They may have just blocked the entire .gq ccTLD. That's kinda considered a bad area of the Internet neighborhood, 'cause they'll just give the domain names away. In fact, it was initially free - but I've since secured it by paying for it, just to ensure i keep it. The project was intentionally a lark and not actually meant to turn into this. If I'd known... I probably woulda picked a better damned domain name!
The regular tlds are too damn expensive now days.
I prefer NameCheap, though there's another one that's supposed to be pretty good and inexpensive. I keep forgetting their name, though I suppose I could search for it. I just stick with NameCheap - as I've been getting domain names from them, pretty much since the day they opened and were like a Tucows reseller - before they were actually a full-blown authorized registrar.
For the .gq (and some others) ccTLD, you can just go get them free at https://freenom.com. They do have some limits, and then registering them is a bit expensive - should you want to pay for it. But, they're free.
I think they charge a fee for 4 letter names? So, I'm not sure if you could secure poal.xx or anything, at least not for free.
I went through ipage for poal pretty cheap and offered identity protection for cheap.
(post is archived)