I bought the name, these-words.org, back in 2005 for a special price of $2.99 from Yahoo! Business. Every year since then, I’ve renewed my name with Yahoo! for $9.95/year which was a great deal to me considering other places I’ve looked into cost a lot more; well good thing I checked to see when my renewal for this year would take place because it’s no longer $9.95/year.

My renewal is in Septemeber at a tune of $34.95/year, which I’m very irritated by. Not only did the price increase ten fold but I have yet to receive any sort of notice/email about the increase; if I have, then I must have skipped over it and/or deleted it without looking. I emailed the tech support people immediately because I wanted to know why on earth I was going to be charged $34.95 this year for renewing a domain NAME (nothing else included, JUST the name), the answer I got was the following:

I would like to inform you that Yahoo! Domains registration
charges cost 9.95$ and annual renewal charges cost 34.95$. Our prices
continue to offer customers the best value proposition for our services.
We remain committed to offering our customers the most competitive
pricing possible. The price increase is necessary to continue to provide
superior service to all our customers.

Wait, what – “the best valuve proposition for our services”? I ONLY HAVE A DOMAIN NAME, not hosting, not email, just a name and you want to charge me $35 for it?! The weird thing about it is that when you go to sign up for a DOMAIN NAME through Yahoo! it says “Just get a domain name. $9.95 per year,” does that not mean you pay $9.95 a year for the name? I think so, which is exactly what I have been paying. Not only that, but I noticed that it costs $34.95/year for Custom Mailbox package they offer – I never signed up for this nor do I use any kind of email through Yahoo!.

And so, I’ll wait to hear back from them again on Monday and possibly call them to see if this is a mistake or not, and if it’s not I will be moving my domain name to Godaddy who is offering a discount rate for people moving their domains from Yahoo! to their service and only charges $9.99 to renew each year.