advice Autorenewal is scam or just business?

[Apprich]

Hello,

I need an advice for this annoying strategy in domain industry..

I've seen this in most of the registrars every time you register new domain they set it auto-renewal true with renewal fee is horrendous price. and if you happen to forget any domain on this registrar with your credit card bound to this website they charge you with their high price and no refund back.. and they call this as business.

Trying to understand whether is scam or shady way or just business way it is... do we have consumer rights against it?

Registrar forcing for auto-renewal and then auto-charging to credit card the price they want and if customer say i don't want to renew it just refund back money to credit card..

they refuse doing it and stating "Terms and Conditions, we cannot provide a refund on domain names as these are personalised items."

what is it personalized items? does it make it qualified non-refundable product?
where is the consumer rights? could i refund any product after certain days?

Please help me to understand this, and what can we do against this registrar that's not refunding money back to credit card.

thanks to all.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

+ 1and1 doesn't set 60 days lock...
So if serverTransferProhibited is not set by the corresponding registry - you may freely transfer away at any time.
For example, recently I sold and transferred out some .life domain (Donuts registry) which was ~40 days old.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Verisign (.com/.net) and Neustar (.biz/.us) also don't use "60 days" anymore.

 

[Name Trader]

Verisign (.com/.net) and Neustar (.biz/.us) also don't use "60 days" anymore.

Really? You can freely transfer to another registrar after being registered for only 1 day?

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Really? You can freely transfer to another registrar after being registered for only 1 day?

Really.
If your registrar doesn't set this lock, registrars have such rights optionally.
Really with 1and1, really with Dynadot etc.

 

[Name Trader]

Really.
If your registrar doesn't set this lock, registrars have such rights optionally.
Really with 1and1, really with Dynadot etc.

Good to know. Although I never want to transfer out unless I sell something at Dynadot

 

[MapleDots]

What really chaps my hide are the registrars that renew and bill 30 days in advance of actual expiration.

There are at least a few registrars that do this.

One has to know their registrars policies and I personally would not be adverse to this because I have some high value domains. I do it 3 months ahead anyways and if I was laying in the hospital somewhere it would make me feel a lot better to see my domains renewed 30 days ahead as opposed to the last minute.

 

[lowcalls]

When you reg a domain,first check the consistency of pricing to be sure of your next budget when renewing. If you see that the pricing is not consistent or has some doubts, as in the first year is different from the proceeding years(very common with discounted domains) then don't enable auto renewals because registrars are at liberty to charge any price depending on the demand/supply ratio and the PR consequences. Domain registrar business is very expensive and the registrars are so desperate to fork profit out of the registrants hence they play all possible tricks within the legal framework to remain relevant in the business, so be more vigilant.

 

[Apprich]

When you reg a domain,first check the consistency of pricing to be sure of your next budget when renewing. If you see that the pricing is not consistent or has some doubts, as in the first year is different from the proceeding years(very common with discounted domains) then don't enable auto renewals because registrars are at liberty to charge any price depending on the demand/supply ratio and the PR consequences. Domain registrar business is very expensive and the registrars are so desperate to fork profit out of the registrants hence they play all possible tricks within the legal framework to remain relevant in the business, so be more vigilant.

I understand that registrar business is not very profitable, considering registering domain fee %90 goes to registry for regular reg fees. Business all depends on 2nd year renewal profit. and if they offer promotion in 1st year and can't charge on 2nd year, registrar in loss in this case, not counting all other fees that they pay to hold business active.

Only way for registrars to make profit, either sell their other products like hosting etc which customers expected to spend money on that or charge them horrendous fee in 2nd year. Domainers, don't spend any money on other products, or registering big amount of domains on their promotional price and escape 2nd year fee...

And domainers have to escape from this 2nd year fee considering little amount of domains they sell out of hundreds of domains they register.. Big piece of cake of course goes to registry... It would be cool if domainer would be differentiated from standard customer when registering domains or bypass registrars. But registry doesn't care about who register domains, registry get flat fee from registrars and busy of eating their big pie..

But who is more legit in this food chain is debatable. If domainers don't register domains, they can't make more profit, or would domains expected to be just registered by end users for the purpose of creating websites? Domainer person exist by nature since rule of first come first served nature of domain name system. It's inevitable names were grabbed by domainers and then sold to others. This would be same like expecting lands and properties just bought for living and not trade them...After that they just designed the system over years to make it less tradable by people. Domain names are digital properties by nature, as same like properties in real world.

Hoping that in future decentralization of domain system will help to solve this distribution of this big cake and become more democratized.. But on the other hand, system puts more protectionism as like Gdpr which is trying to get rid off all little guys and protect end user privacy? then question comes who will pay bill of their big cake if only system is designed to protect legit established entities?

 

[SuperDudePro]

I consider domaining a business. As with any business, I try to understand the rules of the companies I do business with. I use several registrars and with every single one, it is extremely easy to either change the default or change the auto renew setting.

If you are managing your domains in a spreadsheet or even a control panel, it is also pretty easy to manage renewals manually.

Once everything is set up, maintaining renewals is the simplest part of the process.

As for changing prices, why didn't you check on that? If you join the godaddy discount domain club, you will know exactly what renewals are, and they generally won't be much different than original registration fee.

Basically, this is your issue. Learn from it and move on. If managing renewals is too difficult, this is probably the wrong hobby or business.

 

[Member-1010942]

What really chaps my hide are the registrars that renew and bill 30 days in advance of actual expiration.

There are at least a few registrars that do this.

If someone wants auto-renew, that's a good thing. It's intended for people running websites that can't afford an interruption...30 days gives enough time to attempt the auto-renew and if it fails because the card was canceled or whatever, they have time to notify the owner and the owner has time to get it sorted out before their business goes offline.

 

[Kate]

Some registrars will send advance notice by E-mail before autorenew takes place. But I guess most don't want to take a chance, you might change your mind

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

If you have the choice to choose between on / off autorenewal while the registration process, it's business.
This situation is normallyyy the case.

If you don't have this choice while the registration process and it is automaticallyyy set at autorenewal after the registration process, it's already shady business in my eyes - also if you can turn off the autorenewal then (of course this option must be given).
It's possible that some registrars acting like this.

If you don't have the choice to turn off the autorenewal after the domain is registered, then it would be scam - but I don't think you will ever face this situation, you should always be able to turn it off - at least within a specific time.
But be carefull, some registrars won't let you turn it off until the last dayyy before the domain expires.

At the end it all depends on the TOS (terms of service) of the registrar which you are using, every domain registration is an acceptance of a binding agreement between you and their TOS and you always should knowww to what you agreee

 

[poweredbyme]

As the prices at namesilo are fixed and naturally very low without needing discount coupon codes, you don't need to manually renew your domains to use discount coupons. I can turn on auto-renewal with peace of mind only at namesilo.

Trying to understand whether is scam or shady way or just business way it is... do we have consumer rights against it?

For me, it's a shady business practice to sell the same thing to the same customer at different prices. But all big companies have an army of lawyers. It's difficult for an ordinary consumer to win a legal battle against to them. You normally have a right to ask for refund as a consumer right, but usually users have to accept to waive their certain rights during sign up or they can't create an account. Also I am unsure if a domainer can be defined as consumer. Registering/renewing a domain looks like to me more of a b2b type business. So, you should decide which registrar is the best one for you and should keep most of your domains at your favorite registrar. For me, namesilo is the best one.

 

[LaunchUp.com]

It's probably just good business practice:

When you purchased something, that at checkout they give you the option to choose to put your item on auto renew or not. Just like if you purchase internet security or proactive or anything else.

I don't think it's good to automatically put anything on auto renew without your permission.

I simply called my registrar and had them lead me to change the settings so nothing auto renews.
The constant reminders are enough for me..

Each month I get to go through a list of my names a I get to choose what i want to renew and what I want to drop.

I would hate to renew some crap for $30. It happened before. And caused overdraft in my bank account.
I like having the responsibility to do it myself.

Note: what you can do is leave your highly valuable names on auto renew(manually).

 

[Haroon Basha]

Having experienced a lot of time my unwanted, junk domain names used to be auto renewed by Godaddy.com, that too at horrible regular rate (though I am a VIP customer, I have special discounted rates). This happened to me not once, several times. Then I decided to put off Auto Renewal button for all the domain names at one stroke. Thereby, I saved a lot of money. If I want to renew any worthy domain name, I will take care to renew it when they send me reminders. Auto-Renewals are profitable for the Registrar and double loss for the owner of the domain name. Remember, unless you are Discount Club member (need to pay $ 95 per year), your Credit Card will be charged for exorbitant renewal fees; for example manually you can renew it for $ 9.07 per year, but if it is auto-renewed, you credit card will be charged $ 15.17. Be discreet while opting for Auto-Renewals.

 

[golan]

Having experienced a lot of time my unwanted, junk domain names used to be auto renewed by Godaddy.com, that too at horrible regular rate (though I am a VIP customer, I have special discounted rates). This happened to me not once, several times. Then I decided to put off Auto Renewal button for all the domain names at one stroke. Thereby, I saved a lot of money. If I want to renew any worthy domain name, I will take care to renew it when they send me reminders. Auto-Renewals are profitable for the Registrar and double loss for the owner of the domain name. Remember, unless you are Discount Club member (need to pay $ 95 per year), your Credit Card will be charged for exorbitant renewal fees; for example manually you can renew it for $ 9.07 per year, but if it is auto-renewed, you credit card will be charged $ 15.17. Be discreet while opting for Auto-Renewals.

Another dirty practice by GD. One of the reasons i never use them other than for closeouts.

 

[stewmath]

I don't have any of my names on auto renewal, i manage them all in a way that when renewal is due i transfer them out to a cheaper registrar

 

[Steven McEvoy]

What I don't like is sometimes the registrar will change from not renew to renew without telling you. I think GoDaddy have done that in the past, although I didn't keep any evidence. But it's not a biggie for me. Coz I always transfer my domains out ASAP. At every registrar.

Proof from personal experience another reason why I will never use Godaddy, specially their outrageous prices!

My theory on this, is stop jumping around registers find one you like and stay with it. Is the $1 promo really worth the hassle.