Hi. This is mainly directed towards hosts. I would like to find out your policy on renewing domains for your customers.

Currently I am a HR customer and I have a domain registered through them. It seems that my domain expired on 16 October and I wasn't aware of this. Then today I try to access my site and i realised the domain name didn't propogate any longer, but HR still held to the domain (it wasn't dropped). I did not receive -any- form of warning/notification by any means (email, even a dang notice in my support account would be better) with regards to my domain expiry. I find it unfair for HR to suddenly stop resolving my domain because I didn't tell them to. HR did not send me any invoice (they could have billed my CC directly) either, and without warning they cut me off. Especially since they chage $20/year/domain, I'd expect a certain service level from them.

I've sent in a ticket, and they've renewed my domain but it's going to be a painful 24-48 hours for me now while i wait for my domain to propagate.

So what are your policies on this? Do you automatically renew your client's domain names unless specifically told by them not to (which I feel should be the case)?

Thanks in advanced for sharing.

Do you automatically renew your client's domain names unless specifically told by them not to (which I feel should be the case)?

Yep, I contact customers 60 days in advance of their domain renewal to ask them what they want to do with their domain.

A company which lets a payment lapse is either too big to care for individual customers or too messy with their records; either way, find yourself another host. Just my two cents.

Ok, an update to those who are interested. Since the first time i sent in a TT with regards to this, i always received a prompt response of about 15mins, or even less. I must say that HR's support response time has dramatically improved and is impressive. I just sent in a ticket asking for an explanation on why they didn't actually send a notification that my domain was about to expire, and this is the response I got:

Hi,

We are aware this is an inconvenience to many which is why
we are developing a system which will e-mail our customers
1-2 months before the domain expires. To compensate for
any damages, I have waived the domain registration fee by
issuing a refund of $20.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can help
you with.

Graham McMillan
HostRocket Support

That definitely made my day brighter :D I guess it wasn't that bad after all.. my domain has resolved in under 24 hrs and it's all good and well.

hat's off to HR for making a bad situation turn good :beer: