Today I received a letter from the Domain Registry of Canada in a nice envelope that immediately reminds you of the Government of Canada, red maple leaf and all.
Of course, the Domain Registry of Canada is not actually affiliated with the Government nor, as a matter of fact, is it likely to be your domain registrar. However, they’d like to have your domain and, in order to get it, they send these letters to do it. Now, you may be asking what is wrong with that and therein lies the problem…
In general, all of us get various letters or mailings advertising products and the vast majority of it ends up in the recycling bin. The trash is usually more appropriate, but we may as well do something useful with the sheets of paper that they send. In any case, the one thing that these share is that they’re clearly advertisements in the hopes that you may actually be interested in what they’re offering. As far as advertising goes, this is generally a lot less annoying than spam (hot needles in the eye is less annoying than email spam) or telemarketing. Now, enter the Domain Registry of Canada.
First off, the name is deliberately designed to imply that they have some sort of official status. They don’t claim it, mind you, but they certainly want you to think that way, especially when it’s all wrapped in that envelope designed to appear like it is from the Government. This wasn’t always their name, they previously went under the name of the “Internet Registry of Canada” until the federal Competition Bureau issued a warning about them. Notice the naming trend here? As I said, designed to look official and subject to change as needed. They don’t, however, seem to change the company behind it: Brandon Gray Internet Services. Google them, you’ll see a colourful history there.
Now, we get to the letter. It is very carefully worded, but it is designed as an invoice. They claim that they’re sending it as a courtesy and explain how you could suffer outages should your domain expire. They even help you out with things like a due date, options on renewal, and an envelope (white this time and not postage paid) in order to take care of this dire emergency. For an example, a little dated, go here though be aware that they’ve changed it a little, though the pricing appears to be the same.
Which, of course, leads me to pricing. DRoC offers $40 for 1 year, $70 for 2, and $160 for 5. Great deal, no? Network Solutions will do the same (and more) for $29.99, $49.98, and $74.95 respectively. Admittedly, that’s in US dollars, but that means that the 5 year cost is $76.34 Canadian at the current exchange. In other words DRoC is more than twice the price of Network Solutions, the largest Registrar on the Internet. As an added bonus, for $99.90, Network Solutions will register you for 10 years. DRoC’s “deal” isn’t looking all that good now, is it?
Now, on the subject of the consequences of failing to renew that DRoC outlines, what they also fail to mention is the possible impact of renewing with them. Bear in mind that moving your domain information around isn’t without impact. The change of information can take time to propagate and can result in outages. Also, if your registration and hosting is all one package, the shift can have a real impact on your existing site that goes beyond a brief outage. They don’t really care, of course, once they have your money, but it is something you should be aware of.
Net effect, don’t do it. I’ve sent a message to them with a cease and desist statement. As the owner of several domains, I will never use them and I’ve explicitly stated that I do not want any further correspondence or I’ll file a complaint. I’m sorely tempted to file a complaint anyways, especially with ICANN who has been very irresponsible in this regards, first by allowing these people to become Registrars and, secondly, for making it easier for them to domain slam.
