There’s a Devil in those Details
Camoufla
ged in your domain registrar’s “Terms of Service” you may find some distasteful little morsels. Knowing that most people never read the fine print in terms of service documents, We’re here to let you in on a dirty deed done by “cheap” domain names registration services. This is one of those cases when you end up paying more for a cheap service once you factor in hidden fees plus the time you spend in a blind rage when you discover them. We won’t even mention the laptop you threw across the room when you tried to transfer your domain name to another service and it was revealed that you must pay 2-3 times the original price of registration to do so. Never mind that this practice violates an ICANN regulation against it, it happens.
If you paid by credit card, you may be able to plead your case with the card issuer and have the charges reversed, but El Cheapo Domains stands to make wads of cash off of people who fail to notice their larcenous behavior. More deviltry awaits the unsuspecting. Many Terms of Service documents contain language that reflects their actual ownership of each and every domain in their stock. One example is that a third party might be able to suspend the operation of your domain by raising a simple complaint with the registrar.
Losing Your Business For The Win!
Let’s say you pay a nice low rate for the domain of your choice. You choose the 5-year option and off you go, building a small commercial empire on your new domain. In the meantime, the Registrar actually keeps renewing the name one year at at a time, hoping that their hideous customer service drives you off to a competitor. In a strange way, these operators profit when they lose your business! You can check the actual expiration date on the “Whois” database to see if this might be the source of the terrible customer service yo are suffering through right now.
How do you Spell “Free?” F-E-E
Some unscrupulous registrars, knowing that the your details are published in the Whois database, charge a fee for changing any of that information. Let’s say your phone number or address changes. You email Pete’s Dirt Cheap Domains to ask them to change it. The next day (if Pete is in the mood) you get an email back with the total fee due for making the change. This is supposed to be something registrars do for free as part of their job, but you don’t know that. When you do finally agree on making the change, your next plan is to get out of Dodge by transferring to another more reputable registrar. Nope! There is an automatic 60-day lockdown on your domain to keep it in place. And now you are on Pete’s bad side.
The Slammer
Your shiny new domain is up and running when you notice a decided increase in the volume of marketing spam in your email inbox. Yes, it is what you think it is. Even though you were promised privacy, what you got was a thin slice of Swiss cheese between you and the hordes of data mining robots roaming the internet. Your contact info is now all over the place. A lower level of hell is reserved for those who take it a step further. One bit of data collected en masse by these web crawling locusts is your domain’s expiration date. Just before your actual registrar issues a renewal notice, victims receive a bogus one in their email inbox which they dutifully pay to avoid the penalty of losing their domain. THEN they get the real invoice and realize they’ve bee duped.
Lock and Roll
The “Registration Lock” was instituted as a feature to help combat domain slamming. If the lock is in place, no one can abscond with your domain name without you knowing about it well in advance. The problem comes when your registrar turns it on, and them either forgets to or refuses to remove it when you need access. Pete’s Dirt Cheap Domains has you by the you-know-whats, especially because the fine print spells out the fact that “your” domain is in reality the property of the registrar. You are just borrowing it.
Pimping your Parked Domain
You may have a few domains you aren’t currently using, or you’ve registered them as an investment that can increased in value as demand for it goes up. For example, if you had registered and “parked” “Holiday.com” years ago, you’d be very wealthy today if you put it up for auction. Parking simply means to slap together an ad-laden web page that appears in a browser window when someone searches for it. It may not be a big deal to you, but your registrar is making money off your unused domain. To wrap it up we’ll simply say: “Caveat Emptor, domain buyer, caveat emptor.” Your Domain Pick steers clear of anything like the above. You’ll get an honest deal at a value price, so explore our website today!