Scammers. What would we do without them? We have talked about the Domain Registry of America Scam before, but we recently got a letter in the mail from one of them and wanted to share it with you so you don’t get scammed too. As you can see, they are trying to claim that if the domain is not renewed through them, it will be lost. They are also charging $35 a year, $20+ more than the industry average for a year of a .com domain name. What the letter doesn’t say is that it is a total scam. (Click here to view a larger image of the letter)
How did they get my contact information?
When you register a domain, you need to provide the registrar with a valid name, mailing address and email address to provide to the WHOIS database, without this information you cannot register the domain. Shady domain registries troll the WHOIS records for domains that are soon to be expired and send a letter or email to the owner of the domain. It usually says something along the lines of “your domain is expiring soon, you must renew it before you lose it” What they don’t mention is that your domain is not currently registered with them and the transaction would actually be a domain transfer, not a renewal and at a price that is most likely 3 times as much!
You can avoid this entire scenario by purchasing or adding Private Registration to your domain name. Private Registration removes your contact information and inserts ours. We filter out all of the bad emails and snail mail and only forward the important stuff.
Receive free Private Registration when you add it to a domain or register a new domain! Expires 10.31.12. Coupon Code: PRIVATE
*not valid on renewals or with any other offers, management reserves all rights.
Have you or a friend ever received one of these letters or email scams?
How can you call this a scam? Nothing in the letter is misleading at least to me. It says it’s a transfer. It’s up to the consumer to decide on the price. Network Solutions charges this much as well I believe. I don’t know why they think I would pay 20+ extra though I have gotten these for years on various domains.
Hmm, i must say, these are real scammers, yes they are! A time ago i have tried to recover one of my domains hitch hicked through droa, yes this needs time and much more patience. the process of getting back my domain has needed 5 month , with paying another year to them !!! so these are no scammers ??
I have to say, I agree with James. This states everything you need to know, sure, the price is high, but, if you’re too lazy to shop around, you’re ALWAYS going to be paying higher.
Agreed with James. This is not a scam; a business may decide how to best spend its money, even it this alternative is more expensive.
The only scam is the premise of this blog post.
James, Nick, Mike – you guys are right on!
Who cares if they offer less, but charge much more? Who cares if the letter is intentionally confusing and misleading? If someone is ‘too lazy’ to research or too confused by the inter-web then they deserve what they get, right?
But why stop at domains? There is a whole world of consumers who are distracted or uninformed just waiting to be scooped up!
If a consumer is foolish enough to expect a square deal they deserve to get ripped off! And if a business is foolish enough to pass up the opportunity to take advantage of their clients trust – well they don’t deserve to be in business.
After all, isn’t that really the type of world we all want? The type of place where you need get the other guy before he gets you? The type of place where guys like me and James and Nick and Mike defend shady business practices, rather than being outraged.
However I do have one criticism of Domain Registry of America’s tactics…
Why waste your time on Domains? There are tons of senior citizens just waiting to buy over-priced and under-powered insurance products – heck, you could even find your first 3 sales people right on this blog!
You can save the money for private registration and just not fall for their scam. Received their letter a few days ago and also last year so they must be doing well.
Manoles , could not agree with you more.
I wish there was more people like you , world would be a better place.
Even those lazy people need to be warned, in order to learn to not being so lazy, so I thank you for this blog entry.
The question about if it’s a scam or not, is a linguistic one. There are some conditions that define a scam. One of them is that it must be tricky, or it must lead to deception. I personally think this condition is met.
One can say that half of the whole market is ruled this way, but we will never call it scam… The line between scam/no scam seems subtle. However, pushing this line down (from wherever it is) to the scam level will result in benefit for the majority of consumers, and good practices from service providers.
So I vote for moving the line down to scam: The service referred in this blog is a scam. It’s based in unnecesarily frightening their potential clients. You pay (more) for a “protection” you don’t really need, it recalls me to… Well, thanks again.
I got one of these letters right ( maby 2 months. ) after I order my domain name through my ISP.
and this was last year. about jun or july.
OHH and i forgot to mention that my domain was free with services package i got.
I don’t consider this a scam. They are not trying to claim that they are your existing registrar. They are offering you the possibility to switch and pay them, but they are straightforward about it. Sure they don’t say if their price is higher than the price you would pay without switching, but then that depends on who you are currently using.
It’s not much different then getting an ad from a department store offering goods that you can buy more cheaply at Walmart, yet no one calls the department store a scammer.