Folks, domain names are a subscription service. That means you have to pay to keep them every so often.
You don’t pay for them once and keep them forever. If it’s a .com, you most likely have to renew it every year and it’s a lot like your Time magazine subscription: If you don’t pay the bill, you stop receiving the service.
Your ISP will send you an email around 30 days before it’s due to expire, letting you know how to renew it. This is standard practice – although some will send you a letter in addition, but beware the so called “Domain Registry of America” as they are a domain name renewal scam company.
Ignore the notice and your domain will expire. And if you did exactly that, please do not then phone your ISP and scream at them for not calling you about your domain expiring. Most of all, don’t complain that they should have phoned you over your piddling $7.99 domain name. You realise that to phone every customer every day about every expiring domain name that they’d have to hire a half-dozen extra bodies and charge you about 50 bucks for your cheapass domain renewal?
Furthermore, don’t then bitch about how important said domain is to your business, how you’re losing email, and then refuse for 3 days to send in confirmation of your wish to renewal by fax or email. You do realise they don’t really care if you spend your 8 bucks with them or not? Really, they’re hoping you DO stall for a few more days because then your domain is going into redemption and is going to cost you a hundred bucks to get back.
Oh, you just sent a support ticket bitching about how you opened a ticket 9 months ago asking them to keep renewing it indefinitely? They really, really like how you ignored the reply to that ticket clearly stating that they couldn’t do that and you would have to follow procedure which was to follow the instructions in the email sent 30 days before the domain was due to expire.
You’re going to take your business elsewhere? Why would they care? Your current account is worth about 100 bucks a year revenue to them, and you cost them around 400-500 in support. They also happen to know that a number of other local suppliers including a Cisco Gold Partner have told you to go elsewhere when your contracts came up for renewal because you’re such a god awful customer.
Don’t you realise that calling your suppliers names and generally acting like a 4 year old having a temper tantrum does not exactly endear the staff to your plight? You realise that it makes them much more likely to not volunteer information and to strictly enforce their company policies?
Didn’t think so… that’s why it’s 3 days later and your domain name still hasn’t been renewed.
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