Well, I already know the answer - It’s a low-margin, highly competitive business where profits are driven almost entirely by upselling. But fuck it, these companies are like the Ryanair of internet infrastructure.  And today I’ve found a new low.

I use 123-reg for my UK domains - they’re about the cheapest and I know my way around their control panel.  Over the eight years that I’ve been with them, they’ve massively geared up their upselling but I’ve been able to handle it.  There was always the whois privacy add-on, the ‘site building’ software, the search engine submissions and the other assorted bollocks that they try to throw into my shopping basket.

Then they started automatically ticking various other TLDs whenever you try to register one.  Look at this example - I want to register a .co.uk for £5.98 but wait a minute, they’ve ticked an extra £77 of domains that I didn’t want.  I’ve got to untick them to roll on.  Ok, annoying but I can live with it.

Hammering a big fucking nail into the coffin

A couple of weeks ago I noticed the sly bastards autorenewed some domains off a credit card they had sneakily stored.  I thought I must have ticked something by mistake.  I removed the credit card and let the renewal slide.  But today I registered a new domain and saw that they’ve saved my payment details yet again WITHOUT ASKING.  So off I go to remove them and… FUCK ME, what’s this?

To stop them from autobilling me, I’ve got to phone them - and pay 10p a minute for the privilege.  Fuck you 123 reg.

There's a better way.

I use NearlyFreeSpeech for registering .com etc domains.  There’s no scamming, no upsell, no bullshit.  I highly recommend them.  Unfortunately they don’t do .uk domains.