Last Friday, I got a piece of mail from a company called "Domain Registry of America." It looked like a bill for the domain renewal of one of my domains. "This is odd," I thought, "since all of my domains are registered through me!"
And then I remembered that one of my clients had emailed me a couple of weeks ago about this very same mailing. They wanted to know if they needed to pay that bill or not.
In reality, this particular piece of mail was not a bill, but an advertisement disguised as a bill. Basically, this company was hoping that I would fill out that thing that looked like a bill, and send my payment to them. In doing so, they would initiate a transfer of my domain, and I would become their customer. Domain Registry of America wanted to charge me $30 for a one year registration for my domain name. That's over $20 more than you would pay to register your name through YourChurchWeb.net.
(You may have seen similar sorts of mailings from all sorts of companies attempting to look like "the Yellow Pages." On closer look, most of those companies are fairly low-traffic online directories that charge exhorbitant rates to be listed with them.)
My point? Be very careful when you hand bills to your church treasurer. They may not recognize a legitimate bill from a solicitation--and you may find yourself agreeing to move your domain name, simply because you paid something that was designed to look like a bill.
Labels: domains, renewal
