Credit Card Fraud by Registerfly.com

[MadamCaptain]

In April 2002 I paid a 3 month subscription to Registerfly.com for a domain name and web hosting service via credit card. Registerfly.com is a part of the UnifiedNames, Inc.

Their support was non-existant. No phone numbers, and they answered email when they "felt like it". Still, I got the website up and running only to have the server go down for 4-8 hrs at a time 3-4 times in one week. That was the last straw. I obtained a new host, transferred all my files and cancelled my subscription. I wrote to them by every method possible--including support tickets. NO RESPONSE.

6 weeks after the cancellation Registerfly.com hit my credit card for another quarter of billing. I disputed it and wrote them again. The bank had just adjusted the August charge when 5 days later I was hit with yet ANOTHER CHARGE by Registerfly.com.

THESE PEOPLE ARE OUT OF CONTROL. In April, when the charge was valid, they did not have "automatic billing". I NEVER AUTHORIZED AUTOMATIC BILLING. I authorized a one time charge.

THESE PEOPLE ARE STEALING NOW, AND WILL NOT STOP. The bank says they can't stop an "automatic payment"--not even one that was initiated by the seller, and not the account holder.

BUYERS BEWARE!! Stay away from these people. Don't get burned or go through these hassles. They advertise "Satisfaction Guaranteed". I'd settle for them to stop charging my credit card.


RegisterFly.com is an East Coast based Internet Company, we are wholly owned by UnifiedNames,Inc. with the following sites:

Registerfly.com
RegisterEngine.com
Entryhost.com
NameBegin.com
ExpireFish.com
iDotnames.com
iServerWatch.com
FlyServers.com
Appraised.com
NameTwist.com

[oritsfree]

I would speak to another banking rep. If you did not authorise the charge they must be able to do something. Just remember there are four quarters in a year, and if they don't stop it now this company will continue to charge you.

I would follow up with the bank.

[steamingsteve]

WARNING, I have been registering domains many for years now. Network Solutions, directnic, GoDaddy, Dotster, some that are long gone. I have used them all at one time or another... REGISTERFLY is the worst!!! Beware, don't be tempted by their low prices. I am fighting to get $250 bucks back that they zipped out of my bank account. DO NOT TRUST your information to them I warn you.... PLEASE believe me. They are just in it for the money and once they get their greedy gloves on yours you will not get it back. Ignore, stall, divert, lie, and finally deny... that's what they call tech support!!!

[suggs]

Please do pay attention to what people are saying here. Registerfly has been charging my credit card every two to three days for about four months. I have emailed, opened tickets over the phone, and called them, to no avail. The charging continues. It is now up to about $1200 in total and literally happens every three days....

I have reported them to American Express, to the Better Business Bureau and to the New Jersey Attorney General's office. If you go to the BBB website, you will see that I am not alone.

They have now charged me 3000% more than what was agreed - and in the meantime, my site has been down about 50% of the time. It is down now - and I got an email that said, oh, sorry, we'll "reinstate" it - with NO EXPLANATION whatsoever as to why it was down - and then said oops, sorry, you'll have to re-upload your site now. Too bad.

They haven't given me any legitimate answers to my issues, have closed my help tickets, but continue to charge. AND they're not even providing the service I've paid for.

After doing this recent research I really believe they are operating fraudulently and I urge anyone involved with them to consider filing a Better Business Bureau complaint and a complaint with the NJ Attorney General. We can not just let companies operate this way.

They are amassing money through fraudulent billing practices - and they'll probably soon disappear....unless we do something.

If anyone knows another legitimate place to report credit card fraud, please post that as well.

[integrity]

your credit card company should eagerly assist with prosecuting credit card fraud, as part of the dispute you make with them. It happened to me with another host. CC company was surprisingly on my side.

[suggs]

Hi Integrity -

Yes, my credit card company has been very helpful -- I'm calling them every day or so at this point, which is a pain. Luckily I paid by AMEX and not an online check so that helps to have the 'big guys' working on your behalf. In the end, I think, I will get my money back - but only because I have been vigilent for months.

My concern, now, has actually gotten bigger than that. Maybe its wierd, but I am feeling that I have a moral responsibility to let whoever needs to know, know exactly what it going on.

In my research into my own situation, I have found numerous posts, complaints about repeated and ongoing multiple billings by Registerfly, lack of response when trying to get refunds, and the thing that is not being quantified - the fact that they often do not even provide the agreed service - hosting - despite ongoing, continuous, daily billing! In the last month, I've found tons of similar complaints. People are beginning to register these with the BBB. A few others have gone to the NJ Attorney General's Office. I've now reported it on the ICANN website, as some others have. (They, of course, won't worry about my individual problem, but they do say they are monitoring 'trends'.)

So I'm calling this a "who moved my cheese moment" - basically, to me it seems that the writing is on the wall...if I were speculating, and of course thats what this is, I'd say that Registerfly is probably operating on a shoestring, desperate to keep their income coming in, or something along those lines...But if you look at the trend, it does seem to say that they are amassing money, fraudulently, from existing customers on an ongoing and regular basis and meanwhile, are continuing to market to new customers who do not know this. I've also seen complaints about Registerfly reselling existing registered domains out from under people. Another way to get quick income - fraudulently.

Before, I thought it was just me...that I had a problem. Now I believe that "we" as a community have a problem - and I want to report it through appropriate channels before it begins to affect things more than it has...a hosting company and registrar going under or its ceo's disappearing with ill-gotten gain for instance, could affect any number of people.

I don't mean to get on a soapbox - but our community is based on being able to trust the transactions you do online - we don't look into each other's eyes and grasp hands to close a deal So when the deal is obviously going bad, it just seems right to talk about it and expose it and I hope others will go through whatever appropriate channels to get the assistance they need as well. And report their problems to ICANN or the BBB or the NJ Attorney General as well - so that someone with some authority will know what is happening at the 'street' level.

[generouswebhosting]

This sounds like a terrible expierence . Unfortunately, I have heard this before in other user forums. Looks like you should definitely stay away from a service like this.

[mjy222]

Here is my nightmare story....

I started service with registerfly on 06/13/05 and paid $19.95. This was for vps-hosting. I bought 4 domain names, transferred one domain that I have owned for almost 2 years and put protectfly on all of them.

On 07/13/05 I paid $19.95 again for my second month. Then registerfly had about 40 hours of downtime in 3 days, which they later downplayed to a couple hours. I emailed them and phoned them for three days with no replies. After the system was up again 3 days later, they finally sent me an email saying the system is now online and working. I finally got hold of someone there after several support tickets, emails and unsuccessful phone calls. They finally said I would get compensated for the downtime by giving me an additional 2 weeks. Instead of being billed on 08/13/05, they said I would now be billed on 09/01/05 and be billed on the 1st of every month after that.

Well on 08/13/05 they not only took another $19.95, they took an additional payment of $19.95. Nothing was supposed to be deducted until 9/1/05. I called them for 3 days and emailed them. They would not reply to emails. If they did answer their phone, they would not transfer me to billing. (this company has the worst customer service I have ever seen. EVEEER!).

I called my bank and cancelled my credit card and disputed the 2 illegal withdrawals. Once again, this was after 3 days and hours of emails and phone calls. A couple days later, they sent both $19.95 withdrawals back to my account and said I would be billed on 09/01/05.

I thought great, everything is all ok now.

On Sunday, 8/21/05, they suspended my account, shut down all my webpages, and said I owed them $109.00. If I did not pay this amount, they would keep my 5 domains and not allow me to move them to another service.

The $109.00 is itemized as follows....

2 chargebacks of $35.00 each = $70.00 They were charging me $35.00 for each charge of $19.95 that I had disputed. They also wanted both payments of $19.95 which they illegally took out. The two $19.95 charges were for services that they had not even given me yet. In other words, they wanted four payments of $19.95 when I had only been with them for 2 months.

My bank said they do not send a charge through for disputes. My bank never charged registerfly two payments of $35.00. I have no idea why they think I owe them for charges that they incurred when they billed me for money that was not theirs. At this point they emailed me and gave me an extension to call. I called one day and some guy would not shut up for 1 minute to allow me to ask why I owed them $109. He finally hung up on me. Then the next day I called and a women answered. I was trying to explain it to her and she said I had already talked to someone the day before for 2 hours, (it was only about a 5 minute conversation when he hung up on me). I said I wanted to explain to her why that $109 is not owed to them. She said she was too busy to talk to me and also hung up on me.

I called the Better Business Bureau for Livingston, NJ where registerfly is located. They said they have numerous complaints against registerfly and that they will not contact even the BBB to try and resolve issues. They sent me to consumer affairs to turn in a complaint. I am also going to send a letter to their attorney general to let them know of the illegal business activity in their town of Livingston. If anyone is trying to contact registerfly, here is the number and extension they gave me. It might help you get to their rude billing department. Below is the last email I received back from them. They never sign their emails, so you can never deal with the same person.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello

*Your account has been suspended for chargebacks received. You are required to pay all the fees due of $109.90. Please call 973-736-2545 ext 125 for payment information.

Thank You*

Registerfly.com INC
ICANN Accredited Registrar


Other complaints listed on my site at....
http://www.marwencorp.com/registerfly.html

[mjy222]

I contacted the BBB and they sent me to Consumer Affairs for Livingston NJ.

If you have not done it yet, send a complaint form to Consumer Affairs in NJ.

You can either contact them or go to a link on my page for the 2 page form
and print it off.

Your complaint can be mailed to...

Division of Consumer Affairs
PO Box 45025
Newark, New Jersey 07101

complaint form page 1
http://www.marwencorp.com/images/consumer1.gif

complaint form page 2
http://www.marwencorp.com/images/consumer2.gif

My goal is to get back my 5 domains they stole and get their business
shut down. Their little ripoff scheme is costing me several hundred a month.

It looks like one thing they are doing is registering domains or having them
transfered in and if the domains have good traffic they are creating bogus
contract violations to take our domain names, probably to resell down the road.

Also I have talked with their parent company Enon, they seem to be on registerfly.com side.

Thanks
Mark

[jhpservers]

my firend and my personal site use this before but its seems not really good for me , their web site and panel a slow and seems not stable. My firend got even wose experience. his domain all of sudden shutdown and locked for no reason, and keep saying they are abuse, and my firend end up wanna transfer the domain to another domain provider but they locks it and end up take a month to finish the unlock and transfer process.

[sorted]

Wow, I've never heard so many bad reports about a single company in one thread. It really does sound like these guys are out of control. Its a real pity because its bad eggs like this that give the entire hosting sector a bad name.

I'm sorry to hear about so many nightmare experiences, I only hope you have a better time with your new web hosts.

[GamePhreak]

It seems that this isn't the only problem with RegisterFly. Check in another forum about them terminating domains early.

[hysteriaweb]

Sorry to hear that this happened to you, please tell us how things turn out.

[aaronc]

Count me down as another ripped off by Registerfly. Closed my account, hijacked my domain names and pointed them at advertising so they can generate more money.

I have been with them since 2002. Looks like major fraud complaints against them started around mid-2005. I think someone's racking up the money so they can cut loose and leave the country or something. Amazing how no one is doing anything about this company. I have filed a complaint with NJ Consumer Affairs.

My story is at bluestateupdate dot com and they have now stolen several domains from me, and therefore all my regular e-mail has been cut off. Nice, huh?

SOMEONE needs to do something about this!

[Mibble]

Keep your domain names registered with someone reputable, you may pay a bit more for it, however at least you control them. This way you can have your domains hosted at the host of your choice. If you have problems like registerfly, all you have to do is move your sites to a different host, and cancel your hosting. also, use one CC for paying for your hosting. if you have problems, cancel the card and get another one for the hew host usage.