Domain Registry of Canada is a Rip-off

A few times a year we receive a domain name expiration notice from the Domain Registry of Canada. Our web design clients have received these notices as well. The Domain Registry of Canada is very good at making their notices look as though they are the ones managing ours’ or our clients’ domain names. They even say in their notices “You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the web” to trick you into renewing your domain name at a higher prices. The funny thing is, we’ve never used the Domain Registry of Canada to renew any of our domain names nor any of our web design clients’ domain names.

If you look at the pricing on their “Expiration Notices” you’ll see that their prices are close to four times as much as renewing a domain name through godaddy.com or hover.com. For example, renewing with GoDaddy will cost around $12.00 per year while with the Domain Registry of Canada it will cost you $40.00!

Most people will never read the complete notice and pay it as if it is an invoice. If you read it carefully, they have two lines in upper case letters that say “This is a solicitation for the order of services and not a bill, invoice or statement of account due. You are under no obligation to make any payments on account of this offer unless you accept this offer.” One of our web design clients in the Vancouver area was tricked into paying this as if it is an invoice and their domain name was transferred to them. The Canadian Domain Registry didn’t make it easy to transfer it away from them after either.

If you receive this notice from the Domain Registry of Canada, do not respond nor send them any money. Feel free to call Hurricane Web Design in Vancouver if you have any questions about your domain names or your web design projects.

Here’s a video about Domain Registry of Canada which shows you what you will receive and more information about why you should just ignore it and throw out the paper work you receive.