A few months ago I was alerted by Bob Parsons that Yahoo! Domains was raising their prices for domain renewals from something like ten bucks to $34.95 per year, which of course is a ridiculous price for a domain registration. I had one domain registered there which I quickly transferred to Go Daddy without a hitch.

End of story, right?

Uh, wrong. A couple months later I notice my credit card was charged $34.95 from Yahoo! I wonder how many people got billed for one domain and did not realize it? I know that the “relatively” small $34.95 nearly got past my radar. I emailed the Yahoo! Small Business billing department, and the next day I got a canned response saying that they could not talk about billing via email. Sigh. So today I called the 800 number, which was answered after a few minutes, however, I had to be transferred to another department, which immediately announced “Your estimated wait time is 30 minutes!” Great. They bill you for nonexistent services then make it extremely difficult to get the charge reversed. So I left it on speakerphone. After 35 minutes, I finally got a human and was told that I hadn’t cancelled my service, even though I transferred the domain out of Yahoo!

You have to cancel the service, even if you transfer the domain away from Yahoo! Yahoo! does not check every domain out there.

Yes, that’s a real quote. Really. What a load of crap. It’s their business to know how many domains are under their care and therefore billable. You can’t bill someone for services which you do not render. That’s called, uh huh, wait for it… yeah, fraud.

I should have just done a chargeback with my bank so that Yahoo! would take a hit for it, as they deserve. If you’ve ever had a domain with Yahoo!, I encourage you to check  your credit card statement. And if you haven’t already, make sure you transfer your domains to Go Daddy or Moniker… Just don’t forget to “cancel” your nonexistent Yahoo! service afterwards.