Today I received an email with an attached PDF and the words, “I got this in the mail today, is it something I need to pay?” It was from the head secretary of one of the churches I do the website for. To protect privacy, etc., the domain name and any addresses have been blurred. Here is what was received (click for full size, 800×1035px):

Yup, I’ve talked about these kinds of scams before, here and here, but this one seems a little bit different because it looks to be both domain registration and search engine optimization.

For those who aren’t quite “up” on this, what these guys do is fairly simple. They send out something that looks like a bill and the unawares will often transfer their domain names to these people or buy “optimization” that’s worth less than crap, all without realizing it. But it’s not a bill and you are under no obligation to send them any money whatsoever. In fact, I would recommend you don’t at all. Usually, they charge you many times over the going rate for domain names or services which you can otherwise do yourself. In this case, it looks like six and a half times the going rate, $64 as opposed to what I spend less than $10 on. They get your information from the WHOIS information of your domain. That is why whenever I register a domain name for someone else, I put my PO Box information on it, so they won’t end up with this junk. Unfortunately, these guys grabbed the address of the church before we transferred the domain to my account.

But anyway, these DomainUSA guys…

At the top right we have “Domain Registration Notice” which leads you to believe that you need to renew your domain name, right? But then, read further:

As a courtesy reminder, we are sending you this notification for your business Domain name search engine registration. Don’t delay. It’s time to register and save. Please Note that we have merged with MY Software Corp. Please update your records accordingly.

That might make you feel like you have a prior relationship with this company, especially when they claim to have merged with another company, you might wonder if “DomainUSA” is a new business name. But if that doesn’t get you, they try to scare you. In yellow, you see:

This Registration Notice for: [domain name] will expire on [date] Act today

You are then given an account name and number, shown with your name and address.

Now if the first part wasn’t a red flag for you, this yellow part might be. For us, it listed September 10, 2007 as a deadline. The solicitation was received on September 4, 2007. That might send someone into a frenzy, cause them to skip the rest and hurry up and pay, etc. But, in our case, it’s also entirely wrong. The domain name they are trying to get us to transfer to them, or buy services for, whatever, does not expire until January 23, 2008! That’s another four months and some odd weeks after their “deadline.” This date continues to show up further down the page, I am reminded immediately again, of this “expiration.”

Then comes the “fine print.” They claim that if I do not renew with them by this date, that it will not “guarantee” our “listing on the Web.” In yellow again: “Failure to complete your domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in loss of your domain search engine registration listing making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the Web.”

Liars!!

You have nothing to fear! If you have a site that’s worth anything at all, the building of links between you and other sites will eventually lead to the big search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) picking up on your site all on their own. That’s what they do, they’re search engines! And if good, reputable, sites link to you, it won’t take you very long! So unless you do something to royally piss Google off, you have nothing to worry about. Not to mention that a lot of the big, reputable search engines don’t take submissions anyway!

Moving on. Finally, we have a small paragraph about the domain registration and the fact that this is NOT a bill, but a solicitation for services and that you are under NO obligation to participate.

Then the prices… they make me want to puke. $64 for one year, $119 for two years, or “best value” $169 for three years. You’ll note that the dates are wrong, here, too. Finally they want me to register new domain names from them. The two names they gave me were the existing domain name plus the city name dot com or a domain name that’s the phone number… yeah, ten numeric digits… how lame. And for the low price of $64 each!! Yay.

Okay they tell me, cut it off here and mail it to… DomainUSA; 304 Park Avenue South; 11th Floor; New York, NY 10010; (800) 217-1825. Oh, and does anyone notice that the two year box is already mysteriously checked? Notice something else, they’ve given you a phone number, but no where on the page do they give a website! Theoretically, you’d think they would want people to log on to a website and pay by credit card, right? Yeah, I’d think so. A company without a website, especially a company like this that supposedly deals in websites, is a big red flag for me!!

So, the phone number… I just gave it a call, I think it’s fake; well, not fake, necessarily, but not associated with this “DomainUSA.” I first get “press 1 for English, 2 for Espanol” then “please enter your pin number or *0 for customer service.” There is no pin number, of course. I tried entering in the “account number” on the paper but was told it was an invalid pin number. So I pressed *0 and was asked this time, “press 1 for Espanol, or 2 for English.” What the –? I was then told I have reached IDT and fed some crap about their new and efficient phone service. They then wanted some card number. Tired of this game, I hung up.

Now there is a domainusa.com out there, but it’s currently giving me a “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)” error. Looking at the whois information of that domain, the address is:

Tom Romkey
300 South Pointe Drive
Apt 3906
Miami Beach, FL 33139
US

I think “Tom” might have some explaining to do for himself. However, another WHOIS service gives this information on the same domain:

Spray Interactive Domain AB
Riddargatan 17 A
Stockholm, 114 57 SE

The question is, what to do about these jerks who prey on the ignorance of those who receive the mailings? Nothing I know of right now, since I’ve not sent out any money, short of getting the word out and hoping that as few people as possible will fall for this. Spread the word to those who you think might be taken in by this…