The best places to register your domain is register.com or networksolutions.com. They won’t sell off your domain to another registrar.
Don’t purchase your domain name through another venue e.g. if your host package comes with a low priced domain name registration.
Several years ago, I got a domain name with my hosting at yahoo.com. When I wanted to change hosts, I had to access the registrar records to change the DNS info. Yahoo had sold my domain name to a registrar in Austrailia!! I couldn’t get them to give me access to my registrar records!! After weeks of trying to get the domain name released via email, I had to call them directly (no toll free number).
Several other domain names had been purchased with hosting through 5omegs.com. Again, they sold off the domains to another registrar so I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get those domains under control again. At least that company was in Utah – not so much of a long distance call.
I’m not all that fond of godaddy either – they have their own set wierdness going on.
Hence, I learned that the only reliable domain registrars were networksolutions and register.com.
