Register.com is a SCAM

[Nigel Farage]

I have several domain names with several registrars, purchased due to special deals and deep discounts. All of the other Registrars send me NUMEROUS emails warning me about the domain name expiring and the need to re-register.

Discovered today that Register.com has ignored my "autopay" selection and billed my account anyways for re-registering 2 different domain names, for $40.00 each.

The going rate at everywhere else is $10.00. ALL of the other registrars send warnings about expiration. Checking my email account's history shows that Register.com sends spam advertisements on a regular basis, but not one word of warning until the day they auto-bill me for $80.00.

Had I known it was going to be like this, I would have preferred to let the domains expire, as these are prospect domains for sites that I've thought about doing "someday", "if I ever find the time". They aren't really even worth $10.00 to me, and Register.com has autobilled me (against my wishes) at 4 times the going rate. A check of the internet ("register.com scam") shows at least one other person has been fraudulently auto-billed by Register.com, so it's no mistake. This is how they do business.

What I'm Going to Do:

Pay an additional $10.00 for each domain name to transfer them to some place safe & reputable like Hostgator, and then dispute the $80.00 is charges with Bank of America.

One concern is if these Registrars have some tricky legal mechanism that allows them to "take back" a transferred domain if there is some kind of financial dispute. I doubt it, but given todays predatory legal & business climate, you never know what they will try, and get away with.

 

[artizhay]

Sounds like an issue of ignorance to me. Do you make a habit of calling everything a scam? Seems like it. The regular Register.com fee is $38, which is what you apparently have been charged. If you had read your agreement or done research before purchasing, you would know this. The agreement also never makes a mention of contacting you to prepare you for renewal for domains when using SafeRenew, but only for services attached thereto, and is enabled or disabled by calling customer support.

 

[mseostrategy]

What happened you actual i can't understand what you talking about, describe in another scene.

 

[Nigel Farage]

Sounds like an issue of ignorance to me. Do you make a habit of calling everything a scam? Seems like it.

While I agree that some people see "scam" everywhere they look, other people can't see the scam even when they are the focus of a http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/shit-list/520587-artizhay-contact-me-asap-else-problem-4-a.html#post5334032. (There was no reason to make this personal, but since you have I'm handing it back to you.)

Scammers always seem to point to the fine print. They are the only ones that do, primarily because they write it, and because it was written to serve their interests, even though the paying customers think they are paying the business to serve THEIR interests. Even when they are "right", they're still wrong. You understand? There's the letter of the law, and then there's the spirit. As a general rule, people want to do business with a business that they can trust, and not one that uses tricky whoop-de-do's and sleazy fine print to extract 400% more than industry standard from what used to be a trusting customer.

You (somehow) also managed to miss the part where I said that I had deliberately turned OFF the "Autopay" option. I NEVER allow any business to auto-bill me, ever. And this isn't the 1st business that has tried it.

Do you Autobill your customers, even though they expressly refuse to allow it? Did you write some tricky "fine print" into your contracts that allow you to do this?

 

[ub3rst4r]

This is why I don't use automatic payments nor use a over expensive domain registrar like register.com.

 

[Nigel Farage]

UPDATE:

While I have some reservations about GoDaddy (supported SOPA), I cannot ignore the fact that they are charging me less than $4.00 (total) to transfer 3 domains from Register.com to GoDaddy.com. Two (2) of the domains were fraudulently renewed by Register.com, and one (1) had recently been purchased, with almost a full year before it expires. I'm clearing off ALL my domains in order to protect myself from retaliation from Register.com after I dispute the VISA charges that they fraudulently charged me. (I will be using the word FRAUD, loudly & frequently during the phone call to Bank of America.)

Whenever I find a sleazy company like this doing predatory business practices upon previously trusting customers, I take great pride in accomplishing the goal of costing them a LOT more money for having tried to defraud a paying customer instead of doing business in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law). I like to hit them HARD, and where it HURTS, right in the wallet. So if anyone also chooses to dump register.com, or send their business somewhere else as a result of this thread, I'd be pleased to hear about it.

As an addon point, I'd like to report that while clicking through all the screens to get the authorization code in order to transfer the domains, Register.com attempted to "STOP!" me with a spammy pop-up window, and offered me a "deal" of one (1) year of additional registration for the extraordinarily low-low price of $10.00 (each). They also wanted me to fill out a survey, explaining to them why it was that I was transferring my domains away from them, which I didn't fill-out because "Register.com is a bunch of scamming, low-life motherfuckers" was not one of the options that they offered. I clicked "Other", but they didn't give me a chance to type this in, either.

They also use very "imperial" sounding language about the whole transfer authorization code. They claim it is going to take 4 to 7 days (or so) before they will send me an email notice letting me know if they "approve" the transfer. Trying to underline to me who has the power, and who does not, and also letting me know that they are fucking doing me a favor by "allowing" me to transfer my own domain name. Fuck these motherfuckers at Register.com. I hope they go out of business and wind up standing at highway intersections with cardboard signs that say "Need Work. Hungry. God Bless". Maybe I will "allow" them to eat the moldy french fries from underneath the carpet of my vehicle.

 

[bradmaven]

They got me as well. I actually went in to turn off the auto renew function a week or so before my domains were due to expire, but the option to turn it off wasn't even available to me. I got a message along the lines off "you need to call us to turn off auto renew". After being hung up on twice over then next couple of days, I got an email telling me that they had been renewed for $40 a pop.

Here's the best part though, as soon as the paypal payments went through, the option to be able to turn off auto renew was magically enabled.

 

[mikeydell]

I have some domains with them, but never had this kind of problem with them as I always opted out of that during checkout. The only thing I can't stand with Register.com is there constant calling to try and get me to buy there website building service, or trying to sell me some other service of theirs.

 

[Pharn]

after some testing and failing, i use only moniker

 

[desiblast]

Dude, you can get that $80 refunded EASILY. All it takes is one phone call.

Just 3 days back, I got charged $240 due to my 6 domains there (that I got all at 99cents). I called them, said that "your email said my cc was expired, I didn't want these domains, yet I got charged". And without any questions, they refunded all my money (offered to sell them to me at cheaper price, I refused, they didn't try more).

Easy! Just get a refund if you can still and cancel your transfer, you'll get your $80 back!

 

[Nigel Farage]

Dude, you can get that $80 refunded EASILY. All it takes is one phone call.

I called the scamming sleazebags at Register.com several times, and each time I had to listen to at least 5 minutes of recorded sales bullshit. I shouldn't HAVE to make a phone call in order to get the money they stole from me back. My time is valuable and I have better things to do than sit around on hold listing to sales bullshit while the thieves that stole my money find it convenient to discuss the possibility of giving me my money back.

Another Update:

Two days ago I finally did get through to Register.com. Their phone tree software puts billing issues in a category that is only open during normal business hours, however in frustration I punched "1" for Sales and not surprisingly they had a Sales Representative available to speak to me almost immediately. And, SURPRISINGLY, the Sales Representative had the ability to give me the authorization codes needed to effect the transfer immediately, instead of me having to wait 4 or 5 days.

The 4 or 5 day waiting period is complete and utter bullshit. They lie to the customers about this, and pretend like it takes that long, in order to hook the people that want to transfer away from Register.com at the last minute into believing they have to stay with this sleazy, thieving and scamming company. Despite all explicitly stated messages to the contrary, I got a Sales Representative to send me the authorization codes via email within 3 minutes of making the phone call, and outside normal business hours.

They can do it, they just don't fucking want to. People would (and should) flee their shitty and dishonest company in droves if they found out they could do it quickly & easily. All the restrictions Register.com puts up are artificial, and are designed to entrap their customers into paying 400% more than industry standard. (I found transfer & re-registration prices to be about the same, ranging from $8.30 to $13.00 for one year, in comparison to the $40.00 Register.com involuntarily and fraudulently billed me.)

But WAIT! There's MORE!

So, after recieving the 3 authorization codes and typing them in, instead of going wrong and displaying a red bar graph, GoDaddy (the "to" Registrar) showed green and some progress. I figured the job was done and went to bed.

Two (2) days later (last night), I check in to verify that the 3 Domain Name Transfers are complete, and discovered that I have three (3) emails from GoDaddy telling me that they all "failed".

First, I logged onto my Register.com account, and re-initiated the transfer (for about the 6th time) and THIS TIME, I get YET ANOTHER pop-up window (a different one) going on about how "sorry they are" to "see me go" and offering me a whopping 15% discount on my domain name registration. (I never bothered to check if it was 15% off of the $120, $80, or what, because I was too busy thinking "Fuck you Bastards, I'm going to get away from you no matter what I have to do." to even bother to read it.)

So then I called Register.com (the "from" Registrar) AGAIN and the immediately available Sales Representative (Hint: Don't waste time with "Billing" or "Tech Support") said there was no reason why the transfer should not have taken place, and he "did something" on his computer. Five (5) minutes later, GoDaddy (the "to" Registrar) shows all three (3) domain names successfully transferred and locked.

I still don't feel like I'm away from these motherfuckers. I have the feeling that, somehow they will manage to re-transfer those three (3) domain names back to Register.com and then want to charge me some crazy price in order to keep them. There is no limit to what I think this sleazy, dishonest and scamming company is capable of.

In these kinds of cases, where someone that has recently been seriously burned by a sleazy company like Register.com, interested and disconnected observers have a tendency to try to pick out how the complaintant in the situation was wrong in some way. I have no issue with that. Maybe I could have transferred those domain names a month ago. Maybe that girl shouldn't have gone out in public wearing a haltar top and short shorts. If you don't carry around so much cash, you won't have to worry about being robbed, and if you would have carried full coverage insurance, that drunk driver wouldn't have cost you $10,000. That's human nature and there's not much to be done about it.

However, the "counter-agent" if you will is other, disconnected people that have similar stories posting them, so that people can see that it's not just a situation involving just one person. This thread already has one (1) negative report of Register.com. The more of those that get posted, the less this thread is about me, and the more it becomes about that sleazy shit-bag of a company, Register.com.

 

[Gogol]

Thanks for the warning. I always use Godaddy, Bigrock and Namecheap as my registrars.I do not care how much I have to pay them for the first year (yet they have the cheapest domains lol), I can sleep peacefully knowing that they will just bomb my mailbox when my domains are about to expire. This should be one reason why one should not buy a domain from a registrar who is not so popular...

 

[Nigel Farage]

Update:

So a couple days ago I finally found the time to call Bank of America and dispute the outrageous $38.00 per domain name charges that Register.com fraudulantly billed my VISA for. The B of A monkey was polite and asked me lots of questions, primarily intended to find reasons to rule against me. I wouldn't let him do this.

He kept repeating back what I said, only he would rephrase the statements so that they conformed to his B of A dispute resolution checklist. I would say something like "They changed my selection by turning on auto-bill pay so that they could then fraudulently bill me at 4 times current market rates." and he would respond "So, I understand that the Vendor is not following correct VISA billing protocol."

And that's when I would bring everything to a screeching halt, and say, "No. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that Register.com has fraudulantly constructed a billing process that is oriented in such a way that unwitting customers are funneled into a situation that allows Register.com to fraudulantly bill them at 4 times the current market rate. They aren't "failing to follow VISA billing protocol", they are committing the criminal act of fraud."

He only tried this crap twice, before he finally got the idea that I was not going to agree to follow his pre-made script that would allow him to categorise Register.com's fraud as a minor, non-criminal "administrative oversite". It's fraud. I said it was fraud, and I kept saying it was fraud, and anytime he tried to paraphrase my words to mean anything other than that it was fraud, I immediately corrected him and made sure the focus stayed on the fact that it was fraud.

Had he tried to distract me from the allegation of fraud one more time, I was going to ask if the phone conversation was being recorded (I knew it was), and then ask him pointedly why it was that he kept trying to make the situation into something other than what it was, which was the criminal act of fraud? He knew that this (or something like it) was coming, I suspect, and didn't try that shit again.

So I have an immediate, temporary credit of $76.00 to my account ($38.00 X 2 domain names), and I keep open the possibility that I may not keep it. I also think it's possible that, even though the domain names have apparently been safely transfered away from Register.com, they may still somehow get them back. I don't care. I didn't want those domains anyways, and only transferred them away to punish Register.com. They will probably sit, unused in their current Registrar for another year, before I allow them to expire. (Which was what I was planning to do with them when they were registered with Register.com, before they committed fraud and pissed me off.)

 

[Nigel Farage]

A few weeks ago I received written notice in the mail from B of A that my "dispute" was officially settled in my favor and that they considered the matter closed. It's been, what, 3 months? since this started.

It's 3 months later and I haven't changed my opinion about Register.com one bit. They are a criminal enterprise masquerading as a legitimate business. They are regularly committing the criminal act of fraud. Someday, law enforcement is going to get involved and shut them down, however it seems lately that when companies and corporations commit crimes, it's always a big media splash but no one ever goes to jail.

Why is it that you never read about any corporate executives going to jail, ever? It seems to me that they USED to, back in the "olden days", but now they don't. Did they suddenly manage to stop violating the law? I don't think so. I don't know what they are doing (maybe bribing law enforcement and prosecutors), but it seems to be working. The only "named" people that get into trouble now are middle-aged white ladies that used to say the "N-word". That's a big deal now. Crime? Eh, not so much.

Anyways, this is the kind of stuff I think about when considering violating the law. I think about how leadership is by example, and how corrupt & criminally involved our "leadership" is, and having dispensed with any concerns about moral issues, the only factor left in the calculation is the likelihood of getting caught. Yet another reason why I'm a blackhat. I'll go white immediately after the people with all the power and the money do. Until then, they (and anyone else that presumes to control my behavior) can go fuck themselves.

 

[whland]

I registered a domain with register.com about a year ago now. I registered it because I got a deal for like $3.00 for the first year. I didn't realize that the regular rate was gonna be $40.00 until someone over at webhostingtalk told me of the regular fee.

I forgot about the domain and let it expire. Then they wanted a high reinstate fee. I said no thanks and just let the domain go.

Next time I'm reading the fine print.

Chad

 

[Nigel Farage]

I just today had a similar experience with Network Solutions. The scam is the same. It takes "X" days to "request permission" to transfer the domain name, and "Y" days to actually effect the transfer, or you can pay $39.00 to re-register it with Network Solutions.

Jesus, what a completely fucked-up GUI. Like it was put together by a retarded 9 year old.

 

[Invoker]

I have all my domains on godaddy and I sometimes cry myself to sleep. I sold my soul to the devil

 

[whland]

Jesus, what a completely fucked-up GUI. Like it was put together by a retarded 9 year old.

XD. I totally agree. It does look like that.

Chad

 

[Nigel Farage]

I have all my domains on godaddy and I sometimes cry myself to sleep. I sold my soul to the devil

I feel the same way. I really want to hate GoDaddy and punish them until even their grandchildren are withered bags of brittle bones. I'd like to perform human experiments on them that would make Dr. Mengle look like Florence fucking Nightengale.

But, unfortunately I'm a crack addict willing to perform the filthiest sex acts imaginable, just so I can get a domain name registered for only $1.00. I hate myself, and what I've become. BUT I HAVE ABOUT 20 DOMAIN NAMES, WOOT!!!!

And then, back to the self-loathing.

 

[srb888]

It always was that -- scUm/scAm, means the same. They hook you first with absurd pricing, then they cut your pocket 100x more later.