My domain registrar (Hover) rug-pulled me for $3000

Question

I registered the domain onlyfans.sexy ~6 years ago as a gag where I'd post pictures of fans (everything on the site and in this post is SFW). This year I got an email stating that, like all prior years, the domain would auto-renew at $38 in seven days and didn't think anything of the next two emails also notifying me that the domain would auto-renew.It would seem that I very much SHOULD have paid attention to those next two emails, because in both the three and one day renewal emails the price changed from $38 to $3000. Needless to say, I was surprised when I was billed $3k USD (plus tax).After contacting Hover's customer support, they told me that there was nothing that they could do about this and they have a no refund policy because "Hover does not have the ability to override or reverse pricing set by the registry. Premium domain pricing, including renewal costs, is determined by the registry, and they may adjust those prices over time. Once a renewal has been processed, we are charged that fee immediately by the registry, and those charges are non-refundable to us."So according to Hover, the .sexy registry (Uniregistry) sets prices as it sees fit, decided to jack up the renewal cost at the last minute because they can, and there's simply nothing they or I can do about it. Has anyone here experienced anything similar?

rglullis · Accepted Answer

Doesn't seem to be an issue with Hover, here.

thataccount · Answer

Had a thing with Hostgator once where they wouldn't accept any proof of who I was other than an expired credit card that had long since stopped being used. The site went up for sale, and someone bought it and had it up for resale for around $5,000. Turned me even sourer on the domain system of the normal net.

joshstrange · Answer

Thankfully a chargeback is possible here. While a chargeback is almost always "possible" it can be dangerous if the company you are charging-back is the only provider of a service. I'd be wary about doing a chargeback on the Google/Amazon's of the world but Hover? There are many other registrars out there if you are willing to transfer and for $3K I'd be transfering my domains and then filing a chargeback.BUT, before you do that, threaten a chargeback. That might unstick their support or get your case bumped up the chain. If they still refuse then transfer and chargeback.

dividedcomet · Answer

As others said I think a chargeback is the way to go. I had a much smaller scale version of this happen where hover wanted to change $70 to renew a domain that Cloudflare would charge $30 for

wjnc · Answer

Register a complaint with the creditcard company with proof of last years $38, the auto renew message with price of $38 and the amount they put on your card. Pretty clear and cut? You can&rsquo;t offer X and then take Y. It&rsquo;s Hovers problem what the price behind the door is.Did you read the ToS? The ToS states they renew at prices mentioned on the website. I can find .xyz to renew at $19.99. Now get your screenshots and get your money back. (I&rsquo;ll correct myself transparantly: this is not very clear from the ToS. Prices are in USD and from time to time they can limit the number of domains at that price. That says little about the price at renewal.)

dlcarrier · Answer

You are paying for a domain on a gTLD, which is owned by an organization that can charge whatever it wants, and thousands to tens of thousands a year isn't uncommon. Your registrar is only charging tens of dollars a year for their services and they aren't involved in the price hike.
ICANN started selling gTLDs in 2012 and they are not cheap, costing hundreds of thousands to procure, plus tens to hundreds of thousands a year to maintain, which is why prices for domains on that gTLD are usually pricey, too.
There's probably not much you can do, as you need to dispute with the owner of the gTLD, not the registrar, but in the future I recommend switching to either a traditional TLD (e.g. .com, .org, .net, etc.) for the lowest price or a country code (e.g. .io .tv .gg, etc.) which is usually pricier than a traditional TLD but much cheaper than a gTLD.

anigbrowl · Answer

The price change on the registry happened a few years ago, so in that sense Hover is powerless. But when they sent you the renewal notice (and indeed at the time of the price change), they should have sent you a clear warning that the price was going to increase by ~10,000%. istm you have a basis for the chargeback if they indeed offered to renew it at $38 and you thought nothing was amiss; presumably you wouldn't have bothered to renew if you knew in advance.

t0bia_s · Answer

There are recently a many arguments to leave platforms like social medias or blog sites like substack and have own site to have control over your content.However, technically, registrars are gatekeepers - you just rent domain for yearly fee. And they can change price policy any time. Or do wherever political tendencies says.

sva_ · Answer

It should be illegal for the registry to add a domain that has already been 'sold' to their premium tier. Imagine you build anything successful under a domain name and the registry can just legally blackmail you into paying a horrendous amounts of money to keep your domain?

tomcam · Answer

Bigger picture: don&rsquo;t use someone else&rsquo;s trademark for a domain anyway

james_pm · Answer

I work at Tucows Domains/Hover and we're digging in on what happened here. I've reached out to the OP already via email. tl;dr our support team didn't handle this well at all and we've already issued a full refund.We are still looking into where the price mismatch found its way into the picture, but that domain is a tiered price domain but it is also "legacy" priced meaning it should renew at something very close to the standard price for a renewal but didn't.

andreidbr · Answer

I am a Hover user for my personal website, on a .com domain. I've been extremely way of using any of the customized TLDs since I heard about these sort of massive hikes. I agree that the communication could have been much better on Hover side, especially with such a huge increase.