123-reg refusing to give a refund

[IhaveDomainsUK]

Today I got 2 very surprising emails. They were 2 invoices from 123-reg for 2 domain name renewals. Both for £13.19.

The reason they were surprising was because I had already cancelled these domain names many months ago (there renewal date is in January).

I emailed 123-reg asking them what on earth is going on, and demanding an instant refund, and this was there response.

"Unfortunately we do not offer refunds for domain renewals because once this step has been made 123-reg has already paid some non-refundable fees to a higher authority.
I apologize for any inconvenience caused, but please take into consideration that this is a great chance to keep these domains and make an investment.
In the future domain prices will increase and you will actually save some money by keeping them.
Please just login and administrate the renewed domains directly from the control panel.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us."

Not sure what to do next.

 

[retired_member36]

Contact your bank and say this was an unauthorised transaction?

 

[IhaveDomainsUK]

Contact your bank and say this was an unauthorised transaction?

They took the money from paypal.

 

[retired_member36]

Go to your paypal account, open a dispute against the transaction. provide as much information as you can and esculate it straight away. 123 will then have to prove it wasnt unauthorised.

Paypal are quite good at sorting disputed out to be honest.

Another tip, go into your pre apporoved payments in paypal and cancel the 123 reg payment if you dont want it to happen again. I removed 123 from mine after all the shit i read about them on here.

 

[anthony]

Use moneyclaim online, take them to court, and ask for your time and costs when you win.

 

[newguy]

Wow, they're getting so much bad publicity of late. You'd think they would be concerned about that, but there's no sign that they are.

 

[sdsinc]

Paypal transactions can be reversed. But a chargeback is a nuclear option, the registrar will probably lock your account and all domains in it.

Their response is pretty surreal, if you truly cancelled the domains renewal should not have taken place.

BTW I think registrars are entitled to refunds on new registrations from Nominet (up to 10% of volume or something). Don't know about the renewals.

 

[namealot]

If you have used Paypal 123 automatically set up “Pre-approved Payments” check your paypal account... Below shows you gow to cancel them

http://www.123-reg.co.uk/support/an...d-to-renew-my-domain-names-and-services-1088/

 

[IhaveDomainsUK]

Thanks for all the advice

 

[solaris]

HI thanks for heads up. Before I go in there and cancel my payment methods, especially paypal, is it possible to have no payment method live at 123?

I ask because as far as I can see at Domainmonster I couldn't see a way to have no payment method enabled, but I really need to check that again.

 

[rwinslow]

123-reg response

Hi there. Sorry for the delay in replying back, always feel free to email me directly, [email protected], and I can look to help in anything like this that needs escalating.

I have been working on cleaning a lot of things up on 123-reg, as you may see in some of my forum responses. I take the feedback from Acorn Domains pretty seriously, as this is the community which knows the most about domains and can help me learn more about what 123-reg needs to do better.

With that in mind, I have recently had a bug resolved which resulted in domains being renewed at the registry as they should have, but payments not having been charged to the customer, effectively giving some customers free domain names.

The bug was resolved yesterday and the back log of pending payments for domains was processed. I can stress at this point that although the charge for the domains is later than the actual renewal, the charges are only for active services. I was hoping that the bug would be fixed, I would then email all involved, then outstanding renewal payment would be taken. Unfortunately the fix was greater than expected.

If you set your domain to expire, then the domain should not have renewed. We have a log file that I can easily check and cross reference.

Drop me an email, let me know the domain names and I will check them on the list, and also make sure that they apply to the fix that was run yesterday.

We can then discuss, but of course if you did set them to expire, I will look at to why it was renewed, but happily issue a refund as well without the hassle of speaking to your bank or paypal.

Thanks, Richard.

Today I got 2 very surprising emails. They were 2 invoices from 123-reg for 2 domain name renewals. Both for £13.19.

The reason they were surprising was because I had already cancelled these domain names many months ago (there renewal date is in January).

I emailed 123-reg asking them what on earth is going on, and demanding an instant refund, and this was there response.

"Unfortunately we do not offer refunds for domain renewals because once this step has been made 123-reg has already paid some non-refundable fees to a higher authority.
I apologize for any inconvenience caused, but please take into consideration that this is a great chance to keep these domains and make an investment.
In the future domain prices will increase and you will actually save some money by keeping them.
Please just login and administrate the renewed domains directly from the control panel.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us."

Not sure what to do next.

 

[matty281k]

same happened to me. turned of auto re-register and low and behold it renewed them.

 

[Systreg]

@ Rwinslow, can you confirm if this person asking for 123-reg account details is actually from 123-reg?: http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/domain-name-registrars/103248-another-123-waring-2.html#post398363

 

[rwinslow]

same happened to me. turned of auto re-register and low and behold it renewed them.

Send me domain names through to [email protected] and will check them out.

 

[rwinslow]

@ Rwinslow, can you confirm if this person asking for 123-reg account details is actually from 123-reg?: http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/domain-name-registrars/103248-another-123-waring-2.html#post398363

Yes, I posted on the other thread as well to confirm, but is likely easier to email me directly to the 123-reg address, safer than the forum.

As always, you can give a ticket number safely through DM and there is no real associated risk, if preferred.

Richard.