Ask HN: Namecheap charged my card, didn't deliver, then upped the price
Buyer beware if you're looking to purchase a domain on Namecheap.
I've been eyeing a .co domain for a while, but it was pretty pricey at $3900. I thought it over for a while, decided I wanted to go through with the purchase.
To my luck, I see that Namecheap is having a 'birthday sale' and the price has been marked down to $31. I was ready at that point to buy it for $3900, but hell yeah, I'll definitely take it for $31. I click the 'Buy Now' button, my credit card is charged, and I even see the domain in my account. I'm unable to manage/setup the domain, but that's ok, I didn't need it right away.
Eleven days later after my purchase, I get an email from Namecheap support saying the $31 price was a mistake and the actual price is $3900. Ugh. This is annoying, but again, I really wanted the domain so I agreed to pay the $3900. The support agent asks if I'm ready to proceed with the purchase and I say yes.
I don't hear back for three days. When I do, the support agent tells me the $3900 price is invalid and the new, 'actual price' is $8000.
Mind you, this entire time, I can see the domain name in my account and my credit card had been charged the $31.
Apparently, this domain was owned by a seller who listed the domain under Namecheap's 'Buy Now' tool, which according to NameCheap, is only intended for fixed price, non-auction sales. How is it fair then that I'm being forced into an extortionary negotiation post-sale, after I've already paid money, the transaction has been posted in my bank account, and the seller has been made aware of my interest? Because the domain was listed as a fixed price 'Buy Now' and not an auction, I expected to be able to make a straightforward purchase and receive the domain I paid for. Instead, I've been forced into haggling with a seller that I now have no leverage with because Namecheap revealed my interest and intent to buy and is then allowing the seller to try to negotiate with me retroactively.
Does Namecheap have no responsibility to facilitate a fair, transparent transaction? It's like calling an Uber, agreeing on the price, and then having the driver increase the fare by 200x while you're already in the back of the car.
I've been a loyal customer of Namecheap for years. I always thought they were the good guys of the domain world. To say I'm utterly disappointed is an understatement and I'd advise anyone buying a domain, especially a premium one, to reconsider using Namecheap.
GoDaddy also never gave me the domain I tried to buy. What is legally bonding them over delivering their promises ? What can we do ?
It’s worse than this because they are just parking virtually domain names and all they have to do to know if the demand is here (before jacking up the price) is to fake such sells> Apparently, this domain was owned by a seller who listed the domain under Namecheap's 'Buy Now' tool, which according to NameCheap, is only intended for fixed price, non-auction sales.
Perhaps I am an asshole, but seems like they sold their domain for $31, you bought it for $31 and that's that. Good on you to offer $3900 but for $8000 I would pay some lawyer to put them on notice.
Sadly this is all too familiar in the world of specialist TLDs. I had it with a fairly short word domain name. The registrar cancelled my order, even though it was listed in their system at a specific price that I paid. I just don't think they check the data of what they're listing and instead choose to just cancel any orders that they can't fulfill.
The seller should be banned under the Namecheap TOS. Furthermore, Namecheap should offer this buyer assistance and credit towards a future purchase of a domain as a good will gesture.
Your level-headed and reasonable position clearly indicates you are not Namecheap management material.
Don't businesses need to honor prices that they advertise, unless there is some clear indicator that it is a mistake? (Speaking about American businesses and American consumer protection laws here)
That's too bad; I'm a fan of Namecheap as well. This sounds like a breakdown in process. I hope you at least get your $31 back, even if you aren't able to buy the domain for that amount.
Pricing mistakes do happen, and Namecheap as an intermediary here (instead of being the actual seller of the domain) is in a hard place to honor that mistake.
Mistakes happen, but the process is facilitated by Namecheap and it's their name on the banner.
It would cost them relatively nothing to honor the $31 price and eat the loss, or at least the $3,900 price. If the domain holder is the one jerking them around they should be banned from using Namecheap to sell any other domains unless they honor their original listed price.
Namecheap has unfortunately decided to start screwing people and relying on inertia to keep bilking them.
There was a post on here last year or so about how they blamed ICANN for a fee increase, but it turned out that Namecheap was just jacking people for most of it. An alleged rep joined the thread and tried to excuse it by pointing people to an alternate "budget" service that they launched... but of course (IIRC) doesn't allow you to move your domains to directly.
You need to escalate this to the support tier where people are allowed to use their brains. Possibly writing to their legal department would do the trick?
Hm, interesting idea to consider. I definitely don't want to come off as litigious. I have no interest in threatening anyone, I just want this all to be resolved and to get my domain name.
To quote patio11's "Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You":
> You want to communicate with the bank in a manner which suggests that you’re an organized professional who is capable of escalating the matter if the bank does not handle it themselves. [...] Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department.
This post made it to the front page, but it looks like it's been removed and isn't being shown. Would anyone happen to know why that is? Assuming it's because I created a new account to post this, but I'd hope that my post wouldn't be completely deranked just because of that?
Controversial posts are automatically downranked, where controversial means lots of upvote/downvote wars over comments on the post.
If people disagree with each other about your topic, that increases the odds people behave badly when discussing it. HN's algorithm is designed to encourage good discussions, so the post drops in rank.
Huh. Interesting. Thank you - I didn't know that. I can no longer find this post at all unless I go through my profile, so I figured it was manually removed/downranked.
Looking through the comments I don't see anything that strikes me as terribly controversial, so now I'm curious about what's being detected...
What did their customer service tell you when you contacted them? Edit: after the experience told here.
It's in the comment
Before a post like this, I would like to see that the poster has first made their complaint to the company and offered them a chance to make it right. I don't see that here.
And then there's the fact that the poster is using a 1 hour old HN account with zero history to establish their credibility.
It's a reasonable question. I've been on HN since 2019, but can't remember my old password and I guess I never added an email so I'm unable to recover the account.
To answer your original question: not much. They've claimed that the $31 price I paid was a 'glitch.' They said that while they understood it's frustrating, they won't do anything to remedy the situation besides refund me my $31. They said their refund process takes ten business days. It's been well over that and no refund in sight. But to be honest, I'd much rather get access to the domain I bought than a refund.
Their most recent message to me was asking if I want to proceed with buying the domain at the new $8000 price. Since I guess I have unwittingly been forced into a negotiation even though I used 'Buy Now' and the original funds I paid have already left my bank account, I don't have any faith that Namecheap won't allow the seller to continue to ratchet up the price.
get with your state attorney generals office, this is bait and switch and it is highly illegal.
I've been a customer there for years, too. Any suggested alternatives?
Ask for a cash refund. They will probably refund. Initiate a chargeback if that doesn't work. Take the emotion and distain out of it. The world is enshittified!
If you are up for a fight see this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41949905
And thanks for the warning!
I had to switch from namecheap to porkbun when they decided to get all political. Vote with your wallet.
You bought a domain where the price ($31) was listed in error. As the $3900 charge never went through there was never a purchase at that price.
It's not clear what happened, but Namecheap does not owe you anything and there are a plethora of court cases to back them up on that.
Nowhere in my post was I trying to make any sort of legal argument.
I purchased the domain at $31. They claimed this was a glitch and refused to honor the price they charged me. They then said the 'real price' was $3900. Once I agreed to pay this, the price then magically ratcheted up to $8000. At no point was I ever made aware that I was involved in any sort of negotiation. I bought the domain as a 'Buy now' and in my documented conversations with the support agent, they said I could proceed with purchasing it at $3900. Not once was I ever informed that I was now involved in an auction-style negotiation where my agreement to pay the $3900 was going to be viewed as merely a bid vs an agreed upon price.
Do you think the seller would have jacked the price up to $8000 had Namecheap not revealed my interest and intent in buying? Absolutely not. Now I have no leverage or negotiating power since Namecheap revealed my hand to the seller.
If it weren't for the alleged glitch, I could've just bought the $3900 domain as-is and I'm pretty sure it'd be active in my account right now vs the situation I'm now embroiled in.
Legality aside, Namecheap really screwed me over.
As far as Namecheap not owing me anything: really? They, at the bare minimum, owe me a refund of the $31 I paid two weeks ago for the domain they still haven't delivered to me.
Legality aside, Namecheap really screwed me over.
Namecheap did not screw you over. Namecheap is just the middleman. They can't compel the seller to sell you the domain at the clearly erroneous price of $31. You tried to take advantage of a mistake in price and it didn't work out, and now you're trying to use HN to pressure Namecheap into honoring something that was clearly a mistake.
I purchased the domain at $31.
This is false. You made an offer to purchase a domain for $31 that had been listed before, and after, for over 100x that price. And clearly, the mistake was that the seller did not intend to list it on the Buy Now portion of NameCheap's domain marketplace for $31 when it was previously listed for $3900 (and for more after the mistake). The reason I bring up the courts in my earlier comment is that legally, NameCheap is not compelled to honor the $31 mistake price, nor is the actual seller of the domain. Nor are they morally obligated to honor the mistaken price.
Do you think the seller would have jacked the price up to $8000 had Namecheap not revealed my interest and intent in buying?
No, you tipped your extreme interest in buying the domain when you said you were still interested in buying it despite the 125x increase in price. This told the seller that you were price-insensitive and that they could raise the price substantially without affecting your interest. That's on you.
I used some history tools to figure out the domain that you were interested in and it's not worth it. Seriously. There are better domains for you out there for less. Don't get emotionally invested in the "perfect" domain name. Remember that Facebook was originally "thefacebook.com" and that didn't stop it.
They, at the bare minimum, owe me a refund of the $31 I paid two weeks ago for the domain they still haven't delivered to me.
No, the $31 refund is the only thing they owe you.
You seem like you are supportive of bad faith sales which surprises me.
The $31 is silly and everyone agrees it should be refunded. After that, OP tried to buy something listed for sale at a price and the company he tried to buy it from couldn't/didn't honor their quoted price and caused the price to go up more than double.
You've been clear that you don't think they have any _obligation_ to the OP. Do you think good faith negotiation is not a worthwhile thing in general or is there something specific about this scenario I'm missing? Is this a pedantic fight about the meaning of "owe"?
You're voluntarily talking past their point to lick boots and win an argument around a domain of knowledge that im sure you feel very confident in. The $31 'buy now' issue is a secondary point to the story that demonstrates some of namecheaps incompetence and sets up the situation for the main issue. I dont know why you're reading the rest of their story this way, but it reads that they were more than happy to continue the sale at the original price and didn't expect a finalized transaction at $31.
The main issue is misrepresenting errors on their side as legitimate transactions to communicate to the seller, which works exclusively to their advantage instead of acting as a neutral broker.
There should have never been any financial insight on the sellers side that they were willing to make a 125x markup because that misrepresents the reality of the situation: they were always willing to pay around the original listed price and saw the discounted moment as a suitable moment to act. In spite of this discount being their mistake, the poster still wanted to purchase at the original price. This then allowed them to misjudge the motivation of the customer and poison the sale by renegotiating to a higher price because of this perception, which they were never interested in doing. This also puts them in a strategically worse spot since some of their cards are now on the table.
That’s very disappointing and Namecheap should investigate and take legal action against this seller if there was fraudulent activity. If there isn’t a consequence there isn’t a point to their website.
Yeah, don't buy that one
Don't buy that one what? Don't buy the domain name? Or you don't buy my experience?
Don't buy .co. It's made for people who like to be extortioned, if not in the first year, then in the second. Buy something vanilla or value. It's just a name. Never overpay for any name.