Unsupervised machines.

So I changed webhosting company back in June, because the morons changed my access password, and never ever answered any of my e-mails.
(They didn't have a phone number listed anywhere on their site, and I never found one when I searched online for it)
I went with another company, one that boasted 24/7 support by phone, chat, and e-mail. The price was good, too.
At the time I opened my account, I also paid $10 to transfer my domain name over to them. Said domain name was good until August 15th.
My registrar sent me a few reminders but I ignored them since my new webhosting company was going to take care of it.
Theoretically.

Being the somewhat obsessive/compulsive, mildly neurotic Kzin that I am, I decided to contact my webhost and make sure that
my domain name had been/will be switched over correctly. I called them, and left messages because no one ever picked up the phone.
I sent e-mails too, but got no answer. I did this for a week.
24/7 customer support?
Not in a row.
(thank you Steven Wright).

I went to my website today, and sure enough, I was greeted by a "domain name has expired" page.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

So I called my registrar, who actually answers its phones (yea!), told my story and tried to figure out what to do.
Since my webhost totally droppped the ball and didn't carry my domain over, I had to renew with my registrar.
Hopefully, my website will be back up in 8 hours or so.

Now the fun part:
trying to get a refund from my noncommunicative webhost for the domain carry-over fee.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.........

Machines are nice, but humans are needed to keep them in line and deal with the other humans, the ones called "customers".