I bought the domain name linkmeister.com back in May of 2002. Through Dotster I’ve renewed it automatically every year since. It’s never lapsed, never even been close to lapsing.
Nonetheless, once or twice a year I get a letter from some outfit calling itself Domain Registry of America trying to get me to switch to their “service,” which as far as I can tell is nothing more than sending me out reminder notices that the domain will expire. For that “service” they will charge me $30 a year or $50 for two years. Not bad, except that Dotster charges me $15.95 annually.
They’re pretty clear now that it would be a switch; as I recall, in earlier year’s letters the implication was that they were already the registrar of record for linkmeister.com, which was untrue.
I really wonder how many people they manage to dupe into switching.
I get ’em too, for karenivy.net, and I just ignore them. Doesn’t cost me a penny to recycle their letter.
I think that’s their plan. I get them too. I get “renewal notices” on magazines too, from places other than the actual publisher. The price is always higher than I’m paying.