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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
If the charge was legal and within contract and customer regulations, then Hover might very well just challange the charge back.
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.
I've had what I thought was bullet-proof evidence before and lost an appeal (as a merchant).
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.
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.
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.)
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.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240111120913/https://www.hover...
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.
Ooops, says the grocery store: Coca-cola raised the prices, not me.
The price will fluctuate, but this is on another level, and deceptive since they had already stated what the price would be.
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.
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.
But because they said the price was x and not 100x, but then charged 100x, there is a real problem.
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.
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.
You’re making money as a middleman, you accept the risk of a middleman.
And registrar isn't aware of premium domain pricing (at least for that TLD).
...But I'm also not a Uniregistry customer, I'm a Hover customer. Do I have any recourse with the TLD owner?
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.
That's a funny way of referring to a parody.