Namecheap support blamed my hosting provider for a DNS issue that was actually their own broken DNSSEC record

So a few days ago my domain just died. Not slow, not an SSL warning — completely gone, ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED, like it never existed. I run everything myself off a Hetzner VPS (nginx, own SSL, the whole setup), so before I even opened a ticket I'd already checked: server's up, nginx running fine, firewall wide open on 80/443, I can hit the IP directly no problem. The only thing broken was DNS itself.

First rep tells me to "connect my domain to a hosting service like Shopify or Wix." I had already told them I'm self-hosting and the A record is already pointing at my own server correctly. Didn't matter, got the generic script anyway.

So I push back, and the next answer is "contact your hosting provider to investigate." My hosting provider has nothing to do with DNS resolution when Namecheap is literally the one hosting the zone. That's like your ISP telling you to call an electrician because your wifi's down.

Nobody on their end ran a single trace the whole time. I ended up doing it myself — dig +trace showed a DS record sitting at the .shop registry with nothing signed behind it. Classic orphaned DNSSEC record. Their own dashboard shows DNSSEC as "off," so there's nothing for me to even delete on my side — it's just sitting there at the registry silently SERVFAILing my domain for anyone using a resolver that actually validates (Google, Cloudflare, most ISPs by default now).

Had to spell out the exact DS record and key tag and ask for it to be escalated to someone who actually deals with DNSSEC before it got fixed.

After it's resolved I mention how bad the first two responses were, and get told the first one was "our digital assistant, unable to assist with specific cases" and got "transferred to the hosting specialist by mistake." Except no — that was a live rep, not a bot, who just didn't know what they were looking at. Nice try though.

And honestly the part that bugs me more than the wasted time: if I didn't already know how to run dig myself, both of those answers send you somewhere actively wrong. You'd either sit there for days assuming it's "just propagation," or you'd genuinely go switch hosting providers over a problem that has nothing to do with hosting. That's not a harmless miscommunication — that's advice that costs people real time and money chasing the wrong fix.

If you're self-hosting with Namecheap as your DNS and your domain suddenly goes dark for no reason, check DNSSEC/DS records yourself before you trust support to find it. They won't.