Domain Registry of America scam
I recently received a deceptive notice from Domain Registry of America (see image to the left). The "notice," which looks more like a bill than a notice, gives the impression that a domain I own is about to expire and must be renewed. Domain Registry of America's notice informed me that, "Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web." OK. That's very thoughtful, but my domain doesn't expire until November. Why is Domain Registry of America only giving me until July 23 to reply? Well, mostly because it's a scam.
The scam is nothing new. In 2003, the Federal Trade Commission slapped the Canada-based Domain Registry of America (DROA) on its wrists for:
- misleading consumers into thinking that they are renewing their registrations with their current registrar when, instead, they are transferring their registrations to DROA's registrar, eNom.
- failing to disclose a $4.50 processing fee for any transfer requests that are not completed, even when the failure occurs without any fault of the consumers.
- failing to issue promised refunds in a timely manner, in violation of the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), sometimes delaying refunds for months.
On top of Domain Registry of America's deceptive practices, its domain prices are outrageous (sometimes 2 to 3 times higher than the industry norm). If you receive a notice from Domain Registry of America, DO NOT SEND MONEY. It is a scam.
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A sad sad state of
A sad sad state of situation. I just hope that such a scam wont be repeated but you never know.
New twist on these scammers
I am a website designer that takes care of domain name registrations for my clients. Domain Registry of America attempted to transfer one of my client's domains to their registrar service. Their email makes it look like my client requested the transfer when in fact he hadn't. They also provide a link you can click on but if you click on the link it will automatically authorize the transfer and unlock the domain. The link goes to droa.com
This latest Domain Registry of American scam started for me on October 2, 2008.
Watch out for this one folks.
You can't win!
It's shocking, but I when I got one of these letters I noticed that, even at £20 Sterling a year, these con artists are still 25% cheaper than the guys who are legitimately holding our domain. Grrr! :o(
Useful Article
I’m in Australia and have received letters from them with Aussie, US and Canadian addresses over the past 4-5 years. I’m always thrilled [not] to get their new invoices [like today] for a client domain and wish there was something we could all do to ban these miserable gits.
I wrote a blog post just today and then googled them and found your site. All the info above is great - at least we can expose them in some small way.
This could be very important
This could be very important to know all these points in mind.The measures on such scams should be taken as soon as possible from the cyber crime cell. Very informative post giving extremely important information about this incidents and we should all beware of that. Any of the business, like finance, currency trading, their popularity and productivity could suffer. So it should be stopped.
May have gotten out of it!
The person who handles invoices for a group I deal with accidentally sent them $50. I found out about it, called them up, said it was an error and we wanted not to use their service. The person, Jessica, that I spoke with said they would issue a refund and it would arrive in a few weeks. Hopefully that will not be a scam, too!
These people have a good scam going!
Domain Registry of America - This is a Scam!
Why is "Domain Registry of America" still able to operate?
"BRANDON GRAY INTERNET SERVICES INC. dba Namejuice.com has received a
request from Domain Registry of America on 3/25/2008 12:32:19 PM for us
to become the new registrar of record."
protection against Domain Registry of America scam
A solution with DRA is to send back their envelope for payment filled with journal paper but without affixing any postage stamp and without your personal address. If they want to know the content of the envelope, they must pay for the tax. And we can hope they will receive thousands of unfranked mails.
so glad I saw this
I was totally taken by suprise by this letter, the SAME one that you all got. Now I know not to send them money. Such a scam!
Renewal of my domain name
When I saw this letter it kind of puzzled me, I had to wonder why I was getting this. I don't want people to loss there businesses because of this, kind of scam.
I am very upset with people like this .
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