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Another ex-happy Namecheap customer here. Was going through credit card fraud issues back in July. In September out of nowhere get an email from Namecheap suppo

by romanhn 11y ago

Another ex-happy Namecheap customer here. Was going through credit card fraud issues back in July. In September out of nowhere get an email from Namecheap support that my July payment for one of the domains did not go through and I owe them $240 for the chargeback. No amount of reasoning got through to them - this is after several years of owning multiple domains with them. Dropped the penalty by $100, but that didn't exactly make it right. As I was considering my options, they locked all of my domains and redirected to parking pages. Had to pay up to get them back. Avoid at all costs. TL;DR: Credit card was stolen, Namecheap penalized me for that and then blackmailed by locking all domains.

jeswin 11y ago
Wow, I was just about to switch to Namecheap. More people need to hear this. How can a registrar make DNS changes without permission and blackmail? Please write a blog post about this.
- matt4077 11y ago
  "If you don't pay us, we'll turn it off" isn't blackmail.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    But locking all of romanh's domains, so he can't take his business elsewhere, and transferring all of the traffic intended for his systems to somewhere else, does sound a lot like blackmail, not to mention blatant violation of how domain registration is supposed to work. Also, $240 because of one chargeback, and doing the above while the customer is trying to sort out a fraud issue? Neither of those sounds like normal practice for a responsible domain registrar either. Obviously there are two sides to every story and we're only seeing one here, but that one does look pretty bad for Namecheap.
    - tamar 11y ago
      Please see my comments above - there are ways around this but it appears that that path was never pursued.
tamar 11y ago
Hey romanhn - did you contact support and try to make it right by reversing the chargeback? This isn't about blackmail as jewsin writes in the comments, it's about the reputation a business suffers with a chargeback. All you would need to do is reverse the chargeback and the full charge would go away. Disclosure: I work for Namecheap.
- romanhn 11y ago
  Hi tamar - thanks for reaching out! I was in contact with multiple members of the support team throughout this ordeal. Supposedly they consulted with senior management as well. Business reputation was never mentioned - it was always about paying a fee to the payment processor. At no point was chargeback reversal brought up. To be perfectly honest, I know nothing about chargebacks (this wasn't something I initiated, it was fraud-related) and the idea of a reversal never popped into my head. I may try to bring this up with them again, but I'm not sure how much I can do half a year after the fraud occurrence. Still, I think my original points stand. I find Namecheap locking out unrelated domains and redirecting traffic unethical and in bad faith of the service provider / customer relationship. Not to mention that the domains continued to point to parking pages even after I paid up.
  - tamar 11y ago
    Hey romanhn - so sorry for this. Can you share your ticket number? I think there was a definite mistake in the process here as that should have been broached and if it requires some updated training for the billing team, I'll put in my recommendation for that. I'm sorry as well for the parking page situation - my guess is it didn't immediately propagate, but I'd have to investigate further as to why that happened. Usually, it's not about redirecting traffic but just not letting you get into your account. This does not sound like it should have happened at all. I sincerely apologize that this is what you encountered. p.s. I love how trying to genuinely be helpful has resulted in an onslaught of downvotes. I'm going to assume you helped balance that out with an upvote. So thanks :)
    - romanhn 11y ago

by romanhn 11y ago

jeswin 11y ago

Wow, I was just about to switch to Namecheap. More people need to hear this. How can a registrar make DNS changes without permission and blackmail? Please write a blog post about this.

matt4077 11y ago
"If you don't pay us, we'll turn it off" isn't blackmail.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  But locking all of romanh's domains, so he can't take his business elsewhere, and transferring all of the traffic intended for his systems to somewhere else, does sound a lot like blackmail, not to mention blatant violation of how domain registration is supposed to work. Also, $240 because of one chargeback, and doing the above while the customer is trying to sort out a fraud issue? Neither of those sounds like normal practice for a responsible domain registrar either. Obviously there are two sides to every story and we're only seeing one here, but that one does look pretty bad for Namecheap.
  - tamar 11y ago
    Please see my comments above - there are ways around this but it appears that that path was never pursued.

tamar 11y ago

Hey romanhn - did you contact support and try to make it right by reversing the chargeback? This isn't about blackmail as jewsin writes in the comments, it's about the reputation a business suffers with a chargeback. All you would need to do is reverse the chargeback and the full charge would go away. Disclosure: I work for Namecheap.

romanhn 11y ago
Hi tamar - thanks for reaching out! I was in contact with multiple members of the support team throughout this ordeal. Supposedly they consulted with senior management as well. Business reputation was never mentioned - it was always about paying a fee to the payment processor. At no point was chargeback reversal brought up. To be perfectly honest, I know nothing about chargebacks (this wasn't something I initiated, it was fraud-related) and the idea of a reversal never popped into my head. I may try to bring this up with them again, but I'm not sure how much I can do half a year after the fraud occurrence. Still, I think my original points stand. I find Namecheap locking out unrelated domains and redirecting traffic unethical and in bad faith of the service provider / customer relationship. Not to mention that the domains continued to point to parking pages even after I paid up.
- tamar 11y ago
  Hey romanhn - so sorry for this. Can you share your ticket number? I think there was a definite mistake in the process here as that should have been broached and if it requires some updated training for the billing team, I'll put in my recommendation for that. I'm sorry as well for the parking page situation - my guess is it didn't immediately propagate, but I'd have to investigate further as to why that happened. Usually, it's not about redirecting traffic but just not letting you get into your account. This does not sound like it should have happened at all. I sincerely apologize that this is what you encountered. p.s. I love how trying to genuinely be helpful has resulted in an onslaught of downvotes. I'm going to assume you helped balance that out with an upvote. So thanks :)
  - romanhn 11y ago