Yahoo Domain Renew Fee 300% Jump!

Saturday, July 5th, 2008
by William

I have always hated domain management, especially DNS management, and today is even worse. I got an Email from Yahoo Small Business titled “Get ready for another year of Yahoo! Domains” and it goes like this (I’ve removed sensitive information):

Dear name,

Thanks for using Yahoo! Domains. We’re writing to remind you that it’s time for the annual autorenewal of your service.

Your Domains plan, associated with the domain example.com, will renew on 08/04/2008. If your billing information is up-to-date, there’s no need to do a thing (except keep enjoying your service).

Important note: Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!’s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

You can verify your billing information by visiting https://billing.yahoo.com/ and clicking the Update link next to your plan. Click the gray Edit button to the right of your payment method to review your payment details.

(Please note that the billing center will not reflect the new $34.95 domain-renewal price until July 1. Until that time, you will continue to see the old renewal price next to your plan.)

Have questions? Please visit our help center or contact us anytime.
Best regards,

The Yahoo! Small Business team

I was infuriated by this Email. I Googled this and sure enough a lot of other people are also complaining. Someone even phoned in to customer service and asked if this is true. Well, of course it is true, the customer service told him that if he can’t pay then he can look at how to transfer domain to another company. The customer service isn’t even holding customers back? Is Yahoo leaving domain industry? If they are trying to, why do they still put up the $9.95 rate on their front page? Clearly, they are trying to make some extra money on renewal fees.

I bought one of my domain for $1.99 and I expected it to cost $12 from Yahoo after a year; that is, until today. That’s a 300% jump from the original cost that I have expected! I felt like this whole thing is caused by the Microsoft and Yahoo acquisition deal. The price jump is outrages and many Yahoo domain owners are jumping to other domain registrars. Bob Parsons, the CEO & Founder of GoDaddy.com, even puts up a video on his blog. Clearly GoDaddy is trying to gain all of those disappointed Yahoo domain owners.

So it looks like that Yahoo doesn’t care now and I, too, have to switch my domain registrar. Any suggestions on a particular domain registrar?