I have received an invoice from someone I do not know or have been called by someone who wants to sell me domain services. What do I do?
Unfortunately, there are some disreputable companies and/or individuals in the domain industry. Some use aggressive marketing to make you register domain names that you don't really need, while others are fraudsters send you invoices for services you have never ordered.
The two most common frauds that we hear of:
- Customers might receive a letter or an email, regarding a renewal of some service affiliated with their domain. The sender often seems very professional, and it gives an impression of importance and urgency, making the customer believe it is crucial for the domain to stay operative. If you read carefully, you will notice it is not about renewal of the domain itself, but «search engine registration» or some other service that was never ordered. Keep in mind that for domains where Domainnameshop is a registrar (ie. it states that «the annual fee is paid to: Domainnameshop» in the control panel at https://domainname.shop/login), then it is Domainnameshop that send invoices for domain name renewal. Be skeptical to any other invoices regarding your domain where Domainnameshop is the registrar.
- Another type of fraud we often hear about is domain owners who are called by a person who claims he has received orders for the same domain name that the customer owns, just under another top level domain, for example. .org instead of .no. However, since the domain owner already owns the .no domain, the caller will offer him the purchase of the .org domain as well, instead of selling it to the other customer (which are unlikely to exist). No serious companies operate this way, and both Norid, IIS and other registries warn against this type of domain sales. If you actually want the domain names that you are being called upon by these fraudsters, you can register them on our webpages for a much cheaper price. We have also heard of cases where telephone sellers have pretended to be calling from Domainnameshop and offer domains this way. We want to emphasize that we never call our own customers to sell domains in this way.
Some known domain fraudsters we often hear about:
- Protectia
- Edunovas
- DNS Norway / DNS Denmark
- Spenca
- Domäncentralen
- Regcentralen
- Registreringscentralen
- Swereg
- DomainForum EU
- 24 One
- Bolerino
- Norsk Internett Register
- Nordisk Domänhantering
- Nordic Domain Hosting
- Registreringsbolaget
- RegistreringSelskapet
- Europe Web Agency
- Princita
- Netreg
The problem is, however, that these fraudsters often operate under several different company names, and they change names as the old begins to get known and get a bad reputation. Most of these fraudsters also operate from countries with different laws and regulations when it comes to marketing, compared to Norway. The police and prosecuting authorities do not have the possibility or capacity to investigate minor offenses of this type in these countries.
If you are subjected to this kind of fraud, we recommend that you do not pay anything and send a copy of the invoice in return with a signature that you dispute the invoice and if you are called on the phone, you should clearly say that you do not want to order some services. Serious cases should be reported to «Forbrukerombudet» or the police.
You can read more about these types of frauds here:
support
+47 2294 3333 (open)
