Update: If you found this page while searching for Domain Listing Service you might want to know that we get a few dozen hits every day from people just like you trying to find out more about this company. You guys might consider getting together to do something about this. Email me if you have the chance and I’ll start posting your stories on this blog.

http://www.danifer.com/blog/domain-listing-service-search-engine-submission.html

I got an email from one of my clients today regarding what looks like someone trying to scam her out of a couple of bucks based on her domain name information.

Here’s what she said:

Hi Keeton –

Okay – here’s a tech-y question that I need help with. I registered my domain name in November with domainregistry.com. I have the confirmation, etc. that states the registration date, expiration date, etc.

Today I received in the mail a very official looking bill for $65 from a company called Domain Listing Service Corp. It has the listing date as June 18 – June 18. It also tells me all of the inclusions with the website address listing, which I think I have anyway.

I think this is some sort of domain name registry trickery. LOL. Could I fax both the legitimate registration and this suspicious bill and maybe you could tell me what you think?? Don’t want to be “taken” but if I owe this I don’t want to be negligent either.

My response:

That sounds really scammy to me. Send me a copy and I’ll look it over, but definitely don’t pay anything in the meantime. Domain names usually cost between $9 and $15/year and yours is registered through xxx.

Thanks,

Keeton

I hate seeing this kind of thing, but it happens all the time. Essentially, this company pulled my customer’s domain name registration information (the name and address she used to register her domain name) from the publicly available whois information. They then sent out this mailer to try and convince her to send in a check for $65.

You may have seen similar scams for home mortgages, credit cards, etc. Unscrupulous companies will pull information from a publicly available database and send out official looking letters trying to convince people to buy something they don’t need.

It costs a lot to do a physical bulk mailing, so it makes me sick to think how much money they must be making off this. If you get something like this, check with your web developer or just read the fine print to see if it applies to you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 10:34 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.