[sf-lug] How I came to move my domains to Gandi.net over the weekend

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Fri, 31 May 2024 16:39:00 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: sales at iwantmyname.com
Subject: Customer wants to give your firm money; support won't allow me

Gentlefolk:

Wednesday, May 29th, I opened ticket #2476974 with
help at support.iwantmyname.com.  My reauest was simple:  I desire 
manual extension by two years each, of the two domains I register at
IWantMyName, I calculated the fees:

US $21.49 + US $21.49, two years, domain linuxmafia.com
US $26.14 + US $26.14, two years, domain unixmercenary.net
Total charge: US $95.26

To facilitate, I said my credit card on file is up to date,
and that I authorise and request that charge now.

Within a day, I received a boilerplate statement that 
_automated_ renewals are for one year only, and citing some reasons for
that.  This was unresponsive:  I had requested manual two-year
extension.

Thursday, I reiterated my request and said I'd seen no substantive
response.  The assigned agent referred me to the earlier statement about
_automated_ renewals.  I wrote back saying this in no way addressed my 
request, that I desire _manual_ extension by two years of two domains.

It has now been one more day, and I still have not gotten a straight
answer.


Does CentralNic Group PLC d/b/a ideegeeo Group Ltd d/b/a IWantMyName
want the customer's money?  This customer wishes you to have it.

Please either direct Support to accept my money, or let me know 
you don't want it, and I'll commence taking my business elsewhere.

Best Regards,
Rick Moen
rick at linuxmafia.com
+1 (650) 283-7902

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2024 11:32:01 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Gandi.net is my Jedi, now (was: Customer wants to give your firm
	money; support won't allow me)

New day, new registrar.   New renewal date.

$ whois linuxmafia.com | grep "Expiry"
   Registry Expiry Date: 2027-07-17T04:00:00Z
$ whois unixmercenary.net | grep "Expiry"
   Registry Expiry Date: 2027-08-11T15:44:35Z
$


----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2024 20:13:52 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: [conspire] Gandi.net is my Jedi, now (was: Customer wants to
	give your firm money; support won't allow me)

Also posted to Mastodon at
https://infosec.exchange/@unixmercenary/112550224804042309 :


Update & conclusion:  I knew Sales Dept. at UK-based multinational
CentralNic (who in 2019 bought out formerly meritorious registrar
IWantMyName) wouldn't get back to me until Monday, on my "Hey, don't you
want my money?" escalation, following Support refusing to extend my
domain and giving repeated nonsense answers.

But then, a new thing: 

A "reminder" mail, saying my domain linuxmafia.com would soon autorenew,
charging US $21.49 to my credit card of record.  

Quoi?  I never enable autorenew, anywhere, at any time.  I checked:
Autorenew was (in a covert manner; see below) indeed set for both my
domains.

I'd been a customer of (the former, competent) NZ-based IWantMyName
firm, since about 2010.  I'm certain I've never enabled autorenew.  Why?
Because I insist payments be at my initiative, and reminders be sent by
my own scripts.

These new clowns (it seems) had enabled autorenew without notice or
consult (isn't this actual business fraud?), probably around the time
renewals beyond one year became unavailable even through Support, and
available for 1 year only when the domain was soon to expire.  

Let's count the red flags:

1. Support cites irrelevant canned text that doesn't answer customer's
   question.  Support's capabilities seems limited to "push this button"
   rote tasks.  Might be one of those shops where level-1 techs will be
   fired for saying anything outside dictated scripts.
2. Support then ghosts unsatisfied customer; there's no escalation path.
3. Extending domain registration is unsupported.  Renewal (just before
   expiration) limited to one year.
4. No response from sales@ to a "Really, you don't want my money?"
   escalation. (Admittedly, this spilled over to the weekend.)
5. Autorenew added without customer permission. 
6. Control to disable autorenew made difficult to spot, and non-obvious,
   within the customer webUI.  (You must toggle a per-domain setting from
   "renew" to "expire".)

The last two red flags, the new ones, were the final straw, so I
immediately took my business to Gandi.net.  Took an hour or two (might
have been faster if I'd looked at my e-mail at one point).

Gandi.net's Web site is sensibly designed, modern, no annoyances.
Transfer process involved only a couple of polite upsell attempts
(e-mail services, etc.).  Enabling public WHOIS was uncomplicated.
Domains can be extended for up to 8 years at any time (or 9 depending on
expiry date).  Pricing is not rock-bottom, yet reasonable, and also is
public:   https://www.gandi.net/en-US/domain/tld?prefix=c#tld-table

(There are also bulk discount categories, for which, as a small
customer, I'm not qualified.)

Customer WebUI puts no impediment at all in the way of leaving any time
you wish, and not even the 60-day freeze on transferred-in domains many
registrars impose. Customer is not pushed towards autorenew, let alone
defaulted to it without permission.

Customer contracts and disclosures seem reasonable.

Minor nit:  Customer WebUI doesn't have a link to find past billings and
payment records.  However, upon payment you get e-mailed a PDF and a
direct link to re-download it.

For the record, my "intro" pricing to transfer in:

US $14.34 linuxmafia.com
US $15.74 unixmercenary.net

My per-year price to extend the domains:
US $23.99 linuxmafia.com
US $24.99 unixmercenary.net

Don't settle for cruddy registrars.  The market beckons.

And, remember, domain owners:  You also needn't rely on vendors'
"reminder" e-mails to track impending renewals.  Perl script "d-check"
and /usr/sbin/cron are your friends.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/preventing-expiration.html
http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/network/

#DomainRegistrar 
#DomainRieistrars
#domain
#Registrar
#CentralNIC

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2024 21:54:29 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: [conspire] Gandi.net is my Jedi, now (was: Customer wants to
	give your firm money; support won't allow me)

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> It's a sad fact of life that too many companies are taken over by bean
> counters that think they can "improve" things by cutting costs and
> ignoring customers.   They don't seem to realize that they will drive
> customers away and have less business in the long run.

As someone who passed the CPA exam, I mildly protest.  ;->

CentralNic Group PLC (the clowns who bought out my NZ-based registrar,
laid everyone off, and ruined it) are, it seems to me, a particular 
_type_ of badness.  Consider:

Everything about the revised operation pushes domain owners towards:

"We have your credit card.  Your account is set to autorenew.  About 
30 days before your domain would expire, our automation is going to grab
money from your credit card.  You can't do it differently or at any
other time.  We try to lull you into not doing it a different way.
You can't get anything but canned answers from outsourced helpdesk 
staff in some impoverished country who don't know anything and cannot
help you.  We try hard to make sure nobody else here can even hear from
you.  Shut up, stop thinking, accept our canned offerings, and let our
scripts periodically grab your money.

Oh, and we'll try to upsell you for extra services, which naturally will
default to autorenew -- because what we're siphoning from you isn't
enough.  We want more."

And, thing is:  Most customers don't know enough to see what that
utterly fails to be a competent registrar.  Moen's Law of Bicycles at
work.  http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-bicycles

-- 
Cheers,                          "Mastodon: owned by nobody and/or everybody!
Rick Moen                        Seize the memes of production!"  -- jwz 
rick at linuxmafia.com              https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/11/mastoversary/
McQ! (4x80)   

----- End forwarded message -----