Hello everyone,
This is one of the very bad experiences I had with the popular registrar Sav.com. In fact, I transferred many of my domains from other registrars to Sav.com for their uniform pricing for registrations, transfers, and renewals, and their intuitive interface. I had around 100+ domain names with them.
When I was on a business trip, I forgot to renew around 20 domain names, and they were all ended up in expired auctions, past the renewal grace period. I have been holding on to them for the past 15+ years. When I resumed my work after my business trip, luckily I saw those domains at Sav.com's expired auctions. I participated in the auctions, and won them.
Everything went well up to this point.
I was so happy that I am going to get these names back. The moment I received an email from Sav.com about the winning of the expired domain auctions, I logged into my account at Sav.com, and tried to find the invoices for the expired domain auctions I won, to make the payment for them.
I found none.
Then I tried to fund my Sav.com account with an amount required to pay for the expired auctions, but guess what, prepay option is not there. I tried reaching out to the support team, and they told me that there is no way to manually pay for the winning auctions. They told me that their "system" is built in such a way that it will automatically try to charge the payment method on file, once in a day, and continue to do so for three days from the auction end date, in case if the payment method on file fails for any reasons.
I won eight domain names in the expired auctions (they were all previously owned by me and have a history of almost 15+ years of continuous registration). Since I was the only bidder, all those names were won by me for the starting price of the auctions. Another 12 names are still in the auction, and two more days to go.
The eight names I won in the expired auctions had a starting price of $8.6 each. Since I can't manually make the payment for the 8 names I won, I waited for their "system" to automatically deduct the amount from the payment method I had on file with them. In the night following the auctions end date, I received a debit message from my credit card issuer for an amount of $8.6, and another seven "transaction declined" error messages. I inquired my card issuing bank and they told me that, their fraud prevention mechanism had blocked the automated, exact valued, and repeated transaction attempts except the first transaction.
I contacted the Sav.com support team, and explained them what happened. I requested them to issue individual invoices for the auctions I won, so that I can manually make the payment. They told me that it is not possible, and asked me to choose another payment method and wait for the "system" to process the transactions.
As per their suggestion, I changed the payment method with another credit card from a different bank. The next day, I received a debit message from my credit card issuer for an amount of $8.6, and another six "transaction declined" error messages, similar to the ones I received with my previous card issuer. Upon inquiring, the current credit card issuer has told me the same. They blocked all the remaining transactions except the first one for the same reason.
I contacted the Sav.com support team, and explained them what happened. I requested them to charge the credit card on file throuhout the day at various intervals, one transaction at a time, but they told me that their "system" is automated and they can't modify the "system" to do the transactions in the way I requested. They provided me with their default resolution as "Try changing the payment method".
I tried my luck with another credit card, issued by a different bank. This time, the card was debited with another $8.6, but I received a single "Gateway Rejected" error message. This time, I contacted Sav.com support and they told me that their Credit Card Fraud Prevention system has blocked the rest of the transactions except the first one. In order to bypass my account from this filtering mechanism, they requested me to send the scanned copies of my credit cards, and a government issued photo Id to their email address. I sent them to their email address, and they told me that they bypassed my account from the fraud protection screening during the card transactions.
Here comes the best part. I received no more messages from them. I checked the remaining four domains, and found that they are in redemption status now. I contacted the support team and they told me that their "system" tried to charge my credit cards three times in a row, continuously for three days (once in a day), and stopped. It successfully charged 3 transactions, but the another five transactions remained unpaid, and entered into the redemption state as of today.
I won these expired domains auctions 3 days ago. I was ready to pay for them all, but they refused to accept the payments in any other forms. Neither they had an option to prepay the funds required to make the payment for the auctions I won, nor they had an option to generate individual invoices to make payment for the auctions I won. If their so called "system" had an option to charge the total amount of all the auctions I won in a single transaction, I would have not lost those five domains. Now they are asking me to pay $80 per domain to redeem them back.
Do not know what to do next.
This is one of the very bad experiences I had with the popular registrar Sav.com. In fact, I transferred many of my domains from other registrars to Sav.com for their uniform pricing for registrations, transfers, and renewals, and their intuitive interface. I had around 100+ domain names with them.
When I was on a business trip, I forgot to renew around 20 domain names, and they were all ended up in expired auctions, past the renewal grace period. I have been holding on to them for the past 15+ years. When I resumed my work after my business trip, luckily I saw those domains at Sav.com's expired auctions. I participated in the auctions, and won them.
Everything went well up to this point.
I was so happy that I am going to get these names back. The moment I received an email from Sav.com about the winning of the expired domain auctions, I logged into my account at Sav.com, and tried to find the invoices for the expired domain auctions I won, to make the payment for them.
I found none.
Then I tried to fund my Sav.com account with an amount required to pay for the expired auctions, but guess what, prepay option is not there. I tried reaching out to the support team, and they told me that there is no way to manually pay for the winning auctions. They told me that their "system" is built in such a way that it will automatically try to charge the payment method on file, once in a day, and continue to do so for three days from the auction end date, in case if the payment method on file fails for any reasons.
I won eight domain names in the expired auctions (they were all previously owned by me and have a history of almost 15+ years of continuous registration). Since I was the only bidder, all those names were won by me for the starting price of the auctions. Another 12 names are still in the auction, and two more days to go.
The eight names I won in the expired auctions had a starting price of $8.6 each. Since I can't manually make the payment for the 8 names I won, I waited for their "system" to automatically deduct the amount from the payment method I had on file with them. In the night following the auctions end date, I received a debit message from my credit card issuer for an amount of $8.6, and another seven "transaction declined" error messages. I inquired my card issuing bank and they told me that, their fraud prevention mechanism had blocked the automated, exact valued, and repeated transaction attempts except the first transaction.
I contacted the Sav.com support team, and explained them what happened. I requested them to issue individual invoices for the auctions I won, so that I can manually make the payment. They told me that it is not possible, and asked me to choose another payment method and wait for the "system" to process the transactions.
As per their suggestion, I changed the payment method with another credit card from a different bank. The next day, I received a debit message from my credit card issuer for an amount of $8.6, and another six "transaction declined" error messages, similar to the ones I received with my previous card issuer. Upon inquiring, the current credit card issuer has told me the same. They blocked all the remaining transactions except the first one for the same reason.
I contacted the Sav.com support team, and explained them what happened. I requested them to charge the credit card on file throuhout the day at various intervals, one transaction at a time, but they told me that their "system" is automated and they can't modify the "system" to do the transactions in the way I requested. They provided me with their default resolution as "Try changing the payment method".
I tried my luck with another credit card, issued by a different bank. This time, the card was debited with another $8.6, but I received a single "Gateway Rejected" error message. This time, I contacted Sav.com support and they told me that their Credit Card Fraud Prevention system has blocked the rest of the transactions except the first one. In order to bypass my account from this filtering mechanism, they requested me to send the scanned copies of my credit cards, and a government issued photo Id to their email address. I sent them to their email address, and they told me that they bypassed my account from the fraud protection screening during the card transactions.
Here comes the best part. I received no more messages from them. I checked the remaining four domains, and found that they are in redemption status now. I contacted the support team and they told me that their "system" tried to charge my credit cards three times in a row, continuously for three days (once in a day), and stopped. It successfully charged 3 transactions, but the another five transactions remained unpaid, and entered into the redemption state as of today.
I won these expired domains auctions 3 days ago. I was ready to pay for them all, but they refused to accept the payments in any other forms. Neither they had an option to prepay the funds required to make the payment for the auctions I won, nor they had an option to generate individual invoices to make payment for the auctions I won. If their so called "system" had an option to charge the total amount of all the auctions I won in a single transaction, I would have not lost those five domains. Now they are asking me to pay $80 per domain to redeem them back.
Do not know what to do next.
