I received a letter in the mail today that I found to be a little too deceptive for my tastes. Some people may say that it is clever, because it will inevitably fool some of the people who receive it, but it ultimately reflects poorly on the company involved.
The letter came in an official-looking brown envelope, not unlike the ones that you would receive from a government agency. The postage was pre-paid and pre-printed on the brown envelope. Inside this envelope was a long, personalized letter and a return envelope. Reading through the letter, it was an offer to “retain exclusive rights” to one of my expiring domains. I suppose they were able to get my mailing address through WHOIS or some other means.
In any case, the initial reaction to this letter was that it was an official document from an official Canadian government agency, but it was really just from a private company looking to make a few dollars. I’m not going to name them by name — they don’t deserve the free publicity — but the company name also has a certain air of being an official government agency as well. This is deceptive.
The kicker is that their rates for domain registration are considerably higher than the industry standard. For the registration of a single .com domain for one year, the price is $40.00. Even when you look at their two-year and five-year options, the rates were $70 and $160, respectively. Not only is this mail unsolicited — we all get junk mail all the time — but they’re terribly overpriced too.
Would you allow your marketing campaign to enter into the realm of deception in order to get a few extra sales? How far would you take your tactics?
jeff white
May 15, 2008 3:30 pm
I’m pretty sure I know exactly who you’re talking about. I’ve called them several times to voice my displeasure at how deceptive this is, but they don’t seem to care. I’ve also asked to be taken off their mailing list, but they refuse to comply.
They used to include a postage paid envelope (but the last few I received did not have this, just a place stamp here-velope), but I think they stopped doing that because too many of us were sending back nasty notes at their expense.
My concern are people who simply reply because it *does* look official and get duped by these jerks. I’ve also made several complaints to the BBB. Doesn’t seem to have made any difference though. Honestly, I think naming them is a good thing. If your blog post gets decent views, when someone Google’s DRoC, this post might deter some unknowing soul from being deceived.
Matt
May 15, 2008 4:23 pm
I got one of these once, except it looked like a bill…
Dr. Cossack
May 15, 2008 6:31 pm
I think I know what you’re talking about, and “deceptive” was pretty much the first word that came to mind, too. It’s silly, but that logo and name really sounds like some sort of government agency…
Rhetorical
May 15, 2008 9:30 pm
Bingo, we both got hit by the same company.
Mike Muise
May 16, 2008 4:45 am
A few years back there was action taken against DROA and DROC by a few registrars. There practices dupe a lot of customers. Unfortunately after much legal battle they cover themselves a lot better and are within their legal rights. Somehwere in the fine print I believe it is mandatory they indicate it is actually a transfer of registrar.
The real kicker is they often take money from the customer, the domains don’t transfer, they expire and then the customer calls their registrar wondering why we let their domain expire since they paid “US”.