Website.ws Wins First Prize for Price Gouging

[Duke]

Website.ws, the site run by the managers of Samoa's .WS extension, earn first prize for price gouging above and beyond the call of duty. If you make the mistake of registering a domain there, then decide to sell, you will find yourself hit with a $100 ownership transfer fee (no charge virtually everywhere else) that isn't disclosed anywhere on their site when you register a domain. And that isn't even the worst of it. If you paid $70 for a two-year registration (the minimum they allow) they will also cancel the registration period (with no refund) and make the new owner pay again for something .WS was already paid for! Again, not even any fine print on their site about this predatory practice.

I had heard about the $100 fee before but didn't know about the double whammy on the registration fee until I transferred one there today (and had to refund $70 to the buyer to cover his having to pay for the registration all over again). To avoid this ripoff, if you are going to register a .WS domain, register it somewhere like GoDaddy where it costs about $10 (as opposed to $35 annually at website.ws) and where there are none of the extortionate transfer fees.

 

[oxen]

Thank you for your info - by the way, there is no link at the banner "new name .us" in the front page of your website (dnjournal)

 

[Duke]

Thank you for your info - by the way, there is no link at the banner "new name .us" in the front page of your website (dnjournal)

Thank you for alerting me to that oxen. I recently moved the banner and apparently forgot to relink it. I'll go over and fix it.

 

[Mr Webname]

Nominet (co.uk etc) charge a £35/$64.40 to change ownership of a domain but as far as I am aware no "double-whammy" of re-charging.

 

[Duke]

Though these practices are predatory, I wouldn't object nearly as much if the sites guilty of doing it let registrants know up front before they register, that they are going to be subject to these charges. .WS make no mention of it anywhere on their site and that is just downright dishonest and dispicable. I told them that they should be ashamed of themselves, but people like that have no shame, so I'm sure it didn't register (just as I won't register there anymore).

 

[skylight]

actually, i am hesitating of developing site with .ws

you might not know when will .ws suddenly implement new funny rules to all their resellers and that might affect all the .ws extension since this extension is proprietary.

 

[Duke]

actually, i am hesitating of developing site with .ws

you might not know when will .ws suddenly implement new funny rules to all their resellers and that might affect all the .ws extension since this extension is proprietary.

Well, I hadn't thought of that skylight, but when they do unscrupulous things like this, I certainly wouldn't put it past them, especially since .TV has already been known to do it. You register one for $35 and build a site, then the next year they tell you they are reclassifying the domain as a "premium" name and the renewal will be $5,000.