I had all but forgotten an incident involving the DomainsByProxy.com service provided by GoDaddy.com until I read a post about a bad GoDaddy’s experience at SapientSoft.com that reminded me of my own…

A few years ago I ran a site and, for personal reasons, wanted the WHOIS information to remain private. Since I had registered the domain name through GoDaddy.com, I decided to take advantage of their DomainsByProxy.com service for $10/year. The sole purpose of their service is to act as an intermediary, while keeping your contact information private, all for a yearly fee. Please keep in mind that I don’t have any issues with GoDaddy’s registration services and use it regularly. Actually, I do get annoyed by their overzealous upselling, but that’s another issue entirely.

So, I had my domain registered, my info private, site up and running and one day I get an email from DomainsByProxy.com stating that they charged me $20 for a baseless inquiry made into the aforementioned domain. There was nothing in the terms that I agreed to that applied to this charge, and the charge was not authorized by me. When I emailed DomainsByProxy.com, most of my attempts were ignored.

A domain proxy service exists for the sole intention of acting as an intermediary and for keeping customers’ information private. With DomainsByProxy.com, if someone wanted to contact a domain owner they would send an email to something like “yourdomain@domainsbyproxy.com.” The email would then be forwarded to the domain owner. If the domain owner fails to take action, the proxy service may be legally bound to release the contact information in some cases.

Anything that transpired in this case goes against our agreement and the whole reasoning behind a proxy service. They clearly state (see below) that there may be fees for anything beyond email correspondence, which there was not. The question of what is “reasonable” is nullified by the fact that this was within the scope of its regular services and/or all correspondence was handled over email.

DBP reserves the right to charge a reasonable service fee for administrative tasks outside the scope of its regular services. These include, but are not limited to, customer service issues that cannot be handled over email but require personal service, and disputes that require legal services….

I retained a copy of the Domain Name Proxy Agreement and nowhere does it contain a “20″ or “twenty” dollar fee. However, the following is from their FAQ:

What are Domains By Proxy’s shipping and handling fees?
When Domains By Proxy receives certified or traceable courier mail or legal notices addressed to your domain that requires forwarding, we post an e-mail message to your Domains By Proxy account under the “My Messages” page. The message identifies the sender of the correspondence, the date we received it and a brief description of its contents. You have 72 hours to decide whether you wish to reject the correspondence or have it forwarded via overnight courier or facsimile (or both).

- If you choose to have the correspondence faxed, the charge is $1.50 per page plus a handling fee of $20.00.

- If you choose to have the correspondence sent via overnight courier, the charge is the courier’s cost (typically Federal Express standard overnight) plus a handling fee of $20.00.

After finding this, I logged into my DomainsByProxy.com account and there was nothing under “My Messages” and I never asked for anything to be delivered via overnight courier. Additionally, I never received anything via UPS, FedEx, or any other courier service. There was only an email correspondence, which is excluded from any additional fees and falls within their scope of business.

As for the unauthorized credit card charge, let me explain it simply – I did not authorize the use of the credit card for this charge. There was no invoice or bill. The credit card was to be used once, but GoDaddy.com retained the information in their system and out of all the options available, used that one. All credit card information has since been removed, as far as I can tell. Aside from that purchase, I primarily use PayPal for domain purchases.

When this was all said and done, I was out $20 and DomainsByProxy.com lost a customer. I cancelled the service on three domains ($30/year) and spread the word. And, now that I have another outlet, I’m spreading it some more… As for the legal issue, there wasn’t one. The claim was baseless and I went on with my business, never hearing about this again. I later decided to let the domain name and web site go, which I now regret, because I was getting inundated with spam and had too many things on my plate at the time, not that I have any less now.

The moral of the story:

DomainsByProxy.com is a useless and costly service that is not intended to protect its users whatsoever. You are much better off using a post office box, or some other unidentifiable information to register your domain names, if you need the privacy.