Domain Registry of American trickery

[dynocat]

I may have gotten mail from this company other years and never noticed. Their letter states:

As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification of the domain name registration that is due to expire in the next few months. When you switch to Domain Registry of America, you can take advantage of our best savings. Act Today!

This company's pricing is:

$30 1 year
$50 2 years Recommended
$95 5 years Best Value

As most, if not all of you know, domains purchased and registered with GoDaddy renew for around $10/year.

I'm posting this as a warning to new domain name purchasers who might be tricked into buying from this company.

[Business Attorney]

I get several of these a year in the regular US mail from various companies. Since the printing and postage costs them real money (as opposed to email which is effectively free), I assume enough people take their "deal" that the scheme is a profitable one.

[vangogh]

I think a few years ago they were warned that they had to change some of the language in the letters too. They were written in a way that led people to believe if they didn't send a check they'd lose their domain.

The whole thing is a scam and no one should ever respond to them, unless for some reason you actually do have a domain with them.

I'm sure it works to make them money. The letters seem official and I'd bet many people don't even know who they initially used as a registrar.

[Spider]

I don't think this is trickery - not on the face of it. Of course, I don't know the actual words the company has used because that wasn't presented here, but there is nothing wrong with a company having different prices for the same product or service. Indeed, these forum often have threads about our own individual pricing policies.

Network Solutions - one of the oldest and most prestigious(?) registrars charges $34.99 per year.

It's called "free enterprise" - the rockstone of American business.

[Harold Mansfield]

Gotta agree with Spider on this one. I got a buddy that renews with Network Solutions and they are higher than Tommy Chong, but it's not illegal.
That's just what they charge.

Personally I don't understand paying that much per year for a .com, .net, or .org, but he is still nostalgic about a time where Networks Solutions was the only domain registrar and somehow feels that sticking with them and their fees is somehow more "Official".

[Business Attorney]

I have no problem with businesses setting their own prices. It is not the fact that their prices are higher that make the mailings from companies like Domain Registry of America objectionable.

What is "tricky" here is that the business' name and the paperwork they send often make the whole thing look like a routine renewal (though they are careful to put somewhere "This is not a bill"). They don't give you any valid reasons to switch registrars or even make it very clear that you are switching registrars. It addition, the mailings that I have seen make it sound like you are actually saving money when you switch from GoDaddy.

I suspect that the majority of their business is from people who don't realize what they are doing. The next time I get one of a mailing from one of these outfits, I'll scan it and post it so that you can see why I think this is an objectionable business method.

By the way here is the Wikipedia entry for Domain Registry of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Registry_of_America) which addresses some of the issues.

[vangogh]

I guess you guys have never read the letters from Domain Registry of America. They send out letters that look like an invoice with "domain name expiration notice" in bold. The letters are meant to make you think your domain is expiring and if you don't send them a check you'll lose it.

Here's an image of one of their letters (http://www.ucan.org/domain_registry_of_america?size=_original).

If you read the whole thing I don't think anything they say is technically a lie. They don't claim to be your registrar, but the way the letter is designed it comes across looking much more like an invoice you need to pay to keep your domain than a letter asking you to transfer your domain to them.

Notice the words "This is not a bill" just above the table with the term and price. That wording was never in the original letters and was only added after numerous complaints and an agreement with the FTC (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm)

This isn't about price. It's a company that purposely misleads people in order to get them to transfer their domains. They don't disclose some of the fees they charge if the transfer doesn't go through and they send out mass mailings to addresses often obtained in violation of their ICANN registrar agreement.

[Spider]

I get Yellowpage "renewal" notices and automobile warranty "renewal" notices and A/C service "renewal" notices (and maybe a few others) that look like an invoice and state "This is not an bill," all the time.

What's one more?!

I also get official-looking un-official letters that appear to be from the IRS promising to solve my tax problems, lottery award notices that appear to be from some official government department of lotteries, and severe attorney lookalike letters suggesting that I might be the subject of a lawsuit, and Lord knows what else.

They go in the trash just as quickly as the coupons, investment newsletters and public solicitations that make up the rest of my postal mail.

Ho! Hum!

[Harold Mansfield]

I suspect that the majority of their business is from people who don't realize what they are doing.


That, I can definitely believe. No one in their right mind would choose to pay more if they don't have to.

[billbenson]

My boss some years ago got a letter stating he needed to renew his domain. It would be $75 (or some large figure). It also transfered ownership of the domain to "some company". He was going to sign it and send the money but called me first.

I bet in all the fine print, this was a legal offer. It also in the large print said you will loose your domain if not renewed. Renew now (with us and give us the domain to boot).

Cell phone contracts are just as bad. They change the terms from day to day, if you call them for an offer, they won't send you an email stating the terms, befifits, features. When it turns out you were given bad information by some sales agent there is no proof.

Sure it's legal. It's also intentional deception, and scumbag business. Just like preying on the elderly IMO
</rant>

[Spider]

I agree with going after intentional deception. There are laws against false advertising, as there should be. But the line is pretty thin and difficult to see, sometimes. Just stay aware!

[Harold Mansfield]

I have never gotten anything (legitimate) in the mail or email asking for money that I wasn't expecting.

I can't imagine believing something from a company that I have never heard of, that is telling me I need to pay money.

I know who I need to pay money to and when it is due.

[dynocat]

I guess you guys have never read the letters from Domain Registry of America. They send out letters that look like an invoice with "domain name expiration notice" in bold. The letters are meant to make you think your domain is expiring and if you don't send them a check you'll lose it.

Here's an image of one of their letters (http://www.ucan.org/domain_registry_of_america?size=_original).

If you read the whole thing I don't think anything they say is technically a lie. They don't claim to be your registrar, but the way the letter is designed it comes across looking much more like an invoice you need to pay to keep your domain than a letter asking you to transfer your domain to them.

Notice the words "This is not a bill" just above the table with the term and price. That wording was never in the original letters and was only added after numerous complaints and an agreement with the FTC (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm)

This isn't about price. It's a company that purposely misleads people in order to get them to transfer their domains. They don't disclose some of the fees they charge if the transfer doesn't go through and they send out mass mailings to addresses often obtained in violation of their ICANN registrar agreement.

That image is exactly like the one I received.

I realize it's not illegal, which is why I sued the word, "trickery." My intention was to post this as a warning to new e-merchants who might have just one or two domain names. When first starting out there is so much new info to keep track of like, webhosting, merchant accounts, SSL certificates, domain names, etc. Especially when letters look official, it can be hard to decipher who is a legitimate.

The phone book/yellow page companies are the most frequent here.

[vangogh]

I think everyone gets the same letter with the exception of the name and domain name. Trickery was a good choice of words, since that's exactly what this is. An interesting question is where does trickery cross the line into something that should be illegal?

[cbscreative]

I think "scumbag" is as good a description as any. It's an obvious attempt to trick someone who is less Internet savvy to essentially hijack the domain and make it difficult to undo once someone falls for the scam.

I've always advised my clients to ask questions about anything they are unsure of. I've been called on several occasions when they receive this letter. I'd rather have them ask than get taken in. I hate to think what it's like for those who fall for the scam.

Now that "private registration" is offered, I usually recommend it to clients so they don't get letters and emails from these kinds of sleazy businesses.

[rebelnetworks]

The same exact same thing goes to the Domain registry of Canada - sad thing as a hosting company we send out notices and try to tell poeple not to do it. BUT ...people still do thinking its some sort of government fee. I have filed formal compliant with Cira (Canadian Internet Registry associations) and cira basically told me there is nothing they can do as no laws are being broken -- PASS this info to everyone you know-- these types of scams can hurt your business - the first part is getting your domain, the next part is - you dont have a user name or password so the effort to transfer it away is almost impossible

[vangogh]

I bet it's the same company. Did you see the image I linked to showing one of their letters. Check dynocat's post above since the link is in the quote of my post. Why do I have a feeling the only difference is instead of the stars and stripes in the upper left the letter you get has a maple leaf.

It's a shame they're allowed to get away with this stuff. They stay within the legal rules, but are clearly trying to deceive people and take advantage of people's lack of savvy when it comes to tech information.

[Harold Mansfield]

Here's another good one:
I used to get these all of the time, so getting one this morning was kind of nostalgic.



(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward to the right person/ department, as this is urgent, thank you.)
Dear CEO,
We are the department of registration service in China. we have something which needs to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 8th 2010. One company called "HeWa Technologies Pvt. Ltd " is applying to register " 1stinternetmedia " as Brand name and domain names as below:

1stinternetmedia.asia
1stinternetmedia.cn
1stinternetmedia.com.cn
1stinternetmedia.com.hk
1stinternetmedia.com.tw
1stinternetmedia.hk
1stinternetmedia.tw
1stinternetmedia.in



After our initial checking, we found the Brand name and domain names being applied are as same as your company! So we need confirmation with your company. If the aforementioned company is your business partner or your subsidiary, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you don't have any relationship with this company, please contact us within 5 workdays. If over the deadline, we will approve the application submitted by "HeWa Technologies Pvt. Ltd " unconditionally.

Best Regards

Rensis Ho
Senior Consultant

Obviously the intent here is to get you into a panic that some mysterious company somewhere in Asia is going to register your domain in all of these extensions and get you to register them first to "protect your brand".

The first time I got one I was concerned for about a minute and a half until I thought about it... in an almost 3 Stooges like moment of Zen... and realized that it was some registrar phishing to see who is stupid enough to register all of those domains.

[vangogh]

Oh yeah. I've seen those before too. Amazing what people will try in order to trick you. And if you thought it was momentarily real think of all the less savvy people who get this message.

[Spider]

There's another side to this, too. Suppose it was a genuine letter of notification, sent with good intent?

Not possible, you say?

Well, last evening, I thought it would be nice if I had a domain for e-mail purposes that more closely resembled the Toastmasters District 56 Speakers Bureau I am running than any of my other business or personal domains. Now Toastmasters is a worldwide charity and of course needs to be liberal with their brand (240,000 members in 160 countries) but probably worry constantly about misuse. Toastmasters International are at toasmasters.org and the official District 56 site is at toastmasters-d56.org.

Well, I searched for and found that d56toastmasters was available in all versions. I took the .org and plan to use it only for legitmate purposes, but I might not. They have no control over it now that I own it. I could cause them a lot of grief.

I think it is rather good that registrars are prepared to do this sort of notification. I certainly don't think it is necessarily a scam. If the notice is of no interest, then ignre it. Otherwise, the notice may be quite useful.

[vangogh]

Seriously Frederick? The department of registration in China emails you with a scare tactic to register a bunch of domains with country specific extensions that would be useless to most people and you think they're doing you a service? For someone who claims to hate spam as much as you do, you sure seem not to be able to identify it. Wouldn't this email have thrown you into a rage anyway being that's unsolicited and commercial in nature. I thought that alone was enough for you to consider it spam.

[Spider]

It's only a scare tactic if you deem it to be. I saw the possibility of it being a notification, because I could forsee such a situation - had, indeed, been on the "bad" side of a possible misuse of some other entity's brand. I would not mind at all if my registrar notified Toastmasters International of my registering a domain that could be used fraudulently. And I wouldn't object if Toastmasters contacted me about it, either.

Unsolicited and commercial? As you read the e-mail to be a ploy to sell something, yes, it would be spam/UCE under your enterpretation. I offered the suggestion that the e-mail was possibly a genuine notification - which would have made it less commercial and more transactional, and thus not spam.

In all likelihood, you are right, and it is spam. I only offered the possibility that notification by a registrar of a possible brand infringment could have been done with good intentions.

[Harold Mansfield]

It's only a scare tactic if you deem it to be. I saw the possibility of it being a notification, because I could forsee such a situation - had, indeed, been on the "bad" side of a possible misuse of some other entity's brand. I would not mind at all if my registrar notified Toastmasters International of my registering a domain that could be used fraudulently. And I wouldn't object if Toastmasters contacted me about it, either.

Unsolicited and commercial? As you read the e-mail to be a ploy to sell something, yes, it would be spam/UCE under your enterpretation. I offered the suggestion that the e-mail was possibly a genuine notification - which would have made it less commercial and more transactional, and thus not spam.

In all likelihood, you are right, and it is spam. I only offered the possibility that notification by a registrar of a possible brand infringement could have been done with good intentions.

Maybe...if it's YOUR registrar. Other than that the only people that will even have a passing interest your brand name and it's protection is the Department of Patents and Trademarks and I'm don't think they would even send you an email if someone attempted to register your trademarked brand.

Think about it. How do they know that you have a certain domain to even begin to contact you to solicit you to register more extensions? They don't know you. You didn't register any domains with them.

It's not like there is a worldwide system of checks and balances that automatically alerts every registrar in the world when someone has a similar domain or another extension.
All they know is it's available or not available.

No. They scan and phish. Scan and Phish.

[vangogh]

Like Harold said if it's your registrar that's one thing, but this is unnamed registrar in China and they are asking you to purchase the domains listed from them. You didn't ask for the email so it's unsolicited and they're trying to sell you something so it's commercial. I understand you're pointing out other possibilities. I just find it odd since in other threads where we talked about spam you were never open to any other possibility. You held hard and fast to something being spam because it was UCE.

Not a big deal and I'm not looking to go back and forth about what is or isn't spam again. Just found it interesting.

[Spider]

I can't find the previous thread about e-mailing car clubs, but I believe I drew a distinction there between e-mailing car club members trying to sell the vacation package and e-mailing a club officer advising of the existence of the vacation package and would it interest their members. Both would have been unsolicited, but one would have been commercial and the other transactional.

In this case, I agree with you - it is probably spam. I was just trying to draw attention to other possibilities, especially as those thoughts had been going through my mind with myself on the wrong end.

[vangogh]

Got'cha. Always good to be pointing out other possibilities too. It's not good for any of us to locked into any train of thought.

I think you did make that distinction in the other thread about the commercial and transactional emails. I remember you doing that.