yahoo

Yahoo! Domains recently hiked their domain name renewal prices to $34.95. I had one domain name with them. And once I got the renewal notice email with the increased price, I decided to transfer my domain name to GoDaddy, my regular registrar. Domain name renewals currently cost $9.99 at GoDaddy. Yahoo! Domains sent me the renewal email notice 1 month in advance and I was able to transfer the domain in about 3 days without any issues.
Here is what happened next. A couple of days back (11/24), Yahoo! Domains charged me $34.95 for domain renewal fees even though I had already transferred my domain name on 10/29. So, they basically charged me for a service that they were not providing!
So, I tried to email customer service through their website and it turns out that I need to call them instead. In case anybody needs to call them in the future with this same issue, the number for Small Business Domains is 1-800-318-0870. Make sure you have your domain name, Yahoo! username, date of birth, credit card number handy, since they will use it for verification. Anyways, the customer service representative was pretty nice and she promptly cancelled my account and refunded the $34.95 charge. It turns out that Yahoo! would still charge me for the domain name renewal even after I had transferred it, if I did not proactively cancel the account.
Bottom line – don’t forget to cancel your Yahoo! Domains account even though you have already transferred your domain name to another registrar!
The question remains – why did Yahoo! hike its Domain name fees? The general opinion going around is that, with Yahoo! not doing very well these days, they are planning to get out of the domain name business. In fact, Yahoo! itself is not a domain name registrar. Their domain names are managed by Melbourne IT, which I believe also manages domains for Microsoft Office Live.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Be safe and eat well 🙂
Related Links:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/27/yahoo-hikes-domains.html
http://www.godaddy.com/
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/
http://www.melbourneit.com.au/