In my morning mail, I got something from the “Domain Registry of Canada.” This is purely a sales letter for a domain that I own. Here’s my problem. The name and the look of the direct mail piece is, in my opinion, misleading. It makes the company look like a government agency or organization.

This company is NOT Canada’s official dot-ca registry. That would be CIRA. This company offers domain name registry through another company, Brandon Gray Internet Services, which operates as NameJuice.

There’s a long history of people calling out this company as a scam. Here’s Mitch Joel’s blog post from 2004, for example.

Also in 2004, a related company was fined $40,000 for similar activities. They were also banned from carrying out similar activities for five years. Didn’t take them long to get up to their old tricks, eh?

To be fair, a careful read of their web site will reveal that they aren’t a government organization.

My advice? If you get a direct-mail piece about domain name expiration, don’t pay it. The 5 years “best value” option they offered me in the direct mail piece cost $160. Godaddy offers .coms for $10.87 per year, meaning DROC would cost me nearly 3 times as much. A one-year registration costs $40, compared to $10.87 from Godaddy.

Ironically enough, you could register through the same company, this time operating as Namejuice, and pay $30 for one year and $95 for five.

Caveat emptor.

2 Responses to “Beware fake domain name registrars”