ajm

(Mods: pls leave in NSR, its more scam related than computer related!)

Here's a good one... at about 16:30 last night I get a call at the office from a company claiming that someone was trying to register several domains containing permutations of our company name. These weren't domains that we were particulary interested in, it would just be annoying if someone else had them and used them illicitly!

I ask her why exactly they called me and she told me that they "felt it was their duty to tell us" and that "if we wanted to block the registration we could"

To which I asked her what we needed to do to block the registration. She said "register them yourselves"

*alarm bells*

I ask how much.... "300 pounds each" [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

I said I would think about it, and was told we had 20 minutes before they would put the registration through! Bear in mind that a standard 2 year registration is about £30!

A few minutes later one of my colleagues came over and said that the same company had just rung him with a similar but different list of domain names! Cheeky barstewards!

Needless to say I called their bluff and told them to stick it, and this morning I come in and find that, surprise surprise, none of the domains were registered by "the other party".

Basically they called us at the end of the day, hoping to panic us into buying domain names we didn't really want or need at ten times the normal cost! [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Anyone else had this?

bashful

Yes, we had exactly the same. We bluffed them by saying the Financial Director (as if we had one) couldn't authorise the payment until the next day (they'd generously given us an hour), then went and registered the domains with someone else.

SiDHEaD

We had that so i registered them for £2 myself rather than the £100 they qere asking.

Andy

ajm

What UK based registrar would you recomend that allows you to instantly register .com domains online? (in case this happens again with a domain we actually want!)

deanimus

Another domain scan I have recieved is from a company from Melbourne IT or something like that claiming our domain is about to expired and we have to renew with them. Although the domain was for $35 and not £300 it was still a rip-off as they can be registered from Rackshack.net for $5

what would scooby do

AJM - we use safenames.net - they can register domains in virtually every country on the planet..

Redkop

An ex-customer of mine had the same type of phonecall, but he being gullible - paid up

Scooby96

Next time say, "hang on give me five minutes and call me back"

In the meantime reserve them with 123reg and when they call back tell them to **** off as you've got them all now anyway.

Think you can get them from 99p

bashful

Don't be too harsh on Melbourne IT. I had a bad experience when I registered my company's primary domain with a cheap'n'cheerful UK DNS service. They went bust - simply stopped answering the phone and switched off the DNS servers. It turns out they were re-selling Melbourne's service, and weren't the registrars themselve. I had to do some fast talking to get Melbourne to give me the domain key, but they played along.

I just mention this in case you're in a similar situation, and your domain's registered with them by a third party.