How important is customer support for just domain registration?

Question

I'm looking at two companies to register a domain in, it's either going to be GoDaddy or 1and1.

I checked out some of the reviews and saw that 1&1 offers free private domain registration while GoDaddy offers better customer support.

My question is: Is customer support important for just a domain registration (not hosting)? Do things go wrong often and seriously enough for me to care about this?

Also I've heard of some pitfalls in doing private domain registration, is it not a smart move to do?

EDIT:

Also I feel that each google result of company X vs company Y returns results that one of the companies own. Is there any authoritative site for this or something like that?

Answer 1

Custom support isn't important as long as the service is working. If you run into problems, the quality of the customer service suddently becomes very important, especially if the problem is having an impact on your business.

It's really a question of how much risk you're comfortable with. For the most part, domain registration Just Works. If you're going to experience problems, they will typically crop up around renewal time, and tend to be clerical (rather than technical).

In general Serverfault frowns on specific vendor recommendations. There are other places out there that have reviewed registrars, web hosting companies, and such. Here is one such article.