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DON’T FALL FOR THE “DOMAIN NAME EXPIRATION NOTICE”:

If you own a domain, then there’s a good chance you will receive what appears to be an official domain name expiration notice from The Domain Renewal Group. If you do receive such a document, then I strongly suggest that you throw it away and don’t deal with this company, but firstly make a note of your actual expiration date (NOT their “reply requested by” date) if you haven’t already and if you wish to keep your domain after this date, ensure you renew it with your existing registrar or someone else reasonably competitive before it expires which will probably be around 4 months away after receiving this letter, so ignore the letter and relax! In my opinion the renewal letter and document is purposely trying to mislead, cleverly attempting to confuse people into believing that they have to urgently pay a ridiculous and extortionate price for a domain renewal well in advance of when you really need to renew, while just scraping within the bounds of the law.

The letter and document is titled, “Domain Name Expiration Notice” and in my opinion it could be easily confused as an urgent bill that you have to pay to avoid losing your domain – THIS IS CERTAINLY NOT THE CASE! The official looking document is in fact just an unsolicited sales letter which can be simply thrown away! I strongly suspect that The Domain Renewal Group obtains people’s domain registration and expiry details from their public records on Who Is and they then send out these renewals to masses of people.

Okay, on the so called “Domain Name Expiration Notice” letter and document they do in fact state later in the final paragraph of the written text that, “This notice is not a bill” which most probably covers them legally, although in my opinion many people may not read this far or they could still interpret this information incorrectly because of the way it’s written. In my opinion masses of people will immediately jump to the wrong conclusion about the document for the various reasons stated in the section below.

MISLEADING INFORMATION ON THE LETTER / DOCUMENT:

1) The fact that the document is titled, “Domain Name Expiration Notice” is in my opinion likely to confuse people into concluding that it’s an official document along with the whole official looking layout and also the official looking envelope they use to post it to you in the first place. Some people will in my opinion just assume that the document is an official renewal notice, probably from their existing registrar without even reading it through properly and they’re then likely to just pay it, not knowing any better. The document certainly doesn’t appear like an unsolicited sales letter which it truly is.

2) Towards the top of the document is a boldly printed box containing the domain name for renewal with “Reply Requested By” and a date that’s only a few weeks away after receiving the letter. Even though the date given is usually around 4 months until the domain really expires, some people could initially misinterpret this as their domain expiration date or the date they need to reply by to renew unless they read the rest of the document carefully. The document in my opinion creates a false sense of urgency which is also backed up by the words “Act today!”. Since the price of renewal is absolutely scandalous, no-one in their right mind would pay these prices if they received a domain renewal reminder from any reasonable existing domain registrar, so the Domain Renewal Group obviously in my opinion send out these letters very early to ensure people receive them well before any genuine reminders (please note that domain registrars are NOT normally obligated to send out domain expiration reminders, most choose to remind people, but one should ensure you keep an eye on your expiration date yourself in case they don’t as it’s legally entirely your responsibility).

3)The renewal prices are printed as large bold text in a bold table that really stands out from the rest of the document, this is likely to draw in many people’s attention without firstly reading the text above it.

4) In my opinion confusion could be caused by the distinctive way the lower part of the document is cleverly laid out with a perforated stub which should be detached to pay them in a very similar way to an official bill. The payment stub includes tick boxes to select how many years you want to renew your domain along with other similar domains that are also available, but only these are marked as “optional” when in the the whole lot is in fact optional. There is a large total amount box to fill in and you enter your credit card details officially underneath to secure your payment. The logos of the major credits cards including Visa, Mastercard and American Express are all displayed making the document look even more like an official bill.

5) If someone does read the written text in the document, it uses what is in my opinion scare tactics which explains how you could lose your on-line identity if you don’t renew along with all the potential consequences. It later states that you’re not obligated to renew if people decide to read this far and as I’ve mentioned earlier, they also cover themselves legally by writing, “this is not a bill”, although even this in my opinion is cleverly written around other text so as to cover themselves legally while still making some people jump to the wrong conclusion believing that they need to pay this extremely overpriced domain renewal urgently before their reply request date.

OTHER COMPLAINTS:

I’m certainly not the only person who has written terrible reviews about The Domain Renewal Group. In fact there’s numerous scam reports on-line about this organisation because they’ve successfully managed to confuse many people into renewing their domain with them at a their extortionate price, so in my opinion the accusations in this article are well justified. I have also seen a complaint saying the company take your money and don’t renew your domain at all, there’s no evidence of this and I therefore suspect it’s just a problem this particular person has encountered when dealing with them, but I still don’t recommend you trust any organisation that uses dodgy sales techniques as they’re likely to be rogues.

THEIR SCANDALOUS PRICE SCAM & WHY PEOPLE ARE STILL PAYING IT:

It’s costs £20 to renew a .com domain for a year with The Domain Renewal Group which is at least twice the normal cost or renewing elsewhere at the time of writing, yet they write, “…you can take advantage of our best savings” which implies that they are cheap which couldn’t be further from the truth. Their prices are even more scandalous for .co.uk domains and various others that in fact cost many times the usual cost elsewhere. It does work out a bit cheaper if you renew your domain for a longer period, but it’s still costing much more than the price of renewing elsewhere even if you renew for the maximum of 5 years. Unless people are confused into believing that they urgently need to pay the Domain Renewal Group to renew their existing domains, who would actually decide to pay well over the odds to transfer registrars if they truly understood all the facts, especially when it’s usually more convenient to stay with your existing registrar? Well in my opinion, barely anyone would as there’s really no advantage of changing your domain registrar to the Domain Renewal Group in any way what-so-ever, there’s only disadvantages.

VIRTUALLY HIDDEN TERMS AND CONDITIONS:

The terms and conditions for The Domain Renewal group are printed on the back of the letter and document, but they’re printed so small that most people honestly would find it utterly impossible to read. In fact I’ve got above average eye sight and even I’ve really struggled as there’s literally around an average of 50 words per line on the A4 sheet of paper. I’m really not exaggerating, the text really is absolutely ridiculously tiny, if you’ve ever watched the original 1971 film named, “Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory” starring Gene Wilder, you might remember the disclaimer the lucky golden ticket winners couldn’t read, but had to sign never-the-less before being allowed into the factory, well the Domain Renewal Group’s terms and conditions remind me of this. Most people will simply give up reading them as even with very good eyesight it’s too much of a strain and in my opinion they obviously know this will happen. In my opinion, no reasonable organisation would make it virtually impossible for people to read their terms and conditions. Since they’re trying to prevent people from reading their terms and conditions in this way, the worrying question is what are they trying to hide? There are a few worrying clauses I’ve noticed when I’ve persevered to attempt to read some of it, although it really was too difficult to read and interpret properly. Incidentally, I’ve checked for their terms and conditions on their official website to compare, but they’re not identical to the impossible to the tiny paper copy which is even more worrying, my advice is stay completely away!

THEIR WEBSITE HOSTING SERVICE:

The Domain Renewal Group also offer website hosting services that first appear to be more competitive to their very expensive domains and domain renewals. The problem is, I really wouldn’t do business with any organisation that in my opinion purposely uses very dodgy sales tactics as described earlier in this article. When choosing a suitable website host, you need to be-able to trust the organisation to provide a reliable service along with good technical support if there’s any problems. Unfortunately I certainly wouldn’t trust The Domain Renewal Group and would stay well away from them at all costs! I most certainly wouldn’t store secure or important website files or databases on their servers.

For cheap, fast and very reliable unlimited* hosting with masses of features including a free domain and much more, I recommend Hosting24. Please use coupon code “PJCNET” for an exclusive $2 a month discount! No website host is completely without any problems, but since this website has been hosted with Hosting24 it’s been on-line for well over 99.9% of the time as they promise and their technical support is also excellent (* there is a fair usage policy equivalent – obviously one couldn’t host for-instance the equivalent of YouTube for a tiny price).

MY ADVICE ON RENEWING YOUR DOMAIN:

Please remember that you don’t have to renew your domain 4 months in advance if you don’t want to, in fact you could renew the day before your domain expires if you chose to, although I recommend you renew at least a month before expiry to be completely safe in case there are any unforeseen problems. Even though renewing 4 months in advance isn’t necessary as the Domain Renewal Group try to imply, if you would like to renew early to get it out of the way, don’t pay at least twice the price to a company that uses misleading sales tactics. It’s usually much easier to renew your domain with your existing registrar or at least shop around well known reputable companies to transfer too.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

The above article and any comments include my own personal opinion which can’t be taken as definite fact. It is without prejudice to The Domain Renewal Group and the purpose of this document is to do no harm. The image logo used at the top of this article is copyright of The Domain Renewal Group all rights reserved, it’s not hosted on this website, if the owner would like this removed, please contact me at admin@paranormal-marketing.com. The full legal disclaimer also applies to this document, any comments and all other documents on this website.

P.S. We would be delighted for The Domain Renewal Group to reply to this article!

(WE ARE AWARE OF A MINOR PROBLEM WITH OUR GHTIME LINK BELOW: It’s due to their servers being down at the time of writing although it doesn’t effect anything else!)

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