Got a letter from a 'domain renewal service' saying my site would expire in 3 days. Panicked and went to pay £49. Then I checked my actual registrar account and it's fine until October. The letter was from some third-party outfit. How do you all spot these before you almost fork out?
Renewals
I nearly paid for a renewal service I didn't need
Rule one: if it's not from the registrar you actually use, ignore it. These people trawl WHOIS records and send scary letters. They count on the panic click.
£49 is cheap for that lesson lol. I've seen ones charging £180 for a 'renewal' that's just a forwarded invoice template.
The bit that got me was it landed on a Friday afternoon and had a fake account number and everything. Properly rattled me.
Check the sender email domain. Nine times out of ten it's something like renewals @ trust-us-intl . biz. Also log in to your real registrar, and screenshot the expiry date. Keep it somewhere.
My old boss actually paid one of these. Then the company rang him a month later to 'confirm the renewal' for another year. It wasn't a renewal, it was just them pocketing the money again.
Who even reads letters anymore
@flatwhite_fiend the scam doesn't care whether you Read it, it just needs one person in ten to open it. Volume game.
Pro tip from someone who nearly fell for a trademark renewal scam: set a calendar reminnder for 6 weeks before your actual renewal date with the registrar. Then you never have to rely on inbound post. Has saved me twice now.
Calendar reminder it is. And I've filed a report with the actual registrar just in case they want to chase them.
Is it just domains or do they do the same for limited company confirmation statements? Had a letter about that last year that looked dead official.
Companies House ones are rife. They charge £40 for a confirmation statement you can file yourself for £13. Same playbbook — scrape the register, scare letter, fake urgency.
Honestly the trick is to only ever trust the account you log into yourself. Everything else is marketing with teeth.