Ask HN: My domain registrar rug-pulled me for $3000 [fixed]

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.

For 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!

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.

Make sure you get all your domains out before the charge back is filed.

Yes, 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.

Yeah, I already transferred everything else to Cloudflare in advance of this so that part should be taken care of.

I'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.

>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.

True, but you can abandon that domain (OP already said it was mostly a joke website) and transfer all the ones you do care about. If this .sexy domain is their only domain there then it's even easier, just chargeback and be done with it.

Charge backs are generally not for returns.

If the charge was legal and within contract and customer regulations, then Hover might very well just challange the charge back.

I think the OP has a pretty good case for this being an unauthorized charge.

Additionally, as someone who has been on the receiving end of chargebacks a number of times I can tell you merchants have a higher burden of proof in things like this. Even submitting perfect evidence can get ruled in favor of the cardholder.

Wouldn't the merchant's proof be the two emails they sent regarding the upcoming renewal with charges listed?

If they sent an email saying or clearly implying it would renew at $38 and the following 2 emails didn't have any clear warning about price changes in the subject line, I think OP would be quite justified in having assumed they were just empty reminders.

Perhaps? Chargebacks are a completely black box though and the entity that makes the decision is the cardholder's issuer so they often rule in favor of the cardholder if there is even a chance they are right (in my experience).

I've had what I thought was bullet-proof evidence before and lost an appeal (as a merchant).

It will fix the problem of having paid $3000. Just want to add that while Hover might not be at fault, I don't think OP is either. I would have done the same thing (read the first renewal email and ignored the rest). I think Hover should change something, like adding PRICE CHANGE to the email headline or something similar.

Although the timing was suspicious it looks like they might be correct about the price. namecheap has the same price https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?doma... (a bit cheaper at porkbun around $2.5K)

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.

Heh 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!

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.

Not 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.

Are 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) who qualified for grandfathered price that was accidentally not applied.

common law. and both the registrar and the gtld have american entities you can bring to court. otherwise they wouldn't be collecting revenue.

The original pricing didn't break any US regulations. Of course, anyone can bring anyone else to court for any reason, but if the defendant didn't break any regulations, the plaintiff won't prevail, and publicly asserting that the defendant did so, when contrary to evidence, could leave the plaintiff liable for defamation.

It's also an awful place to start from, as a good-faith effort to settle the matter is much cheaper for both sides, and the only way to prevail when no regulations were violated.

There doesn’t have to be a statute that says “ you can’t raise your price more than x %” . That’s what common law means. The judge determines whether the contract between them was upheld in good faith.

Now if the contract says “every 5 years we may raise the price by 10000% “, there is good faith between the two parties.

If the contract says “every year we may increase the price by a reasonable amount to cover increasing operating cost” – the judge decides what a reasonable amount is.

That’s what common law means. The statutes are not the law. Judgements are the law.

> “… which is owned by an organization that can charge whatever it wants…”

Sure, but how can the price change at the last moment like this?

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

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.

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’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.)

> 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.

What does .xyz TLD have to do with this? The TLD is .sexy

You'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...

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

Arguably 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?

Not 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.

I 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!

How?! 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.

Sounds 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.

The domain renewal cost in their dashboard is notably right back to $38 too!

Absolutely take a screenshot of this and your prior charges and dispute this with your bank.

Maybe .sexy TLD owner decided that "onlyfans" is a "premium" domain, with special pricing.

And registrar isn't aware of premium domain pricing (at least for that TLD).

The issue isn't that the price changed. The issue is that they auto charged after the price was quoted lower. If the registrar had said, "hey the price just got jacked way up, do you still want to buy this?" There would be no issue.

But because they said the price was x and not 100x, but then charged 100x, there is a real problem.

I agree but they did send two emails with the 100x price once it changed.

It would be nice to get an email specifically about the price change not just the auto renew but that's hardly a rug pull.

I cannot imagine that I would assume that the price had changed in the 4 days between the first and second emails. Until reading this post, I didn't even think that was a possibility. Clearly grounds for a chargeback if the 7 day email was explicit about the $38 price. Maybe it was the TLD and not Hover that triggered the price change but I'm sure that this isn't the first time this has happened and I can guarantee Hover is aware of this possibility and simply chooses to ignore it. I don't think Hover's fault can be dismissed but whatever, chargeback.

Let's say you grab a can of Coke in the grocery store, shelf sticker says 49c. When you pass on the cash register, it clearly shows $5k in the cashier's monitor, and the point of sales screen, so you're charged $5k.

Ooops, says the grocery store: Coca-cola raised the prices, not me.

Have you used amazon subscribe and save? What you described is basically how it works. You're agreeing to auto-buy at whatever price amazon sets on that day. The only exception when you first set up a subscription, in which case the first delivery's price is locked in.

Amazon will tell you the price 7 days before it auto-renews and then jack the price up 100x three days before it renews?

The price will fluctuate, but this is on another level, and deceptive since they had already stated what the price would be.

>Amazon will tell you the price 7 days before it auto-renews and then jack the price up 100x three days before it renews?

Yeah probably? [edit: no, see below]

You go on amazon 7 days before renewal, check your subscriptions, see it's $10. 7 days later it's no longer sold by amazon and the only other seller selling it is a scalper that charges $30. The only difference the order of magnitude, not whether price changes can happen.

No, that's not what happens. They lock in a price when they alert you to the upcoming delivery round.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

> The price of the item may decrease or increase between deliveries, but will never be higher than the price shown in your reminder email.

I sometimes get "item available" cancelations for this reason. The items are always available, just not at that price.

Thanks for the correction.

I'm not sure that analogy flies. Technically they did inform him of the price change ahead of time, they just didn't do a very good job. If I were them I'd add "PRICE CHANGE" or similar to the email subject, I feel like that's the least they can do.

The registrar is not "just a proxy". They are the merchant of record, they bear the financial and legal responsibility.

There can be a difference between whose the fault is, and who is accountable. Usually, the entity you paid is the one legally accountable to you. This is not just a trivial detail: you will have no luck with the law attempting to hold the other entity to account, even if they are at fault; while you can hold your counterparty to account even if their action was dictated by someone else; they have to act correctly with you- it's not your problem if their relationship with some other company is put into contention. This may not apply to domains, FWIW. usually, buying a domain means you have a contract with the registry too. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

This can big companies too, FWIW. Cisco were in violation of the GPL over the WRT54G, which resulted eventually in the release of OpwnWRT. Well, Cisco weren't the entity which actually caused that fault; the chip vendor was, as they were the ones who used the linux kernel without releasing the source. That is not a valid reason to violate a licence.

It 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"

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.

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.

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?

Bigger picture: don’t use someone else’s trademark for a domain anyway