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Be Careful with Sneaky Domain Renewal Notices

--> Warning! Read Renewal Notices Carefully <--

    A number of Domain Name Owners have reported to their Registrars that their domains disappeared from their account after they responded to renewal notices by snail mail. It turns out that they actually transferred the domain to another registrar who had sent them a renewal notice by mail and urged them to renew the domain immediately. Without knowing that these notices were not from their current registrar, these unsuspecting users transferred their domains away from their registrar, paid a much higher price, lost their virtual domains, erased their email forwarding rules and POP3 accounts, and consequently took their websites offline.

To see examples of these deceptive expiration notices . . .

Image of the sneaky renewal notice from Domain Registry of America
Image of the sneaky renewal notice from VeriSign/Network Solutions 
 Image of sneaky renewal notice from Register.com -
All Images are In Process

    For the record, our registrar, directNIC relies almost solely on email to contact customers and does not solicit business through the U.S. mail. If you receive notices in the US snail mail regarding renewing your Sound Trax Technologies or directNIC-registered domain names, be sure to read them carefully and consult with Sound Trax Technologies or directNIC before you make any decisions.

    Several registrars are mining WHOIS data and sending deceptive and predatory expiration notices to owners of domains that are not registered with them. They have one common purpose: To steal domains from their competitors without lowering their price or improving their service and products. A few that have participated in this practice include Domain Registry of America, Network Solutions/VeriSign and Register.com, among others.

    We believe competition should be fair, legal, and ethical. directNIC has attracted many customers by constantly improving its website and user interface, adding new services, launching new products, listening and responding to customer feedback, and protecting customers against hackers and unethical solicitors. In order to better protect your domains and our business, we invite you to join our efforts. If you have received the mentioned paper-based renewal notices from other registrars, please report this activity to ICANN, the governing body of the domain registration industry. 

Class Action Lawsuit

    UPDATE: July 2002 - There is currently a "Class-Action" lawsuit being prepared against "Network Solutions, VeriSign" addressing the misleading tactics used to trick unsuspecting or unaware Domain Name owners into transferring the domain registration from owners current registrar to Network Solutions. This case is being handled by;

Adam Gonnelli
Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP
320 East 39th Street
New York, NY 10016
(212) 983-9330 phone
(212) 983-9331 fax
agonnelli@faruqilaw.com
www.faruqilaw.com

    Please contact Mr. Gonnelli, if you have received any of the "Renewal Notices" from VeriSign/Network Solutions. The more people involved in this suit the easier it will be to stop such deceptive practices from being perpetrated on domain name holders who may or may not have the time to spend researching the validity of fraudulent "Renewal Notice", or any other scam that may be conceived by Domain Registrars in the future.

The link to file a complaint is http://www.internic.net/cgi/registrars/problem-report.cgi

Sincerely,
Webmaster

For Your Information:

Advisory Concerning Deceptive Notices from "XChange Dispute Resolution" 

1. ICANN has received reports of domain-name registrants receiving "Domain Dispute Notification" mailings from an entity identifying itself as "Xchange Dispute Resolution." The mailings falsely state that XChange is an "ICANN authorized arbitrator" and that the registrant must mail in a "security deposit fee" to defend "ownership of the domain name."
   The link to the article is http://www.icann.org/announcements/advisory-08apr02.htm

Violation to the Federal Mail Guidelines:

1. The official USPS regulations for mail "that reasonably could be considered a bill, invoice, or statement of account due, but is in fact a solicitation for an order": 
    http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm/c031.htm 
2. The requirement is that the following phrase must appear in at least thirty point capital letters on the face of the notice: "THIS IS NOT A BILL. THIS IS A SOLICITATION. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PAY THE AMOUNT STATED ABOVE UNLESS YOU ACCEPT THIS OFFER."
3.  Here is a helpful example picture of what it should look like: http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm/c031.htm#Rar16021
4. The VeriSign messages clearly violate this requirement, and come under the mail fraud category.  You can complain to your local Postal Inspectors, or file your complaint online at: http://www.usps.com/websites/depart/inspect/fraud/MailFraudComplaint.htm

    This Information has been supplied by directNIC, one of the most ethical registrars operating today. We recommend that anyone who desires to register or renew a name do so at directNIC, we register all of our company's names and the names we register for our clients at directNIC. They are fast, easy to understand, inexpensive and honest, a difficult combination to find in today's world. Registered Names are fully configurable, (contacts, nameservers, email routing, hosting options), via a browser through a secure connection to directNIC. 

• To have Sound Trax Technologies register a name for you or your company
• To directly register a name yourself at DirectNIC

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Last Revised: July 29, 2006 10:58 PM.

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