Namecheap Autorenewal and cancellation, Names go to redemption

[its_different]

Hi,

Wanted to share my experience with namecheap.

Few of my domain names were renewed automatically by Namecheap due to the default settings and my debit card was charged.
As its 14USD/domain while I had a plan to transfer it to another registrar with around 8 USD transfer fees.

I asked Namecheap to cancel my renewal for these domains,and they said, if i cancel the renewal, the domains will go into redemption period. I was of the view that may be these agents are saying whatever limited knowledge they have,as i could not see anything online about such policy.

Anyhow, after cancelling the renewals of these domains, I am not able to view these in my namecheap account, while there is still one month left in the names expiry.

Is this normal?Does ICANN allows these registrars to adapt such shame policies?

Thanks

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

I asked Namecheap to cancel my renewal for these domains,and they said, if i cancel the renewal, the domains will go into redemption period. I was of the view that may be these agents are saying whatever limited knowledge they have,as i could not see anything online about such policy.

Anyhow, after cancelling the renewals of these domains, I am not able to view these in my namecheap account, while there is still one month left in the names expiry.

Is this normal?Does ICANN allows these registrars to adapt such shame policies?

Admittedly, with GoDaddy, there appeared to be no ability to cancel a renewal once it happened. So, I'm delighted to hear that Namecheap would even be so considerate about allowing a renewal charge to be reversed.

Did you ever check to see what the whois is showing? And did you create a support ticket? Namcheap customer support hopefully can help sort this out, so you can proceed with the transfer elswhere (as long as it's pre-expiration).

 

[karmaco]

Contact name cheap for auth codes but it sounds like they are past the grace period.

If they indeed have one month left of grace period they should still be in your account and/or they have to give you the codes upon request . If they won’t give you the codes file a complaint with icann.

None of this sounds like normal NameCheap. I suspect you are beyond grace renewal and into more costly redemption period but only they can answer that.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

....they said, if i cancel the renewal, the domains will go into redemption period.

Sounds like you may have misunderstood the consequences of cancellation of the renewals that happened. Registars as a whole do not appear to permit transfers of domains past their expiration date, unless renewed at the current registrar.

The "expiration" grace/redemption periods allow recovery of the domain at that registrar, with fees that can be increasingly higher. For example, at Namecheap, there appears to be a slight bulk discount (for some customers at least) prior to the expiration date, but a higher price during the grace period. For the redemption period, the cost is even higher.

So, if you are no longer seeing the domains in your account, it may be that effectively the domains have been cancelled. Customer support will be able to clarify that.

I'm sorry to hear that this didn't go the way you had hoped. Hopefully, you can still recover them, but perhaps requiring a higher cost at this stage. Or, you could wait and register them again, if nobody picks them up?!

 

[karmaco]

Taken from ICANN website

1. My domain name has just expired. Can my registrar require me to pay for a renewal before I can transfer the domain name to a new registrar?​

   No. You have the right to transfer an expired domain. Registrars are not allowed to deny a transfer due to expiration or non-renewal. (unless you haven't paid for a previous registration period).
   However, if the current registrar has begun to delete your domain (i.e., the EPP status code (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-codes-2014-06-16-en)) shows the domain in Redemption Grace Period, the name must be restored by your current registrar before it can be transferred. This may result in an additional fee, sometimes referred to as a redemption fee.

 

[its_different]

Admittedly, with GoDaddy, there appeared to be no ability to cancel a renewal once it happened. So, I'm delighted to hear that Namecheap would even be so considerate about allowing a renewal charge to be reversed.

Did you ever check to see what the whois is showing? And did you create a support ticket? Namcheap customer support hopefully can help sort this out, so you can proceed with the transfer elswhere (as long as it's pre-expiration).

The domains renewed because the default settings was set to auto-renewal,but strange thing is that,they renewed the domain, even when there was one month left for the domain to expire.
Even now, the domains will expire on 10th of May.

I did talk to Namecheap support and there they told this weird policy that,if i cancel my renewal, they will send the domains to redemption period,despite a month left in the domains to expire.

 

[its_different]

Sounds like you may have misunderstood the consequences of cancellation of the renewals that happened. Registars as a whole do not appear to permit transfers of domains past their expiration date, unless renewed at the current registrar.

The "expiration" grace/redemption periods allow recovery of the domain at that registrar, with fees that can be increasingly higher. For example, at Namecheap, there appears to be a slight bulk discount (for some customers at least) prior to the expiration date, but a higher price during the grace period. For the redemption period, the cost is even higher.

So, if you are no longer seeing the domains in your account, it may be that effectively the domains have been cancelled. Customer support will be able to clarify that.

I'm sorry to hear that this didn't go the way you had hoped. Hopefully, you can still recover them, but perhaps requiring a higher cost at this stage. Or, you could wait and register them again, if nobody picks them up?!

After cancelling the renewals, they put the domains into redemption period, despite the fact that domains will expire on May 10(still 24 days left). Although I had told them that they can put the money into my namecheap account,and not refund it.

 

[its_different]

Taken from ICANN website

1. My domain name has just expired. Can my registrar require me to pay for a renewal before I can transfer the domain name to a new registrar?​

   No. You have the right to transfer an expired domain. Registrars are not allowed to deny a transfer due to expiration or non-renewal. (unless you haven't paid for a previous registration period).
   However, if the current registrar has begun to delete your domain (i.e., the EPP status code (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-codes-2014-06-16-en)) shows the domain in Redemption Grace Period, the name must be restored by your current registrar before it can be transferred. This may result in an additional fee, sometimes referred to as a redemption fee.

Thanks, this is pretty useful information,
In my case,the domains were still having 1 month in expirry left, but they give me only this option,that if i cancel my renewal they will change the state to redemption and I cannot move it to another registrar.And Yes, they want to charge now 70USD+ to change the redemption state.

Actually I was looking for such info and even asked the customer representative to show me where is such policy written by ICANN,and they could not show me.
I just agreed to whatever he said assuming that such thing has never happened, but they deleted the names from my account.

 

[Jv1999]

i just wanted to share my own Namecheap experience: They're pretty good.

My two domains were past grace, but i had asked them to unlock and send me the auth codes. They were already expired almost 30 days. I initiated transfer with another registrar, then thought everything went well since i didn't receive a notificaiton that anythiung failed

Flashback to today, I get an email from NC that one of the domains i was transferring out had a bid of $307 as one of their top auctions. Panicking, I emailed support and i 100% thought they were going ot say sorry too bad so sad... because they were a business and why would they throw away a 307$ bid?

What happened instead, is they just sent the auth code and unlocked!

I'm a huge fan of NC now. It's obvious they care more about loyal customers than money.

 

[Grego85]

It always sucks when that happens. 30 days prior to expiration is absurdly early in my opinion to charge someone for auto renewal. The redemption thing is bullshit too. This os one of the reasons I rarely use Namecheap at all anymore. There are far better registrars to use out there.

 

[forge]

30 days prior to expiration is absurdly early in my opinion to charge someone for auto renewal.

Namesilo does this. In fact I'm not sure Namecheap has this policy.

 

[nuncio]

Few of my domain names were renewed automatically by Namecheap due to the default settings and my debit card was charged.
As its 14USD/domain while I had a plan to transfer it to another registrar with around 8 USD transfer fees.

I asked Namecheap to cancel my renewal for these domains,and they said, if i cancel the renewal, the domains will go into redemption period. I was of the view that may be these agents are saying whatever limited knowledge they have,as i could not see anything online about such policy.

Anyhow, after cancelling the renewals of these domains, I am not able to view these in my namecheap account, while there is still one month left in the names expiry.

Is this normal?Does ICANN allows these registrars to adapt such shame policies?

I believe NameCheap has recently introduced this shady and likely illegal practice:
a) save the credit card on file without user's explicit consent
b) renew the services and domains automatically (30 days before expiration), without user's explicit consent and at a higher than regular rate
c) when user complains, offer to reverse the automatic renewal, but send the domains into redemption right away (NOT when the domains were actually set to expire)
d) when user loses access to domains, offer to recover them for $80 each

The exact same thing happened to me.

a), b), c) and d) clearly seem against the U.S./E.U. consumer protection (and privacy) laws, while at least c) seems against the ICANN rules.

I would suggest to file a complaint and with ICANN; also file a complaint with consumer protection agencies, like FTC (ftc.gov/complaint) or if in E.U., the national consumer protection agency, or use the European Consumer Centre (ECC) for cross-border complaints. BBB complaint would be warranted too.

Keep in mind that the domains that were renewed without your consent, 30 days prior to their original expiration date, were already paid for the entire year. Therefore, it's crucial that they remain valid and accessible at least until the original expiration date.

The behavior might also warrant a lawsuit (or even class action).

Please keep us posted of the progress.