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Ask HN: Namecheap jacked up the price on a domain name, can you explain?

35 points by n42 ↗ HN
Namecheap just quoted me $24 for registration of a domain name, multiple times. After attempting to add it to my cart, each time, it failed to add to cart. Now when I search for the domain, it quotes me $1.5k.

I've never had this happen before with Namecheap. What gives? I'm trying to assume the best. What is an explanation here that is not malicious intent?

39 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] thread
xsc
What tld? It’s likely premium but they don’t get that info back until they call into the registry. Comparing prices between registrars is good practice as well.
n42
the TLD was "ID"; this was my guess but I was surprised they would quote me anything without checking the registry first
groffee
Not saying this is what happened but if you search for a domain multiple times, then sometimes the service you're using will register it instead of you, then try to sell it to you at a jacked up price.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

quickthrower2
It would be fun to spam domain searches to cause them to register a bunch of shitty domains they can’t sell.
koolba
That doesn’t work because they don’t pay anything. They get to “taste” ownership of the domain for free.
quickthrower2
Ok, at least there must be limits, so it would act as a diluter and possibly make it uneconomic.
api
GoDaddy was once notorious for this. Don’t know if they still are.
simplotek
GoDaddy to me is synonym for actively sabotaging their customer's interests.
PedroBatista
Oh yeah, and you don't need to search it many times. Do the window shopping a couple times and "someone" will get the domain right away.
tennisflyi
I always search for my desired domain with the .wtf TLD and then browse to see if .media/.io/.dev is available.
egberts1
This is an excellent anti-pattern strategy to adopt when searching for a new but premium domain.

No sense tripping up all the gTLD and registars’ mousetraps of shady jacked-up pricing scheme.

KomoD
Sounds like it's a premium domain or it's being sold through their marketplace
tyingq
Not saying they are doing this, but what you're describing used to happen with shady registrars. It was called "domain tasting"[1] where there was a loophole path for registrars to squat a domain for a short period of time. That allowed them to dynamically sense interest in a domain, squat it, and mark up the price.

I'd be very surprised if a big name like Namecheap were doing that today though. Probably just a coincidence that someone else bought it while you were deciding.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting

roundandround
> I'd be very surprised if a big name like Namecheap were doing that today though.

The risks with getting caught doing that intentionally are very high, but preventing any employee with access to lookup information, email addresses, etc, from selling it has been a very hard problem that most large names have admitted to failing at a few times.

joshxyz
Namecheap is now a shit company to do business with.

Also had the same experience, I even complained to their customer support about it. The cheap price is already in my cart then when i try to pay it, it doesnt proceed.

Keep in mind this happened to me already over the course of many years, just as what other users have experienced.

not_your_mentat
Who do you use as a registrar and why did you choose them?
jszymborski
If I had to guess, I'd probably say the XHR call that tells them when a domain is a premium domain wasn't resolving. Also kinda helps explain it not being in your cart.
corobo
Sounds like a premium domain that they didn't know was premium until they checked the price for real rather than it being the standard tld price, at which time it cached and started showing the real price

Guessing you tried to register a dictionary word on one of the new tlds?

Been got by it too "Ah. That would be why this gem of a domain was still available"

tmikaeld
I don't think this is malicious, registrars often have to use third party top domains like for example .tech which reserves common words as premium domains, but you are unable to see the price until you make a request for buying it. So in this case, Namecheap would show the default price, but when it tries to process it, they would receive the premium domain price - thus, since it's no long matching the cart price, they have to update it to reflect the actual price.

I'm sure they could do this more informatively though, but they're not alone in not doing that..

satoshiiii
When I asked why NameCHEAP still used their name, despite no longer being cheap, I was downvoted. It seemed as if I was implying that I could buy apples from Apple. Ironically, some people have been referring to OpenAI as ClosedAI lately.

BTW, I am a Namecheap customer for 20 years now :D

hombre_fatal
Well, those people are right. Burger King isn’t a monarch either. It’s a boring complaint, and people are trying to a disabuse you of the idea that it’s not.
satoshiiii
Yeah but there is NameSilo selling cheaper domain names, almost half the price.
zhte415
When did Burger King start selling domain names, and does NameSilo handle trademarks?
simplotek
> It’s a boring complaint

I disagree. If a company portrays itself explicitly or implicitly as offering low prices them it's more than fair when they jack up prices.

Namecheap's own description is "Buy cheap domain names and enjoy 24/7 support."

I do not understand why people feel the need to play the role of a corporate white knight and do their best to shield them from any criticism.

hombre_fatal
It's a response to people sperging out over silly things which isn't more acceptable just because it's a tech forum.

FWIW, "quit whiteknighting for the megacorps", when someone rejects a comment that happens to slight a corporation, is just as tired as their complaint no matter how effective "down with teh corporations!1" is on social media.

That makes as much sense as accusing someone of whiteknighting just because they happen to defend a female politician or whoever.

simplotek
I don't appreciate your veiled attempt to conflate accusing a company of false advertising as being a kin to mysiginy and sexism.

Namecheap advertises cheap domains when, as covered in this discussion, it jacks up prices. This is impossible to defend even by the staunchest corporate shill.

trippingrobot
It wasn’t veiled, and it was accurate. This whole thread is boring, which was the point.
furyofantares
Fair? Sure. Interesting? Not even slightly.
simplotek
> Fair? Sure. Interesting? Not even slightly.

Anyone can opt to go off tangents playing semantics games. Meanwhile, if a company portrays itself as selling cheap products and services and then charges a hefty premium in exchange for nothing, they deserve being called out on what amounts to false advertising.

furyofantares
The first thing in the HN guidelines is this:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

GP suggested the complaint about nameCHEAP wasn't well received because it's boring, not because it's wrong or unfair. It's not a semantic game I'm playing, I agree that the reason the complaint wouldn't be well received is because it is boring/not interesting.

Downvotes may not mean "this company doesn't deserve to be called out." They may mean "I didn't come here to wade through boring content."

throwaway675309
Yes and every time a GPT post comes up inevitably somebody points out the amazingly unique argument that open AI is in no way open. No sh##, and it's as tired now as it was when it was first pointed out.

It's about as interesting as the armchair philosophy 101 HN comment that humans are also nothing more than statistical token prediction machines.

MagicMoonlight
They don’t check whether it is available until the last second. They take it even further than this too, they’ll literally charge your card for a domain they haven’t even checked is available. Then they refund you after. It’s ridiculous.
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mattbgates
I saw a premium domain listed for sale at $60 and went to grab it.. and when I tried to add it, it wouldn't let me. I emailed them and they said it was already taken. So why advertise a domain that is already taken? Definitely annoying.
not_your_mentat
I stopped using GoDaddy because it seemed like they would squat the domains I'd search for, find, not buy immediately, and then come back to buy a day or two later. Maybe there's some innocent explanation of the behavior, but as a consumer the experience sure felt malicious. I wound up switching to NameCheap after that.

It would be such a bummer if my brain wasn't just finding patterns that didn't really exist in the noise of consumerism and NameCheap started taking on dark patterns like this. Vetting and switching registrars is a headache.

AntLoveSoda
FWIW, I had TERRIBLE experience with Namecheap. Somehow, they managed to mangle the email address attached to my account, and went into a "prove my identity" situation. Yet I couldn't, since the email on file isn't what I used (pro tip: yes, it was).

After a run around with support, I switched to another provider. What's silly is the domains were for my own use only (some VPS servers). I frankly would never recommend Namecheap. Despite their popularity, they're terrible in my experience.

Jarzis_Hossain
I want a free sub-domain name. Can anyone help me? pls
not_your_mentat
Buy a domain, add CNAME records to your heart's delight. :D