Hi all, hoping for some advice please. I registered a .mortgage domain this time last year with 123 reg, the cost was £89.99 for a year, they've just tried to take the renewal payment at £1049! They've said it's because registry have classed it as a premium domain. Any help would be appreciated. Danny
Yes - some of these new extensions have crazy renewal fees. Similar to .xyz Have you built a site on it? as it may be worth letting it go otherwise
I haven't heard of them hiking the price up to a premium price unless it's dropped and re-registered so I'm surprised to hear it's changed so significantly between renewals... unless it was registered initially at a discounted rate.
Transfer it across to porkbun: https://porkbun.com/tld/mortgage?ref=371_760db1ec $33.45 for a renewal and transfer.
Or maybe OnlyDomains (£56.06/yr renewal and free transfers) https://www.onlydomains.com/domains/new/.mortgage
Is this just 123reg trying to rip the customer off then, or is it the registry offering a discounted rate initially and then hiking up the renewal price no matter who the registrar is? Was it made clear when you registered it that the price would subsequently escalate for renewals?
Thanks for all the advice. When I spoke to 123 reg they said it wasn't their fault and that 'Registry' set the price as it was classified as a premium domain. I initiated transferring it to various other registrars and the cost was around £200 from most of them. I ended up moving it to godaddy for £197 for a year. Shocking from 123 reg really as they must have decided to rip me off. The domain is holidaydotmortgage, which to be honest I'm not sure is even worth the renewal cost!
They said today it was discounted for year 1, but there was never any mention of such a ludicrous renewal fee
Yes I agree, they're awful. I'm too busy to move the hundreds of domains I have with them that I'm paying far too much to renew!
No, there was no mention of the cost. The first I saw was an email today saying they couldn't take payment for the £1049 renewal, as my card has expired. Luckily it wasn't set up on a PayPal renewal. Even the automated renewal email a few weeks ago didn't mention a price. All seems a bit underhand.
This is the danger of all these .whatever - their business models are that they give you the name for cheap, let you build a site/brand/traffic, then they extort you. If your .whatever isn't doing it to you yet, they will. Sorry to say, that the numbers for running a .whatever don't add up unless they practice this businesses model. Stick with .uk's, .com's, net etc You may not get a premium name for cheap, but you won't lose the hard work you put into a name.