Posted by paige_d 2 days ago
Ask HN: Namecheap charged my card, didn't deliver, then upped the price
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.
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.
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 sellsPerhaps 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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...
And then there's the fact that the poster is using a 1 hour old HN account with zero history to establish their credibility.
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.