Hi all,

Just a heads up - these boys are back on the sell again.

I had two letters this morning about domains I own that are up for renewal later this year.

At first glance it looks like this outfit are official - their sales patter is carefully worded to scare you in to thinking that you might lose your domains if you don't renew with them.

Of course, they're just a bunch of Domain Name Resgitrars with no official standing. They're trying to get you to transfer out of your existing Registrar to them.

Just beware and don'yt get conned in to thinking they're official!

Joe

They never stopped... I've been getting them for the last 2 years without fail...

Domain Registry of Europe, etc... was another one...

Bottom line, if you don't recognise the registrar saying you "MUST RENEW!"

*Cue: gasps of horror and panic!*

... then ignore it... or query the company/designer you registered with/through in the first place...



Oh and rule of thumb, if you're paying more than £10 a year for your domain then you're being ripped off... (that's domain only.. not hosting).

We hear about this quite a bit from quite a few of our customers they seem to receive loads of letters from the DOA trying to get them to renew there domains.

We just advise them to throw it away.

And if your after a domain for less than a tenner have a look at www.glasstop.net

Originally posted by Martin_s

Oh and rule of thumb, if you're paying more than £10 a year for your domain then you're being ripped off... (that's domain only.. not hosting).

I've been looking at this recently, with the intention of getting a permanent email address. [URL=http://order.1and1.co.uk/[/URL] charge just £1.99/pa for a 'co.uk' domain name,- but is there likely to be a catch at that price....it seems very cheap. :suspect:

Originally posted by Greybeard
I've been looking at this recently, with the intention of getting a permanent email address. This firm (http://1and1.co.uk) charge just £1.99/pa for a 'co.uk' domain name,- but is there likely to be a catch at that price....it seems very cheap. :suspect:

1and1 are OK, we have customers who book their domains through them. Yahoo (& now 1and1 by the look of it) actually lose money on .uk domains, unless Nominet are skanking everyone else...

Nominet charge £5 for a .co.uk domain.

so if a company charge you £1.99 they also add on the £5

Originally posted by Glasstop
...if a company charge you £1.99 they also add on the £5

"Netcraft reckons Yahoo! is selling the domain at a loss of at least $1.50 per domain in order to expand its share of the shared-hosting market."

And they haven't changed their pricing policy since, in fact they're extending it beyond US...

from here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/13/yahoo_domain_name_price_promo/)

**edit: actually, they've finally stopped (no-one told me!!) but 1and1 definitely charge £1.99 a year for .uks, one of my customers has just had about 80 off them!

Originally posted by steev
1and1 are OK, we have customers who book their domains through them

I'll second that.

If you only want a domain name, give 1and1 a look.

I had one of these letters through the other month for my xafiers-home.com domain, I think they wanted about $25 per year to renew it... it's only costing me $15 per year with whoever my hosting company goes through... so it quickly went in the bin... lol

my sheffsingles.co.uk only cost me a couple of quid I think... .co.uk are a lot cheaper than .com for some reason :?

Originally posted by Abdul
I'll second that.

If you only want a domain name, give 1and1 a look.

I'd want their Instant Mail package too, but that's just £0.69/month with imap, POP3, Webmail and 5 email addresses. which all sounds pretty reasonable. My ISP [Metronet] wants to charge me £7.50/pa for just one email addy @their domain name.

Anyway two endorsements from here is good enough for me, - thanks :)

I have to say one and one have the worst customer service I have ever, ever come across. Our company used to host with them. We paid them by Bank Transfer every six months. Every six months we had a letter from them saying that they had not received payment. We would email them the details. Then last year, they put us to a debt collection company and charged us £15. After no less than FIFTEEN phone calls (all at a national rate charge) and god knows how many emails, they refused to refund because their terms say we are supposed to pay by credit card and they do not have the facilities to track bank transfer!!! I got this from my final phone call to them. Not once did they reply to a phone call or email. I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was informed that the supervisors only took messages by .... wait for it .... FAX !! So I faxed them. No response.

Amazingly, after every phone call they sent me an email asking me to complete a survey on how they felt they I dealt with my query!

Needless to say we moved and use a company called cwshosting.co.uk . It was like a breath of fresh air. Their support is quick and if you have any problems whatsover, it is not an issue.

Just on the original topic, we had a phone call from a company similar to this. They said they had registered a dot com domain similar to our dot co dot uk domain for a person in Rotherham who was selling over the net products similar to ours. As we were established company they were obliged to offer us the domain at £25 per year if we wanted it if we refused then they would let this other guy do it. And it was urgent, we had to let them know by phone that day.

We told them to let him have it and we would get our legal people to get in touch with them.

The dot com domain is still available.

I use 123-reg for may domains. always been decent enough for me.

Joel

Another company to aware of calls themselves Business Services Ltd or something close. Their "legal" department rang me today to say that they were concerned that a competitor of ours was seeking to register a domain name very similar to ours and that they couldn't legally stop them but could offer it to us if we wanted it but we would have to buy it within 15 mins. Okay, so that's par for the course, but these guys had the back story sorted too with lots of detail about how this guy had got arsey with them for hesitating. Really using scare tactics. It would only have cost us £400 for ten years...

They've also tried it on with other people I know of so we've been on to the DTI and hope to get these companies highlighted in Which magazine to warn others. This blatant lying really bugs me!

Rant over.

I've got queries with ICANN at the moment with a company holding a domain that I want, linuxmod.com, and they want me to cough up £450 a year for it, and have emailed me several times about it, but they are "cybersquatting". I've spoken to ICANN and am waiting the result of thier inquiries.

Basically the rule of thumb is never deal with anyone other than the people you bought the domain off.

Joel

Originally posted by LottieWat
Another company to aware of calls themselves Business Services Ltd or something close. Their "legal" department rang me today to say that they were concerned that a competitor of ours was seeking to register a domain name very similar to ours and that they couldn't legally stop them but could offer it to us if we wanted it but we would have to buy it within 15 mins. Okay, so that's par for the course, but these guys had the back story sorted too with lots of detail about how this guy had got arsey with them for hesitating. Really using scare tactics. It would only have cost us £400 for ten years...

They've also tried it on with other people I know of so we've been on to the DTI and hope to get these companies highlighted in Which magazine to warn others. This blatant lying really bugs me!

Rant over.

Thats the same company I was talking about Lottie. I made them put it all in email to me. Next time I am in the office I will post it to tell you their exact words.