You Know You've Made It

28-04-2011

The Bauble is fast approaching it's fifth birthday and yesterday I got a sign that it has been on the Interwebs long enough to attract attention from some strange folk.

Yesterday I got a letter in the post from a company called the "Domain Renewal Group", with all of my domain details and a little bank giro to be filled out. They even gave me a nice freepost envelope to send back said giro once completed.

What was the letter about? Well that was the hilarious bit. It was about renewing my domain name.

For those that don't know, one of the things that makes a website work is the little address you put up in the top of your browser. It is your unique identification online as it were. But you have to buy your domain name and then renew it every year or risk it being nabbed by some porn site selling novelty dildos in the shape of baubles. Usually you can get your hosting company to handle domain name stuff as well, all in one yearly payment that you don't have to worry about as it gets done automatically.

That is unless something goes wrong on their end, which it can.

But bottom line is that I generally don't have to think about renewing anything since the site more or less gets looked after by those I pay to do just that.

Which made this letter from the DRG crowd interesting to read. They were offering me a similar service. No hosting, but they would renew the domain name for me. They even had nice little price plans. You could go for one, three or even five year renewals.

Why not? a sane man might ask. A man that did not really understand the Internet and was thinking that this sounded like a great idea.

Well let me tell you why. To renew my current domain name I pay nine euro a year. A tiny amount that I don't mind spending at all. To renew with DRG would cost me twenty eight euro. For one year.

You don't have to be Rainman to do that maths on that one. Plus the other plans were just as insane. Two years was forty five quid and five was sixty eight.

Last time I checked nine times five was forty five.

Turns out that DRG are one of many, although to me totally unheard of, scammer companies that trawl the web. They find domain names that get a lot of traffic and have been up for a few years and then "offer" them these "deals". Apparently, from what I read online last night, there are some people out there that think it is a great idea and jump at the "offer". Only problem being that DRG never renews nothing, takes your money anyway and then your previous domain renewal crowd charge you for the renewal anyhow.

So it looks like I have finally made it on the Internet if I am starting to attract hilarious idiots like this. Any one else out there that hasn't heard about this sorta thing yet beware.

This has been a friendly service announcement from The Jester's Bauble.

Blue_jester




Mr. Tea | Thu, 28 Apr 11 09:45:03 +0100

May I just take this opportunity to congratulate you on "Breaking" the lucrative scamming market. You have truly made it now buddy!



Hey.....if you send me your bank details AND website account particulars I'll get you a GREAT deal ;) Whatcha say?

albertw | Thu, 28 Apr 11 11:51:31 +0100

i get about 5 letters a year from them for various domains. someone must be giving them money!

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