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Ask HN: My domain registrar rug-pulled me for $3000 [fixed]
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 2mo agoDoesn't seem to be an issue with Hover, here.
- shrinks99 2mo agoArguably yeah! The issue I have seems to mostly be with Uniregistry (aside from the fact that Hover takes a cut of the transaction). ...But I'm also not a Uniregistry customer, I'm a Hover customer. Do I have any recourse with the TLD owner?
- kotaKat 2mo agoNot really, I'm afraid! All these sketchy TLDs have been playing the "premium domain" rugpull for quite a while now. The gag is you'll get a really cheap first year intro offer on the domain, then they'll spin around in a year once you're footed knowing you have no choice but to grin and bear the price.
- ontoillogical 2mo agoI believe this is extremely unexpected behavior for an "auto-renew" feature. If I'm told that I will be autorenwing something in 7 days and am told about a price, that price changing within those 7 days feels like something the consumer should be protected against!
- rglullis 2mo agoHow?! Hover is just a proxy between the customer and the real TLD owner. It could very well be that the TLD system saw that the domain was about to expire and decided to jack up the price then. Maybe Hover could've bought the domain themselves when close to the expiration date to secure the lower price, but then if the customer decides to let the domain go it would be they holding out the bag.
- ofjcihen 2mo agoSounds more like the risk is on Hover then and not on the customer. If you advertise 38 dollars to me for a product you source from someone else and that the producer suddenly charges 100x the price you can’t just charge me that price because “that’s the price”. You’re making money as a middleman, you accept the risk of a middleman.
- shrinks99 2mo agoThe domain renewal cost in their dashboard is notably right back to $38 too!
- driverdan 2mo agoIt is. If the price suddenly goes up that much they need to be sending very clear warning emails about the price increase, with the subject clearly saying so. Something like "Alert: Upcoming Domain Renewal Price Increased to $3000"
- wjnc 2mo agoRegister 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’t offer X and then take Y. It’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’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.)
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- 8organicbits 2mo ago> It’s Hovers problem what the price behind the door is. This feels key to me. If .sexy is changing fees with very short notice, and Hover doesn't have enough time to inform their customers before renewal, then Hover should stop offering .sexy domain names. None of that is a problem for the customer.
- fckgw 2mo agoWhat does .xyz TLD have to do with this? The TLD is .sexy
- wjnc 2mo agoYou're right. Those are 2999.99 according to their site. According to the Wayback Machine they've been priced that way since at least 2024 [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240111120913/https://www.hover.com/tld/buy-sexy-domain https://web.archive.org/web/20240111120913/https://www.hover...
- add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago[flagged]
- joshstrange 2mo agoThankfully 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.
- behringer 2mo agoMake sure you get all your domains out before the charge back is filed.
- joshstrange 2mo agoYes, you are burning your bridges with a chargeback which is why you should threaten it to support first and only after they say no do you transfer all your domains, wait a few days, then file the chargeback. You somewhere between 60-90 days to issue a chargeback so OP has plenty of time.
- shrinks99 2mo agoYeah, I already transferred everything else to Cloudflare in advance of this so that part should be taken care of.
- throwawayffffas 2mo agoI'd say don't wait, just do the chargeback, if you threaten all they will do is try to stall you out of the chargeback window.
- gruez 2mo ago>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. If what hover said is true (ie. "the .sexy registry (Uniregistry) sets prices as it sees fit, decided to jack up the renewal cost at the last minute because they can"), trying to transfer to another registar won't fix the issue, because they'll just charge the same price.
- dividedcomet 2mo agoAs 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
- thataccount 2mo agoHad 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.
- shrinks99 2mo agoHeh yeah, I've recently had another site succumb to the same thing (that domain wasn't managed by me). I've long accepted that domains are kind of a racket, but haven't actually been on the losing end of the money until now!
- james_pm 2mo agoI 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.
- shrinks99 2mo agoFor anyone reading the thread, they did do this! Had a nice call with James too, which I appreciate. It looks like the situation is actually more complex and interesting than "The registry rug-pulled me". My .sexy domain price was increased by the owners of .sexy (to $3000) since I bought it 6 years ago BUT in Hover's system it was supposed to retain the legacy price of $38 as it had for the past few years. Something went wrong between Hover and the registry where the legacy price wasn't honoured and as such, it bumped to $3000 on renewal. Apparently support really flubbed this one and we both agreed that going the "post on HN" route for customer service isn't exactly a win on their part. The money has been refunded and I've been assured they're looking into the bug. Will probably do a follow up blog post!
- tomcam 2mo agoBigger picture: don’t use someone else’s trademark for a domain anyway
- sva_ 2mo agoIt 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?
- t0bia_s 2mo agoThere 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.
- anigbrowl 2mo agoThe 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.
- dlcarrier 2mo agoYou 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.
- tonymet 2mo agoNot exactly. We’re a common law country, and there is an implied covenant of good faith. It’s for a judge to decide if this price change counts as good faith. OP should file a complaint and let a judge decide.
- dlcarrier 2mo agoAre you in the Cayman Islands? It looks like that's where the owner of the gTLD, Internet Naming Co., is based. Did you mean commonwealth or common law? Either way, their pricing is in line with other gTLD providers and there's no sign that they didn't violate any territory's regulations or ICANN policy, so there's not really any reason for a judge to rule against the gTLD provider. A method for a more likely success to contact the gTLD provider and ask if a cancellation is possible. Edit: It looks like the registrar got in contact with shrinks99 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099021#49100427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099021#49100427) who qualified for grandfathered price that was accidentally not applied.
- tonymet 2mo agocommon law. and both the registrar and the gtld have american entities you can bring to court. otherwise they wouldn't be collecting revenue.
- andreidbr 2mo agoI 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.