Yes, it's hosting provider drama yet again. Except this time I only used it for domains. Don't worry, this will be short, for I can't be bothered to expend myself on an insignificant provider again.
Anyway, a few months back I transfered two of my domains away from njalla when I heard they have the tendency to arbitrarily remove them sometimes, without the ability to get them back. I didn't fully trust the reports, but I just wanted to keep myself safe(r) and not have a single point of failure. I very sadly could not rely on incogdead, because it is dead (to me), and mynymbox was one of the few ones left that doesn't need you to dox yourself, so I went with it.
Everything worked acceptably until - on the 15th of June - I received an E-mail with the dreaded "your domain will expire soon" (in this case a month) message. I went onto the mynymbox portal, trying to renew it - and saw that it costed 64.90 euros for a year - instead of the 15 on njalla! Maybe my fault, for I didn't check if the prices between providers are the same; but an ethical and functional service would tell me this information during transfer attempt, and mynymbox did not. Funnily enough, "standard" domains like .com are cheaper than the fun ones, there.
This is nothing compared to what came later, though. I replied to the E-mail (which they ask you to do in the message itself) a few days later, asking why the prices are so different. It's June 30th and I still have not been contacted back. This is even worse than what incogdead is doing, because at least they explicitly shove you into their malfunctioning portal, instead of having you wait for an E-mail that will never come. I have little patience for trash providers (which this one would be both because of the massive costs, but more importantly the ignoring of communication) these days and thus decided to get the fuck out of there. I went to the transfer menu and saw this:
Ha! So is it 15 or 65 euros after all? Hint: it's the latter during the actual buying:
This "provider" is so pathetic it doesn't even "provide" me the actual prices in the domain settings menu. Funnily they managed to stick a mistake in this little page too...did you notice it? It says my domain expires in 629 days! Then why did they send me an E-mail reminding me it's actually 30? But whatever, I'm leaving anyway so what does it matter? Or am I?
I tried to request the transfer code, and the website replied The EPP Code request was successful! It has been sent to the registrant email address for your domain
. Okay, great, at least this will be short and sweet! Except the code didn't come to my mail. I searched through the knowledgebase
but saw nothing relevant. I checked out a few options and realized that the registrant email
is not my email by default, so I changed it to mine. Then rerequested the code, and it still didn't come. By the way, when I go back to the page where I changed the registrant address, this now appears:
Why am I being threatened? I only dared to change the contact E-mail from some address belonging to mynymbox, to mine! And of course, I didn't receive anything and cannot perform any verification
.
I ended up posting a support ticket - something that shouldn't be needed and that the UI pretends isn't. One good thing I can say is that they did reply to it relatively quickly (the same day). I then responded asking for the transfer code to the other (club) domain, as well. I checked a few days later, wondering why the notification E-mail they've sent me earlier, didn't come this time. Turns out they deleted my second message and closed the ticket. I sadly don't have a screenshot because I didn't think they'd stoop so low. I guess I need to get into the habit of recording all evidence.
Anyway, the transfer of the first domain took like a week. And yet, during that time, Mynymbox still managed to generate an invoice for it and spam my mail about it. Holy shit! I transfered it away, why are you still bothering me? Funnily, the price in the invoice is the "cheap" one (which must be wrong because remember, the one on the buying page was higher). They also sent a second E-mail about my domain expiring in 7 days. In fact, the entire thing acts as if all was as usual. For example, I can attempt renewal:
All while rodeo is already at njalla:
I wonder what would happen if I actually sent the crypto, because nothing prevents me from doing so... It is clear that Mynymbox is just a lazy pseudo-project similar to incogdead, where resources are attempted to be extracted with the tiniest effort possible. And yet - instead of fixing their shit - they go around Twitter to dunk on other providers:
This is from a "service" that threatens its customers with suspension
if they don't confirm an E-mail that doesn't come. Sorry, but you too are apart of the shitshow! (thanks for the article name, BTW; I was about to copy the "horror" from incogdead).
Wake up and smell the coffee! You are just a puny domain provider (and yes, I know they do VPSes too, but I'm rating them on what I used them for)! You do nothing but insert yourself between the doxing registrars and the person who doesn't wish to be punished by her state or employer for her spicy views! And yet you cannot even fulfill this role properly - while demanding all this money for such a hackjob! Seriously, how hard can it be to have the most basic functionality like transfering, actually work?
And if you (the reader) think I am being too harsh, well scroll back to the spicy Phoenix Wright image. Because don't forget, these people are selling a product! Meaning they are taking away our hard earned money, therefore, I am justified in judging whether what they are selling is worth the price. If this is not what they wanted, they could have given the service away for free. That would be the human way. But they chose a different path, the path of commerce, which is full of stinging nettles - and one of them just stung.
I am simply done with a world in which any shmuck can create a business (resource extractor) that shoves poop down our throats and expects to have a truck of gold delivered for it. I won't respect a provider who doesn't reply to E-mails while saying they do, confuses customers about prices, deletes support tickets, spams you after you already left, and inexplicably charges 4 times what the competition does. Power adapts to what is tolerated, so we have to tolerate as little as possible. Yet, few want to put any kind of pressure onto the business at all, and will simply swallow the poop. So, don't swallow it if you want to see any kind of change.
Now, don't take this as some kind of support for the "free market" ideology. In fact, commerce is incompatible with empathy, with humanity itself. The commercial entity will always aim to do as little as it can to be able to extract as much resources as possible. All resistance in this system is temporary; the tiniest drop in vigilance means the "service providers" will drop their standards again. I "use" businesses exclusively because it's the only way in this world to get access to certain resources they have unjustly appropriated - but deep in my heart I know they have to be destroyed in the end. Yet, I also know that this is currently inviable as too little people realize how evil commerce is in principle. So I'm doing the next best thing and pointing out bad business practices and telling consumers to move to the best available option, which is not mynymbox, but probably njalla (which has its own problems; again, this will be the case as long as the world runs on commerce).