I have known for years that Register.com really sucks, but I had one domain there for a long time and never got around to transferring it to eNom.

The domain expired a few days ago. When i renewed it, these Nazi Al Qaeda child-killing terrorists charged me $35 for one year registration and a $25 "reinstatement fee". If the management or ownership of this company fall in their shower and die, I will be the first to laugh at their misfortune.

Is that reinstatement fee even legal? Is it permitted by ICANN? I want to punch these slimebags in the face.

NEVER USE REGISTER.COM - you know that before, and i am reminding you now

All we learn from our mistakes, well, to tell the poor not to use suppliers.

Yes, restoring an expired domain usually carries a fee. That's pretty standard. I think it is often more expensive than $25, in fact.

$35 per year is a bit ridiculous when most registrars are < $15 per year for a .com. But they are free to charge whatever they want really...

Most registrars I've used don't charge a fee until domain goes into redemption. Register.com are not a domainer's registrar - avoid them like the plague.
Enom and moniker don't charge an extra fee for renewing a domain until 30 days after the expiry date. Don't know about godaddy and others but I expect they don't either.

I suppose now you just need to provide domain names registered through them to approve that you are using them.

In October, I found out that a domain I bought in 2007 as an investment was given away a few months prior because I failed to renew it. I only found out because I was finally ready to move forward with a website and the hosting company said the domain was not owned by me.

Today I found out that a website and domain I have had with them since 2003 also expired 35 days ago and I no longer own the domain. Again, they blame it on me for not responding to their renewal email that I never got. I assume it went to a spam filter because they used to send me spam all the time and I likely blocked them years ago. The underlying cause was that my bank merged with another and my checking account debit card changed. The auto-renewal payment failed, and instead of calling me (I confirmed they have the right cell phone on file for me) they expired my domain, killed my 7-year old website that generates almost 100K in sales revenue a year, and are not doing anything to help me get it back! In fact, they had the balls to tell me I could bid on it (starting at $200 min) to try and get it back, assuming it is not already gone.

If anyone reading this is planning a lawsuit, count me in. I am sure they have fine print in the Service Agreement they have online that protects them, but if enough of us file suit, we may be able to win based on unfair business practices.

NEVER AGAIN will I trust Register.com for any of my domains, websites, etc.

Thanks for your feedbacks mate, good luck with enom

This has happened to me twice: Domain is set for auto-renew. Credit card supposedly has a problem. Auto-renew fails. Domain immediately goes into locked status. $50 penalty to renew, plus the $35 annual fee. No warning, no courtesy call. After a long customer service screaming match about how ridiculous this policy is to have no warning on a failed renewal on a card that has NO problem (I called my bank and they didn't even show any attempted transaction,) before a $50 penalty is exacted, and about what exactly i get for the extra $25 per year i pay them over godaddy.com's and practically everybody else's fees, Register.com graciously agrees to reduce the penalty to "only" $25.

The first time this happened I said eff off and waited 59 days until the domain was open for renewal again. Second time it happened, Register.com registered my domain themselves for an additional year, apparently in attempt to sell it for even more money.

Now tell why, with such huge financial incentive, they wouldn't just make up this "refused card charge" scam, to take over valuable domain names for resale? Nobody polices these guys. They can screw us all they want.