DROC - Domain Registry of Canada

It sounds cool — like a hip-hop star, or maybe a sci-fi space cruiser — but really, DROC, the “Domain Registry of Canada”, is a giant crock. They sent me a letter today; not for the first time, but I don’t remember getting one last year. The letter looks like a standard invoice, designed to fool the casual person into thinking it’s for an extension of an already existing agreement. For the princely sum of $40CAD, they’ll renew one of my domain names for a year — and for only $160CAD, they’ll renew it for a wonderful five years!

A quick google search reveals that they’ve been running this scam — I mean, uh, “offer” — for awhile now, under the name the “Domain Registry of America” in the USA, although apparently the company is based in Canada. Their business practices have previously been spanked by the FTC, but they’re still sending out these “renewal” notices, and I assume making good money preying on people who don’t read these sort of things closely, or on the tech-phobic people who simply don’t understand how that crazy internet works, and simply pay up.

I pay a little more than average for my domains because html.com has been totally awesome supporting dumpshock.com for years now — why would I want to spend more money and support a company that uses such deceptive business practices? Simple answer: I wouldn’t.