123-reg Stole My Money! Auto Renewal Nightmare!
May 07
How come people like 123-reg can break the law, and get away with it? We have used them for years and years and we have never had a problem with them (ok, we have had some related problems when they fucked up a domain name registration and it got stole from under us) until now!
We have around 40 domain names in our account, and we probably have at least one come up for renewal every month. Normal procedure for me is to leave it as long as comfortably possible (LOL) and then log in and renew it.
We store our credit card details on there site, so every time we do this or every time we buy a domain name, we dont have to write in the long number etc. Its to save US time basically.
Now, we had a .CC domain name that had come up for renewal last month, and it was gonna cost us over £30 to renew it for one year! So as we were not using it, we decided to leave it and let it expire.
3 days ago we received an email invoice from 123-reg for the .CC domain name.
What the fuck?
We logged in, and the .CC domain name was not in our renewal list any more?
I checked, and the amount had been taken from our bank, without our say so?
Ok. So they stole money from my account, to renew a domain name that i did not want.
I rang 123-reg and they fobbed me off with some bullshit about auto renewal and how i had stored the credit card details in my account, so in doing so had given them permission to take my money whenever they wanted to?
What utter bullshit!
English contract law states (basically) that if i dont say i want something, then i dont want it!
They KNOW they send emails out every few days reminding you to renew, i even renewed some other domain names and left that one out on purpose! Yet they STILL renewed it and stole my money to pay for it!
I read all the way through their terms and conditions, and there was no mention of this credit card auto renewal shit – no where did it say “if you put your details in, we’ll use them when we want”
So what gives them the fucking right to do it?
I rang them up again to see if i could speak to someone who wasnt a fucking moron, but surprise surprise another moron on the end of the phone saying something that is blatantly written on a bit of paper in front of him.
Oh, if you want to call 123-reg and dont want to pay 10p a minute, then call 02085877558 as this alternative number replaces the old alternative 01782 605 399 number number that seems to no longer go anywhere.
We have taken the matter up with our bank, and i have removed our credit card details from 123-reg so they cant steal more money.
You fucked with the wrong person you bitches – you WILL feel my wrath.
Grrrrrrrr!
Hi there
I just discovered 123reg thiefs they have taken 140 pounds of my account when I thought it would just expire.
THey said they had emailed me yet the email registered with them expired months ago and they never wrote.
Ive passed it onto my credit card company to look into.
Please could you let me know how you got on.
Thanks
Same thing just happend to me, they took £160 off me. Im also wondering how much more money they have been stealing over the years that i havent noticed! Very angry! Did you ever get your money back?
We got into a right mess with it.
We got our money back from the bank, but then they blocked access to our account.
My advise to you all, is to remove the AutoRenew from every domain in 123-reg.
The UI is PANTS but you should be able to figure it out!
I had a very similar experience. The upfront message you get is that ‘your hosting is due to expire’ but what that means is ‘is going to be renewed unless you work out how to stop that happening’. I have been looking for a way to make sure I don’t pay for renewals and/or hosting for most of this morning – and I design sites at code level, so techfear isn’t the issue. Also, the 123-reg site seems to auto recognise my PC, so I can’t set up accounts for my rather less tech-literate clients. I’m sure it is just about possible to do if you know where to look or spend ages waiting on the premium rate support line, but the point is that it is very difficult to find and this, coupled with extremely misleading information and muddled wording almost everywhere you look, makes 123-reg dangerous to use. I had to phone a client this morning to tell him 123-reg had debited his credit card to pay for someone else’s hosting – hosting the other client didn’t want to buy anyway. AVOID.
My wonderful little hosting company was taken over by these idiots.
Moved all my domains names out today, over 50 of them. Stuck with them for hosting for now until all the packages come up for renewal.
Their version of auto-renew is completely unworkable for me. But once they’ve got a hold of your card details you’ve had it.
Good news is they have removed my card details from their system and I will never purchase anything from them again, so they can’t enforce their auto-renew.
Most sneaky and devious company I have come across.
Control panel is abysmal. Not a company I will ever use again.
We also have just had money stolen from our account for a domain we didn[t want renewed.
I contacted them and they refuse to refund the money, they are nothing but common theives.
How Nominet can allow these criminals to continue to trade is beyond me, it just shows you how corrupt the governing body is to allow this fraud to continue.
I also had an auto-renew. I had actually taken my card details off, but it basically wouldn’t let me navigate through they control panel unless I had card details. I stupidly put my card details back in, but 3 day AFTER the expiry date, and it still instantly renewed it. Even though I had moved the hosting to Godjira.co.uk (excellent independent company by the way).
I then found out that they had taken a separate £46.98 from my credit card, which doesn’t seem to be for anything at all. They say they don’t even have a record of it. But its there broad as day on my credit card statement. That sounds like pure theft. This was now nearly 3 months ago. I can’t get through on their 10p a minute phone “support” and the “support” site is beyond a joke (last communication from them was 2 weeks ago).
I am thinking of submitting through the small claims court.
Any clever ideas?
Ring this number 0845 859 0023. The more people who complain then maybe they will change the horrible website where you have to find where to turn the renewal off. I didn’t even have a contract with 123.reg it was with Supanames who were brought out by 123.reg. Do not use 123.reg!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ever
F*cking idiots.
They lock me out of my account without telling me, then tell me there’s a debt to be settled on the account due to a chargeback (caused by an unauthorised payment taken from one of my client’s credit cards).
Instead of allowing me to respond before closing it, they promise and promise to respond to a faxed letter by phone every time I call them. Then they send me a F*CKING support request/answer which I can’t respond to or even look at because I’m locked out of the F*CKING ACCOUNT!! AAAArrrgggghhh!! For the third time!!!!
So I call again, and explain the same damn story for a ninth time and they respond with another support reply in my account which I can’t access.
UN-FUCKING-BELEIVABLE how stupid their system is.
I’m so angry now, I should sue them for wasted time and damaged business.
F*CKERS! Who regulates these fools???
who can I complain to? Trading standards?
I’ve tried civility and niceness, and politeness and explanation and letters, and they still F*CK ME OVER!
They’re owned by WebFusion which don’t exactly have a good security or customer service record either.
I asked for my card details to be removed in Feb. Made another purchase from them since, checked for an opt out on the card details page for storing the card found none, they then set everything to auto renew without my knowledge because of that purchase and they’ve just robbed £150+ for domains that usually just expired.
Just writing to them to demand a refund and then will move the 60+ domains over to UKReg or another provider. Once sneaked up upon from behind and robbed never again.
Look forward to their response, be buggered if I’m giving them anymore money by ringing them.
For interest, their official complaints page:
http://www.123-support.co.uk/support/answers/what-is-the-official-complaints-procedure-312/
Just had the same thing happen to me! They’d been sending me emails for the last few months asking me to renew the domain, but I’ve just been ignoring them to let the domain expire. Now when I woke up this morning, I had an email off them with an invoice attached to it!
Can’t believe that just because they have stored my credit card details, they would set all my domains to automatically renew. I can’t even find a way to delete my card details.
Did you guys ever sort out your problems with automatic renewal? Are there any different hosts you’d recommend, because I don’t trust 123 reg anymore?
These bastards and their fraud .co domain refunds cost me £285 they made this procedure of refunding people who booked a .co domains they had some fraud plus 5% option which supposed to give you a 5% extra money but you did not get a bigger refund but they put the money into your 123reg credit account or something which is completly useless!!! When I choose a full refund option I got some error message (fraud) and ended up with £105 full refund ( for 3 domains) and the rest of the money is in my (their) account which is completly useless!!!! DO NOT REGISTER ANY DOMAINS THROUGH http://WWW.123-REG.CO.UK be careful this as this company appears to be quite solid but is a COMPLETE FRAUD !!!!