- Joined
- Jan 11, 2006
- Messages
- 2,615
- Reaction score
- 54
Home.pl, "Poland's largest domain registrar", offers a very convenient 14 day grace period before any invoice is to be paid. At first glance, I thought great policy, but couldn't figure out why they would do this. Then I realized, most Poles still don't use credit cards, but opt to pay for online goods via bank wire transfers, which can obviously take days or weeks to process. In parallel to this 14 day grace period, Home.pl also seems to have their price structure centralized around "promotional offers", being that I've never not seen a sweet domain deal being heavily promoted over there.
Now, this company actually sent me an invoice by mail and email for roughly $2,000+ USD worth of domains. I tried to pay the invoice the same day I registered the domains, but their checkout system mysteriously blocked my IP address for apparently sending in too many queries [I tried to buy 100+ domains, there system only allows 10 domains to be purchased at once]. When I tried to pay using my credit card days later, their checkout system listed the total price as $4,400+ USD. I thought WTF, so I called them up over the phone. Their administration claims the "promotional offer" expired, and now I have to pay the $4,400+ USD price if I want the domains, ignoring the fact that I already have a printed official invoice stating a completely different price.
The saving grace of this situation, is that I tried to pay using a credit card. If I had sent a wire transfer for the invoiced amount, they would have tried to extort another $2,400 dollars from me before locking the domains for 1 year in my account. I can only assume Polish people using them in connection with wire transfers, are having a good deal of money extorted from them in this fashion. Their about us page in English even offers a prelude to their core business strategy, stating we "We only accept payments in full", as if it would be generally expected that a company would accept less.
Buyer beware of this company. To any Polish people out there not using credit cards, try and find yourself a registrar that can prefund your account with a bank wire transfer, and then you can reg domains without a credit card, and not have to worry about any bait and switch scams.
Now, this company actually sent me an invoice by mail and email for roughly $2,000+ USD worth of domains. I tried to pay the invoice the same day I registered the domains, but their checkout system mysteriously blocked my IP address for apparently sending in too many queries [I tried to buy 100+ domains, there system only allows 10 domains to be purchased at once]. When I tried to pay using my credit card days later, their checkout system listed the total price as $4,400+ USD. I thought WTF, so I called them up over the phone. Their administration claims the "promotional offer" expired, and now I have to pay the $4,400+ USD price if I want the domains, ignoring the fact that I already have a printed official invoice stating a completely different price.
The saving grace of this situation, is that I tried to pay using a credit card. If I had sent a wire transfer for the invoiced amount, they would have tried to extort another $2,400 dollars from me before locking the domains for 1 year in my account. I can only assume Polish people using them in connection with wire transfers, are having a good deal of money extorted from them in this fashion. Their about us page in English even offers a prelude to their core business strategy, stating we "We only accept payments in full", as if it would be generally expected that a company would accept less.
Buyer beware of this company. To any Polish people out there not using credit cards, try and find yourself a registrar that can prefund your account with a bank wire transfer, and then you can reg domains without a credit card, and not have to worry about any bait and switch scams.
