WHOIS sending me mail?
11 Oct 2004No, WHOIS aren’t an organisation… it was a joke. Sort of. Leave me alone.
I got a letter in my physical mailbox today, from an organisation called the “Domain Registry of America“, about a domain I’m the administrative contact on (well, I’m also the technical and billing contact, but what the heck). I’d never had anything to do with them before, so I assume they pulled my details from the DNS record on the domain of a client.
I’m pretty impressed. They sent me physical mail, and it wasn’t even a scam. This, from a dot com company. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. I honestly don’t mind real world spam. It’s reassuring to know there’s a tangible cost to the people sending it, even if it means trees are getting lopped down from old growth forests. I can pretend it’s recycled if I want, anyway.
It was letting me know the domain expires in March next year (talk about forward notice, hey?!), and was offering me renewal with them, instead of my current registrar for that domain. Yeah, it’s just a domain transfer form, which they mailed out. The suggestion is that if I switch to them I’ll be paying less than I am with my current registrar, which is blatantly untrue — their rates listed here are $AU38 per year ($US25), whilst I get domains with my current registrar for $US12 each ($AU16). Still, there was an envelope enclosed, and a form I could fill out to change domain providers, as well as purchase the .org and .biz namespace of the same name.
They have a Melbourne office, and the whole thing looks quite legitimate… I’m tempted to send them a polite reply informing them that my current registrar is cheaper, and they’re most welcome to try and match pricing and ancillary services if they wish. Maybe.
It’s moments like these when I’m glad clients aren’t the administrative/billing contacts for their own domains. This thing, although it says “This notice is not a bill” in the 3rd paragraph, reads awfully like a renewal form (the header reads “Domain Name Expiration Notice”) — I can quite easily see someone who doesn’t know or remember who their registrar is simply processing payment for it and etting on with their life: not a problem in itself, but for the fact that there’d be an upset client a few months later, when their DNS services are suddenly borked and they don’t know why… neither would I, and logging into the registrar’s panel wouldn’t help, as the domain would no longer be with them!
Aside from that slightly scary aspect, I haven’t got any real problem with this kind of attempted poaching… I am, however, somewhat curious as to whether anyone else has experienced this kind of mail before. If you’ve got a domain name and have or haven’t received this type of mail before, post a comment or something.