Customers voice frustration over paying for whois privacy.
When you give something away for free, it’s really hard to then start charging for it. Just ask Name.com.
On April 21 the company announced via its blog that new domain name registrations would no longer come with free whois privacy. Domains that already have privacy turned on will continue to receive the service for free; new registrations must pay $1.99 per year for the service as “promotional price”. But the company also disclosed a coupon code to get the service for free for the first year of each domain registration.
Five days later, the blog post has 92 comments, and many of them are rather angry.
A typical comment: “This really blows. In the past 30 days I moved over 60 domains over to you because of the privacy being free AND was about to move another 160 domains.”
Increasing prices is difficult — but increasing them from $0 is even harder. Name.com offered freebies to existing customers but a vocal crowd is still upset. When making a move like this, sometimes it’s easiest to take a grandfathered approach. For example, when unions agree to health care concessions, they try to apply the changes only to new members. That way their existing members aren’t affected and don’t raise a fuss.
Tim says
The most upsetting part is how they approached letting everyone know about the changes. A blog is NOT a substitute for a personal email from customer service letting us know that the business relationship has changed. Poorly executed and a sure sign that they knew this wasn’t going to go over well. Name.com gets an ‘F’ on customer service!
Felix says
Thanks for letting me know Andrew 🙂 just read about this here for the first time – do they really think customers read their company blog?…frequently?…at all?
Free privacy was a USP of Name.com and one of the main reasons I chose to register my domains there. Well…
Paul Carter says
@Tim – We hear you. We certainly know there are things we could have done better while rolling this change out. We are human and we make mistakes. We’ll take what we’ve learned here and apply it to future changes.
We make pricing changes everyday to domain registrations, web hosting plans, SSL certificates, etc. and we generally don’t email our customers about them – but we realize the impact this has had on some of our customers and we realize we could have communicated better about the change.
We did try to be proactive by grandfathering in domains that already had the service, offering a free promo and offering the service at a $1.99 price, which we believe is very competitive.
Charging for the service was a hard decision and one we didn’t make easily. We don’t like to hear that are customers are unhappy, but we do apprecaite the feedback.
Paul Carter
Name.com
Tim says
Privacy should be free at all registrars.
Mike says
Free Private Whois was their niche, they just chucked the baby out the window.
Alan says
Thank you for posting this. I thought it was strange that they were charging for privacy when I registered my last batch of domains. I have over 900 domains with them. No e-mail communication at all regarding this change in pricing. I’ll be registering my domains at Fabulous going forward where privacy is free. $1.99 per domain adds up quickly.
Kevin M. says
I’m sorry, but anyone who pays for ‘privacy’ are fodder for WC Fields’ insight. A PO Box and a designated email, keeps one abreast of his/her domains’ correspondence – renewals/offers/updates etc., and saves booculoo amounts of annual ‘privacy payments’. No depending on someone else to pass on any quick attention or important email corresponse. Can’t see how privacy benefits anyone except a registrars pocketbooks, myself. But as WC said, “There’s a suc…”
jblack says
It was P.T Barnum, not WC Fields who said that….
Anthony says
I’m pulling a chunk of my domains out
of name.com because of this. No email notice
to customers ? This is a poor decision imho.
monday - monday says
When a registrar supplies private whois, it is a little bit more work for them.
However, it is basically a profit center.
If you don’t like it, move on to another registrar.
I believe Fabulous offers free whois and special pricing for domainers.
I’m not happy with most of the registrars.
What is even worse, I don’t trust any of them.
Jeff says
I’m transfering out to. 120 names.
Donv says
Only suckers pay for Private Whois.
Stephen Douglas says
One word about this fiasco for Name.com’s image as a previously well-respected registrar:
F A B U L O U S . C O M ! !
Sharon Hayes says
Even paying for privacy is no guarantee that it will be kept. We had privacy dropped from domains at Moniker. Contacting support about it resulted in nothing other than a “we’ll look into this” response. The only domains we had with privacy on them all had them dropped for the same time period so I wonder if it was a system-wide glitch.
Tim says
I’m looking at moving my domains to someone else at this point. A bunch of slick lip service is all I’m hearing out of this bunch. They fail to recognize how fragile a relationship they have with their customers. Charging 2 bucks for free privacy isn’t even the issue here. It’s broken trust and it can’t be patched. If I were to continue doing business with them, I could fully expect to be treated the same way in the future. Better to pay heed to the warning signs and move on.
Jacob says
Yeah, I gotta say, I’d switch to fabulous.com all the way on this one. Charging for privacy is a pure profit game. If it was 10 or 20 cents that’s one thing, but $2+ is way too much.
Dtagr says
This is poor, poor communication on the part of Name dot com, not to mention a poor decision.
Name dot com was known for free whois privacy – now no more, most competitively priced backorder service – now no more, and an excellent and intuitive interface – now cluttered with with the distracting whois enable/disable.
What is it known for now? Nothing. Just another registrar. Nothing to see here, move along.
Mark J says
Whois Privacy is a bomb waiting to explode.
John says
You have got to be kidding me. I specifically spent the last year transfering all my domains from godaddy to name.com.
Now I have my last few pending transfer to you and I think I should cancel the transfer immediately. This is a move in the wrong direction on your part.
I am just learning about this for the first time on this website. This is very poor communication from an otherwise upstanding company with great customer service.
You guys are in the hosting business now. Your hosting is not up to par as you offer no 24/7 support like most hosting companies do.
You are now are now going to charge for a service that you have had free for years and no small sum it is when you count the numbers. This is not going to go over well.
THink about it like this. People ACCEPT your company because of what you have to offer. People JOIN youre company because they trust the name Name.com.
People will no longer ACCEPT your company let alone JOIN your company.
If I wanted to pay all these extra fees on all my domains, I would have stayed with GoDaddy.com.
Time to move them all back. You see Godaddy is constantly improving their services and providing more and more. You guys on the other hand never change a thing on your website. So since you got the first part down about charging customers an arm and a leg for anything and everything that was once free for years.
I am transfering my domains back to godaddy. I have seen a registrar go bankrupt before and I do not want to be part of it. It’s a nightmare getting your assets out.
FREE PRIVACY WAS NAME.COM’S GREATEST FEATURE WHICH GAVE US THE BENEFIT OF PRIVACY FREE FOR ALL OUR DOMAINS. THIS WAS ESPECIALLY POULAR AMONGST DOMAINERS WHO HAVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOMAINS. DOMAINERS THAT EMBRACE COMPANIES SUCH AS NAME.COM ALWAYS BRING MASS APPEAL AND REALLY GIVES THE COMPANY A GOOD REPUTATION. AND ALL TOO OFTEN WHEN THE OVERALL OPINON IS THAT DOMAINERS DESPISE A COMPANY THAT COMPANY IS UNIVERSALLY KNOWN AND ALWAYS A LAST RESORT SUCH IS THE STORY WITH GODADDY.
YOU GET BIG AND LOSE YOUR HEART AND SENSE OF FAMILY WHICH GOT YOU WHERE YOU ARE IN THE FIRST PLACE. ONCE YOU’VE DEVELOPED A FOLLOWING YOU TAKE A VACUUM TO OUR WALLETS AND CLEAN US DRY.
The problem is domainers are never good for the plucking.
When you look at a domain portfolio of 412 domains and then calculate that you are going to have to pay $1.99 per domain to ensure your privacy that’s $819.88/ A YEAR that was once a free feature that was the MAIN Benefit of transferring my domains to your company.
This was a given freebie from registrars popular amongst domainers.
I hate to be the first to say it, but NAME.COM will no longer be popular amongst domainers. They were everything to your company. You sponsor Chef Patrick.
To Paul:
It’s certainly not something to be proud of as and to share with customers that:
“We make pricing changes everyday to domain registrations, web hosting plans, SSL certificates, etc. and we generally don’t email our customers about them – but we realize the impact this has had on some of our customers and we realize we could have communicated better about the change.”
COULDN’T WE HAVE PRIVACY BETA WHERE I DON’T GET AXED FOR A FEW YEARS. I just had to pay the damn government. I guess I will be adding Free Privacy to my list of taxes this next year.
Sarah says
I’m looking at moving my domains to someone else at this point. A bunch of slick lip service is all I’m hearing out of this bunch. They fail to recognize how fragile a relationship they have with their customers. Charging 2 bucks for free privacy isn’t even the issue here. It’s broken trust and it can’t be patched. If I were to continue doing business with them, I could fully expect to be treated the same way in the future. Better to pay heed to the warning signs and move on.
Anthony says
I got an answer to my email question …
Thank you for contactign us. The FREEWHOIS promo code will be active for 90 days.
Time to move OUT of Name.com
Noni says
I love Name, but now is the time to move OUT.
Stephen Douglas says
I ALREADY SAID IT PEOPLE!
FREE WHOIS PRIVACY AT FABULOUS.COM
Why complain about Name.com? Just transfer out your domains to Fabulous. And I don’t work for them.
I’m sure that Bill Mushkin will recover from the rapid exodus of domainers from his registrar…
Dang, although I have never used his registrar, I’ve talked to Bill, he’s a nice guy, but this is a PR nightmare.
Vishal Desai says
Yes it is time now to move out of name.com the way by which they are increasing whois privacy day by day and domain registration fees soon they will be costlier domain registrar in the world. Now they are charging 7.99$ for whois privacy, 3.99$ as special offer. Soon WHOIS privacy charges will be more than Domain Rgistration charges.