Plusnet Domain Hosting for Business Users

I would just like to make users of Plusnet Business aware that if you register a domain name with them you will be ripped off.

After discovering that our boss had unknowingly renewed our domain name for 2 years at a cost 1000 times greater than the wholesale price. See this link for the invoice: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/ripoff.png/ I decided to call them up and have a chat about it.

I put it to them that as a "good, honest" (broadband provider) their customers might also assume that the rest of their business is also good and honest. The guy at the other end of the phone told me I should ask my boss why he renewed if we aren't happy with the price, fair enough I said I will but what about all the other business customers who don't know a thing about domain hosting and are putting their trust in a "good, honest" (broadband) company. He basically said hard cheese, its not our core service, we put the prices out there and its up to the customer, we don't force them, again I said fair enough but that's not very good and honest is it, I didn't get an answer.

Just wanted all you prospective plus net customers to think twice about using them.

Here you can see an email from Steve basically telling me to ask my boss why he has renewed with plus net. So I went and asked him, and he said he has always thought he was getting a good honest service from them and until I came along had no reason to think he would be getting ripped off by such a good honest company like plusnet.

Dear User,
As discussed the renewal costs can be found below.
http://www.plus.net/support/hosting/domains/cost.shtml

If your manager has made this decision to register/renew and host their domain with ourselves and you are unhappy with this decision I can only recommend you raise this with him and make alternative arrangements if he agrees with you.

If you need to speak to someone, call our Business Support team on 0114 296 5182 between 8am-8pm Monday to Saturday (calls outside of these hours will divert to Residential Support) or contact us online via the Help Assistant - http://help.plus.net/

Kind regards,

Steve Lockley

I would say they have been very fair and honest. Very expensive but it's not as if they hid it.

By the way, I have a lovely new widget that I'm sure your boss would be interested in. Get him to send me a cheque for £50 and I will send it over.

If your boss is a business person then I am sure he/she is used to shopping around for services and I'm afraid it shows a grand level of naivety to take whatever price a company offers for a renewal - any business boss should know to check prices before buying something.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I would say they have been very fair and honest. Very expensive but it's not as if they hid it.

By the way, I have a lovely new widget that I'm sure your boss would be interested in. Get him to send me a cheque for £50 and I will send it over.

If your boss is a business person then I am sure he/she is used to shopping around for services and I'm afraid it shows a grand level of naivety to take whatever price a company offers for a renewal - any business boss should know to check prices before buying something.

You got the same mindset as plusnet.

I feel sorry for any other customer that has to find this out the hard way.

I have the same mindset as most. It takes 30 seconds to find out how much domain registration costs - plusnet are obviously very expensive for it but they have been completely transparent over their charging. Nobody in their right mind would pay that for a domain registration - I would say if it isn't their core business then they should stop providing it if that is their price, but the onus to get a good price is entirely down to your boss.

Any boss that believes "good and honest" of any company is naive and likely to go bust.

After discovering that our boss had unknowingly renewed our domain name for 2 years

As a matter of interest why didn't he consult the renewal with you or anyone else in the first place?

Whilst agreeing that is a very high price, where do you get the "a cost 1000 times greater than the wholesale price" from?

That would put the wholesale cost at 26p per year, including Vat, and the company you quote as charging a mere 118 times the wholesale cost.

Do you perhaps mean 1000%, ie 10 times "typical price"?

It's only £50. Minimum wholesale price is c. £5 - £6 per year. So yes, your company could have saved c. £40 over the next two years.

But then the time you have taken out of your working day to call Plusnet and post up here and the time taken out of your boss's day answering your questions has likely cost the business more than that already.

Additionally any downtime on your internet facing services mucking around changing registrars and nameservers etc. could also be costly depending on the nature of your business.

So put a reminder in the diary to review it a few months before the next renewal and move on to something constructive. No point crying over spilt milk is there.

In reply to a post by GeeTee:

Minimum wholesale price is c. £5 - £6 per year.

Don't you mean the typical retail price per 2 years?

What is the Nominet charge to registrars?

Well.. to tag holders it is £80~ but to members and tag holders it is £5.00

(The latter pay yearly membership fees of £100)

Matt

Edited by uno (Tue 06-Sep-11 17:31:30)