The company I work for has had a domain name held for us by a local law firm for quite some time. Recently we decided we'd like to start making use of it so I was asked to contact the firm and make the arangements to hand over control to us. I started with an email explaining the situation and waited for a little over a week with no response. After talking with my boss who normally deals with this firm he asked me to "just give them a call".
Thinking that there's no way a simple phone call would do the trick I figured I at least give it a shot. The conversation went something like this:
Receptionist: "Thank you for calling Dewey, Reckum and Howe. How may I direct your call?"
Me: "Could I please speak with <lawyer>?"
Lawyer: "This is <lawyer> how can I help you?"
Me: "H <lawyer> this is MommyItBurns from <companyname>. I sent you an email a little over a week about about transferring a domain back over to us and I've not heard back from you."
Lawyer: "Gee, I don't recall that, let me check. Nope nothing here."
Me: "Well, I'd really like to get the ball rolling. What do we need to do?"
Lawyer: "I could make the changes for you but I'll tell you what let me give you our Network Solutions login and password so you can change it yourself. just make sure to only change yours. There's a few of them there.'
Me: <boggle>
Lawyer: "Here you go it's XXXXXX and the password is YYYYYY."
Yes ladies and gentlemen she gave me the keys to their domain escrow kingdom. Hundreds of domain records, including those of their firm and several financial institutions were place at my mercy based off of a less than five minute phone call and my assertion that I worked for one of their clients!
Needless to say their services will no longer be in use by our company.