Over the past few days I have been receiving telephone calls from my customers worried about loosing their domain name. Each customer asks, “But I thought you handled this for me?” The reason for the panic is Domain Registry of America, a company that uses a tactic of sending what appears to be a bill to business owners in an effort to sign the customer up to their domain registration service.
The problem with their tactic, is the letters they send look like a bill with a headline of “Domain Name Expiration Notice” and “You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web”. The wording is purposely designed to confuse non-technically minded individuals into inadvertently transferring their domain to Domain Registry of America.
I have come to a very disturbing realization that many of the individuals in my industry are just plain crooks. They hold the domain names of their “customers” hostage in an effort to extort additional monies out of them. The thought of stealing a customer’s domain name or holding it hostage is so alien to the way I choose to do business, I am surprised to find that for others it is common practice.
