Things That Just Piss Me Off

I was just watching this commercial on tv. They tell me for just $1 I can start my online business with everything I need to be successful. My worries are over right?

As usual, wrong. People really should get it thorugh their heads that if it sounds too good to be true it is. Especially where tv commercials come into play.

The commercial was for 24.mydollardomain.com. For just $1 you get a domain name and you can use sitebuilder to build your website and start making money right away!

Only when you actually read the terms of service you see where the suspicious part of it come in.

Dollar Website Details

Welcome to MyDomain’s $1 trial offer. You will receive the use of a domain of your choosing, plus a Standard Shared Hosting (Windows only) package with SiteBuilder® in this exclusive 30-day risk-free trial offer; it has everything you need to design and launch your own website.

If for any reason you are unhappy with your domain name and/or hosting plan during the first 30 days, you can cancel by simply clicking on the “cancel” button on the account management page in your account.

Sound good so far?

If you cancel during the 30-day trial period, the domain will become the property of MyDomain.*

So in other words you are not really registering a domain name. They are. And if you cancel, they keep it. That means it was never your domain name at all.

If you do not cancel your service within 30 days, you will be automatically billed $8.95 for the one-year registration of your domain name, and $32.85 for a three-month subscription of your hosting plan 31 days after you order the trial offer. Your credit card will then be billed $32.85 every three months for your quarterly hosting subscription, and $8.95** annually for the one-year domain registration. If at any time your credit card cannot be authorized for the required amount, your service will cease.

And everything reverts to them. That means if they get people to work hard at getting some traffic, then they don’t pursue it anymore, as many people don’t, then they can monetize the traffic you worked to build.

The $1 paid for the trial offer is applied to the 30-day Standard Shared Hosting (Windows only) package. If you actively cancel your domain during the trial offer, or if your credit card cannot be authorized for the purchase after the trial period ends, then your domain will become the property of MyDomain.*

The $1 MyDomain 30-day trial offer is for a limited time only. This offer is limited to one per household and one per account and is not valid with any other offer. This offer is available only for new domain name registrations of .com, .net, .org, info., and .biz. This offer applies only to domains registered with MyDomain. MyDomain reserves the right to request additional information for proper order processing and/or the right to reject any order.

* See Registration Agreement and ICANN regulations for further details.

** One-year registration fee subject to change.

That last really cool statement means if you get a lot of traffic and you begin to have some success, they reserve the right to raise the cost of that domain name each year. It’s completely up to them. Now of course I’m not saying they are scammers and would do such a thing, but they reserve the right to do it anyway.

And this is from the terms of service at mydomains.com which really owns this great one dollar offer.

You understand and acknowledge that MyDomain.com is not itself a registrar of domain names, but offers such registration services on its Website as a service to its members by providing registration pages and links to official sellers and registrars of domain names.

Members are under no obligation to use any of the domain registration services available at MyDomain.com. If you use any of the domain registration services on the MyDomain.com Website you will also be subject to the Registration Agreement of the registrar for such domains, current Namesdirect.com.

My point is stop trying to get something for nothing. It’s much better to use a well-known and trusted registrar like enom.com, godaddy.com, register.com, or networksolutions.com than to try to get soemthing for nothing. it almost always ends badly.

The fact that they control the domain name should be enough to scare you away. When you register a domain name, it should have your whois info on it. You should have control of the domain name you registered, period. Anything short of that is a scam in my opinion.

Some hosting companies and web design companies do the same thing. They know clients don’t know any better so they register the domain name in their own name instead of the client’s name. Then if you ever try to leave them for another company, they “decide” how much they should charge you to keep your own domain name.

Don’t get ripped off.

Stumble it!