I just got notice from one of our clients that they had mistakenly thought that Domain Registry of America was sending them a bill for their domain renewal.  They paid them 4 times what they should to renew their domain, and DROA is not even the current registrar.  DROA sends a statement that looks like a bill and tells you that your domain is going to expire.

Not only do you lose a lot of money, these domains are not transferred easily.  The domain needs to be “unlocked” and an authorization code provided.  If you are with Super Cool Sites your domain will renew automatically.  We will bill you once per year for the domain renewal.  The cost is $9.99. 

I took the following definition from Wikipedia for “Domain Registry of America”:

The Domain Registry of America is an Internet domain registrar based in the Canadian province of Ontario best known for sending solicitations for business that resemble legitimate invoices.

In 2003, the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with the company for practices such as transferring domain registrations to their service under the guise of domain renewal, a practice known as domain slamming, and having hidden fees. Despite this action, the company still sends mass direct mail to consumers resembling invoices with “domain name expiration notice” in bold print. Targets for the company’s mass mailings are known to be in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States with information obtained in violation of their ICANN registrar agreement.

They have also now (Aug 2009) started emailing potential customers with an email scam, purporting to indicate that the transfer of a domain is ‘not complete at this time’, and requesting the domain owner follows a series of steps to complete the transfer to DRoA. These are highly misleading emails.