whats crazy is after 20 years of domains it is still like the wild wild west, people can still steal your domains and get away with it, and registers are not held responsible for losses, etc.
You mean they can't tell where the domain went? It can't be tracked? This can't be the case otherwise no one would invest in super premium domains if they knew they can lose them by accident or temporarily stolen.
It sounds like you let a domain expire and once it dropped it was taken, as far as payment can't you call their customer service department and just give them your cc info over the phone, and get a confirmation number too?
Also it seems like trouble when a company is in a transition of changing their system to try and move domains. Also if a domain is expired no register will let you transfer or push the domain. Never heard of a grace period for this, the grace period is before the expired domain goes into the redemption period, I think 45 days?