Switching reseller hosting = how much down time?

My current reseller hosting company has been a big let down. I've been with them for 3 years. The customer service is very lacking, specially of late. They charged me $50 for no reason on Dec 6th 2004 and said they refunded it but it has as of yet showed up as a credit card credit. Every time there is phpBB upgrade available, I lose my BB database. I didn't back it up, my bad, and so all the posts are lost. They do not answer their Help Desk tickets and service emails.

They also registered my domain name for me and it's in their name! I can't access it to do anything. Live and learn. Since they don't answer their customer service requests, I'm not sure how I will get it out of their hands.

I'm interested in starting with the Aluminum plan just to test things out.
If I do that, how much of a down time will my customers have when I switch their DNS? Is there a step by step procedure online for me so that I don't have to show that I'm changing servers to my customers?

Thank you in advance for your input.
Abby

[Nutter]

Most registrars have a procedure in place for domains owned by one person that are registered by another. You should be able to go to whoever their registrar is and fill out some paperwork to get the domain transferred. It's easier if it's a company name and it's easier if one of the 4 contacts (billing, technical, etc) is you. If they are listed on all 4, you might have a few more hoops to jump through.

48-72 hourse is the stock answer for DNS switch over, but the last couple of times I've changed over it's been less than an hour.

[jeff_s]

If you have your site completely replicated and ready to go at your new provider, then you should experience ZERO down time as a result of switching nameservers. It's just like throwing a switch from one IP address to the other.

The long time mentioned for propagation is simply the maximum time before it's guaranteed that everybody on the planet will have seen the switch has been thrown.

I have just done it for six sites. One more to go.

Good luck on reclaiming your domain name!

-Jeff_s

What IS the best way to switch things over? I think for some of my simple sites, that contain to scripting such as PHP, I can simply drop and drag (FTP) from my current host to the new one. But, what about sites that contain extensive PHP scripting and special coding. What's the best way to facilitate a transfer on those?