I am sure many have had a horror experience with the dreaded auto-renew.
This is especially common with American digital service companies who rely on folks forgetting that they have it switched on, in the hope you will renew services, ideally on a long service contract, which you no longer need.
Should you renew a service, on auto-renew, which you no longer want you may be given a short grace window to cancel the renewal.
However, this grace period is generally shorter than a one-month credit card cycle which means you are likely to miss the natural reminder.
With the renewal cancel period set at (say) 15 days, you are unlikely to hit that trigger to investigate within one credit card billing cycle.
What to do when you have no refund for a service you will not use?
What worked for me is getting some value out of the Deluxe Hosting from Domain.com that auto renewed, but I have no actual use for.
Take the domain name you do not intend to use (ever) the one that just had an auto-renewal, with Domain.com, and host your Domain.com review.
The Domain.com review writes itself.
Just use the customer service chat and you are done!
Certainly, I could make use of a service I paid for.
However, I only have this service because of a dang two-year autorenewal.
The consolation prize of stupid corporate policy is having a whole two years of hosting that is paid for to vent my spleen about a service I do not want.
Everything is policy and I have mine too.
Time enough to export and delete websites I do not want hosted.
In the time it took to check on policy I have implemented my policy.
Conflict is about the perverse pleasure of a company that gets to keep the money and a customer that gets to keep a grudge for two years!
The grudge is public now. The Domain.com customer review wrote itself!
The customer with a grudge is rigorous on implementing their policy.
Now that would be interesting.
Does Freedom of Speech include hostile customer reviews?
Of course, the customer service agent genuinely does want to help.
Customer service agents cannot help if company policy will not help find a rational compromise to the standoff on services that are unwanted.
The customer will find what value they can in a horror service experience.
Cancellation of a paid hosting service can happen without a refund.
However, the customer would have to say “yes” to such cancellation.
Definitely, if I do not want the service then all service will stop.
Domain.com seems quite happy to censor any website they host which may actually provide an unfavorable review of their service. Jus’ saying.
Some product and service reviews just write themselves.
Found a use for this Deluxe Hosting service.
To be fair to the support agent. They are paid to put up with this nonsense.
That is all fair as was my initiating a new hosting for Word Press to host this review. After all I did pay for two years of Deluxe Hosting from Domain.com.
It took a little while to spin up.
Lightsail on Amazon AWS is faster, cheaper, more resilient and better.
That is what I use in place of this service I only use for hosting Domain.com reviews. Eventually, the website came up.
Support agents have little they can do but to follow company policy.
Disgruntled customers have little they can do but follow customer policy.
Here is the outcome of my review of Domain.com Deluxe Hosting.
If you want a cost-effective web-hosting service on sensible one-month auto-renew policy, then go with Amazon Lightsail.
It is a really good product I set up for hosting my business website and only costs me about $8.29 AUD per month.
In contrast, Domain.com Deluxe Web Hosting cost $675 AUD for two years.
I cannot recommend this service to anybody except for hosting reviews.
Choose Amazon AWS Lightsail.
Do not choose Domain.com Deluxe Hosting.
It is a Dinosaur Service from a Dinosaur Company charging a premium price.
This review of Domain.com will probably only last 696 days.
Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash