Screw You, Domain Renewal Group
Anybody who is in this business owns one or more domain names. In many cases our WHOIS records for our domains contain our contact info, including address. This allows companies like the Domain Renewal Group to fetch my information (or your’s) and send you a “renewal notice” for your domain.
The above is a scanned image I recently got for one of my domains. I have gotten MANY such notices from this company. Here is my problem with this:
- They purposely make it look like a bill. This is no doubt designed to get people to accidentally change their domain name to these guys from its current registrar. A lot of people (rather naively) pay bills quickly without truly looking it over. And I bet these guys have gotten a lot of new “customers” because the person thought it was a bill.
- Even seeing through the above, their pricing is ridiculously high. I can renew my domain far cheaper at GoDaddy. When you visit the company’s website, you see that $30/year will get you basic hosting, too. This is not clear on this promotion.
I find this kind of promotion deceiving. It is designed to hopefully fool people into changing their domain to these guys. As a guy who is trying to help others get into this business, people who may not be totally up to speed on how these things work, I hate to see companies like this seemingly trying to take advantage of them.
BTW, according to this blog post, this company also goes by the name of Domain Registry of America and Liberty Names of America. That’s probably correct because I’ve gotten mail pieces from these names as well.
Use a reputable domain registrar guys. I personally recommend GoDaddy.
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Comments
You could ask your registrar if they provide “private WHOIS”. I own two domains registered by Name.com and Bluehost.com and both provide this service absolutely free!
Thanks for bringing this up. I get these all the time also and it’s easy to see how those new to this business can be deceived by these mailings. They are also targeting larger companies where these “invoices” may fall through the cracks and be paid unwittingly.
There are also similarly deceptive telephone directory mailings sent out to businesses.
These people are no different than spammers and don’t care how disruptive they can be as long as they get their percentage of dupes to buy into their scams.
I can’t stand it when companies disguise solicitations and advertisements as bills. It’s infuriating! The company that did the fumigation of my new home sent “bills” for services that weren’t even rendered yet, and even had the nerve to put late charges on it! Although they were contracted to provide the initial fumigation (which the builder paid for), I was never under any obligation or contract with them. I was livid! I promptly made several angry calls and even had an attorney friend of mine contact them just to ruffle their feathers. Unfortunately, their tactic works because I often see their signs in homes that were built well before mine.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve just received one just like it here in London. I have returned it to them in their own envelope, without a stamp and with a moderateley rude comment scrawled across it. They’ll have to cough up for the postage fee. Snigger.
I paid a domain renewal group bill thinking it was the co i’m with, on going to the address i was sent to an other mbe buiness service centres 439 little bourke st melbourne they said they just look ater the mail and would not let me know were the cheques are sent on to
Thanks for referencing my blog post, David. The more we do to expose these companies, the fewer people will be taken in by their tactics.