauce

Out of interest how did you find out that F2S is definitely the active agent here?

Looks like ≠ definitely. It seems most likely from the available evidence.
Register.com provides domain registration services to a number of businesses, one of which is F2S. Peter's domain used to be registered via F2S. Register.com have recently renewed the registration of Peter's domain and F2S/TT have billed him for it. Peter has been led to believe that the domain is now registered through 000webhost. However, 000webhost are a freebie webhost and don't do domain registration, only domain hosting (or a free subdomain), though the imprecision in the language surrounding domains could lead one to believe that they do. 000webhost's sister company, hosting24, do domain registration as part of a paid hosting package, but they don't appear to use register.com (they use PDR for .uk, and in any case it would be an expensive way of buying a domain if you're not going to use the hosting, and Peter's from Yorkshire). So, it looks like the name servers have been moved to ipage.com (who don't appear use register.com either), but the registrar is still F2S's agent, register.com. If there is another partner of register.com involved, we haven't so far heard of it.
Gabe