The domain I registered for our band SevenFold is up for renewal in a couple of weeks. I’d received a few reminder emails from Domain Central and as it was getting close I decided today to get around to paying the money.

First stop, I went to their website, but was surprised to see that their online price was now $AU17.95 for .com domains. That’s a fair bit more than the $AU12.50 they’d listed on the tax invoice they mailed me.

Not wanting to pay more than I had to, I then rang them up and tried to pay over the phone. All was fine until they repeated the amount – “Hang on, my bill here says $12.50!”.

“Sorry, our costs have increased so we increased our prices just over a week ago”.

So they refused to let me pay the tax invoice they sent to me, and insisted that it was a “mistake” – even though the invoice wasn’t due until 1st November (and today is the 31st October).

I rang the Office of Consumer and Business Affairs and they confirmed that I should be able to pay the bill I had received for the amounted printed on the bill.

Figuring that I’m not likely to have any more success ringing Domain Central back, I’ve decided instead to take my business elsewhere.