Reminds me of my own registrar nightmares
I agree that Marketo's specific inclusion of the words "someone who left Marketo" points towards missed emails/communication issues after the renewal didn't go ahead.
However I have no love for registrars either, after a horrible problem I had with 123-reg/webfusion a few years back. My domain was fully renewed through the registrar, with ~2 years until expiry. However I noticed one day that the domain had been moved to "pendingdelete" status. Support was dire and I had to dig around online to find the email address of someone high up in the management team before I got any traction.
Once the domain dropped it got immediately snapped up and passed around for a couple of days (potentially they used a drop catcher service?) before eventually ending up back with my registrar, and ultimately in my control. I never received the promised explanation of what went wrong. Needless to say my trust was shaken and I now have a script that monitors the status of my domains through their whois data.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
