It finally happened today -- after two years of clients calling confused because they got renewal notices from Domain Registry of America even though they thought their domain had already been paid for through me through EV1 (which it had been) a client today who recieved the Domain Registry of America "renewal invoice" in the mail finally fell for the Domain Registry of America fraud and sent them a check, thinking that it was a renewal notice for their domain

The domain is locked luckily, as I would be fearful to allow a domain to slip into the hands of these fraud-spammers Domain Registry of America, but I'm wondering about getting their $25 back.

Any advice?

My first email sent to them is as follows:



Should I file a complaint with ICANN? Any advice on how to proceed with such a complaint?

They are know scammers !

domain registry of Canada
"" America
etc...

They have been tagged by the RCMP in canada, couple time in court then still in bizz...

Put a wrong postal code or omit 1 caracter(s) here & here on any registration to avoid this.... This make sending someting via ground post undoable..

IMHO you should immediately file a complaint with ICANN, the forms are on there website(somewhere).
Using a bogus name or address on a domain registration is also against the ICANN rules. Not likely to ever be verified, but if a complaint is lodged on that domain, and they cant contact the owner, most likely it will be revoked.

This situation is know from long time, icann never do someting for that
take a look ; http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=domai...G=Google+Search

they continu to rip ppl all around the world...

Including Australia!

Unfortunately, the only way to deal with a problem like this is with a personal visit to their corporate offices, assuming they have any.

I receive numerous letters from this sleezy bogus company every week, as do my clients. It's time somebody nailed them good for false representation and intentionally misleading advertising. Perhaps also contact the USPS.

It's probably a prison cell somewhere, or if not, it should be!

The hard part is actually submitting all the forms needed to ICANN to actually lodge a complaint. Almost more trouble than its worth for $25.
What should really happen, a tech savvy lawyer should start a class action lawsuit against them.
If it truely is a US company, the USPS could get em for mail fraud.

I agree, and the only reason they've survived this long is that it's not worth the hassle to an individual and they know it.

Thank you everyone for your feedback so far. I just hate the feeling of having one of my clients ripped off by these people.

I never thought I would hear myself say this, but a class action lawsuit against the Domain Registry of America would be a very good idea. Being ripped off for $25 through someone trying to "pay the bills" and do a good job is annoying, but hardly worth the trouble of a lawsuit just to recover $25. But a class action suit would definitely be worthwhile to both recover all the thousands of $25 rip-offs; even if most of the money went to the legal pursuit, it would be worth it to put the evil people at Domain Registry of America out of business once and for all.

As a start I also put in a complaint at
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/registrars...blem-report.cgi

It says that ICANN will take no specific action, but that they will file the complaints to watch for trends. Maybe if enough of us start filing ICANN complaints by the time they get a few hundred or a few thousand more complaints against the Domain Registry of America ICANN will finally yank their ability to commit this fraud. I'm sure that ICANN doesn't condone this decrepit and having your money stolen by a conman registrar like DROA reflects badly on the whole system, but how to get them to take time to look at it and take action is another question.

Great idea. I just registered a complaint too. Ironically, I got 3 letters from DRA today.

I would go to both ICANN and the federal US governement mail fraud division. Mail fraud is a federal crime. This is what wikipedia came up with http://www.whois.sc/news/2002-12/registry-america.html

To be honest, ICANN will almost certainly be a complete waste of time. They were less than worthless back in the days of Totalnic, the domain registrar that refused to allow domains to be transferred out. I say less than worthless because people were wasting their time on the ICANN forums and writing letters to ICANN officials, rather than publicizing the information across the net and banding together for a class-action suit.

This is disappointing to hear. Since ICANN are the ones who set the rules (e.g. the 55 emails we get each year stating that our whois information has to be accurate or we risk losing our domains) they should not allow one of their registrars to use this whois information as the basis of mail fraud.

Does the root server infastructure really cost all of the ~$6 x how many million domains the registrars pay? Is there no money left to investigate registrar complaints? If nothing is done in 6 months and the "fake invoices" continue to role in, where and to whom would one file a complaint about ICANN's lack of action?

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to that. ICANN has withstood heavy criticism for some time. Here is a recent article talking about what entities actually govern the Internet now and into the future:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27803

I just post their envelopes back to them empty and without a stamp.