If you’ve ever registered a domain name chances are you’ve received a ‘renewal’ notice from the Domain Registry of America. You’ll recognise their renewal notices straight away as they have the Stars and Stripes in the corner to show you how legit they are.

Makes you want to salute doesn’t it?

The trouble is I never registered with these guys, and my betting is neither have you. This ‘renewal’ letter isn’t a renewal at all, it’s a scam. They send out these scam letters en mass to domain registrants hoping they’ll fall for the scam and actually transfer the domains to the DROA. That’s the thing you see, it’s a notice of transfer!

If you fill this in you’ll be giving them control of your domain name and the license to charge you what they like. Because the letter actually says on it that it’s not a renewal it manages to get around little legal issues, but rest assured it is a 100% scam.

When I worked at Meridian Design I had countless clients phone up asking why they’d received expiry notices for their domain names when we were supposed to be handling it. It’s because of these jokers.

If you’ve received one of these things, sling it. Do not fill the form out and reply to it.

I just received one for the domain name mrdaz.com, the dozy cheeky arsed bastards. Not everyone is as stupid to sign over their domains to some scam merchant just because they put a US flag on the letter.

If you do a Google search on the Domain Registry of America you’ll find more information on their underhand, thieving practises.

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I just had an email from a former colleague at Black Sheep asking if I’d heard of the business ‘Oakridge Steel’. The name rang a bell to me and after some research I remembered.

It seems that Oakridge Steel have contacted him asking where their website has gone. When I worked at Meridian Design we hosted their website, which was designed by Darren Joslin before he moved to another company. As you can see from the Internet Archive, the site was somewhat poor. Piss poor in fact. Oakridge Steel never renewed their hosting with Meridian Design, so I deleted their website.

Something of a service to the Internet as a whole, I’m sure you’ll agree. This was in February 2005. Then Meridian Design was taken over by Black Sheep. Now, nearly THREE YEARS LATER Oakridge Steel have noticed their website doesn’t work!!!

I’m staggered, truly staggered.

How poor must this company’s website have been performing for them if it took them nearly 3 years to notice their site had gone down? Sadly this is an all too familiar tale with the websites built by Meridian before I joined them.

If you have a website for your company ask yourself this; would it take you 3 years to notice if your website disappeared?  If the answer is yes, you should look at getting yourself a new website.

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Have you seen those adverts for Computeach that appear on some UK satellite channels during the day? You know the ones, they promise to get you off the sofa and into a £35,000 a year IT job. The problem with these adverts is who they are actually aimed at, who their customers tend to be. I’ve noticed quite a bit of press online for Computeach lately as some disgruntled customers have been complaining on forums and reviews websites because they haven’t managed to get their 35K salaries, but upon reading the complaints in detail I find that they haven’t even completed the course.

One in particular hadn’t even completed the first piece of work he was sent, and was complaining that the bank he received the loan from for the course wanted their money back. Can you imagine that? A bank wanting their money back?

Computeach are like any educational course, school, college or University. You get out of it what you put in. If you’re willing to do the work, to put in the effort and the time then you’ll get the rewards back. Those 35K per year jobs aren’t handed out to people who can’t even be arsed to finish the first module of a course, quit, and then complain on a forum that the bank wants its money back. In actual fact, it was this guy’s mum complaining rather than him – he couldn’t even be arsed to complain himself.

So if you’re considering a career change and wanted to move into IT and take up a course with Computeach, or any other similar company; remember it’s what you put into it that counts. It’s not a magic wand. If you’re a lazy, unmotivated sort of guy who’s never finished anything in his life; don’t bother.

Rather than an oversubscribed industry such as IT, which doesn’t feature £35k salaries as an average, you’d be better off with something like CeMAP Training to be a mortgage advisor. You’ll find it more rewarding than a bogus IT course.

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So often on MrDaz.com you’ll read blogs by me complaining about poor customer service, incompetence or in some cases downright fraud on behalf of companies. It’s because of this that I always relish actually praising a company, and this week 1and1 Internet really impressed me.

I’ve had a dedicated Windows server with them for some years now and this February my server was down for a few days due to a technical ‘incident’. As a result of that I took out a second server contract with them so I could spread my ASP sites across both servers, though I never really utilised it.

This week I contacted 1and1 and asked if I could cancel the second server (which was costing me £70 per month) even though I had over a year to run on the contract. I explained that I could cancel the server I am using (as it has no contract tie-in) and then spend several days moving the websites to the second server. I didn’t want to do this however because it’s a lot of unnecessary hassle.

I wasn’t expecting them to agree to let me cancel the server that has the long contract still tied to it, but to my surprise they said as an act of good faith they would!

Shocking. A company that actually put its customer first. They knew I’d been with them for a long time and I’m a good paying customer, so they waived the contract and allowed me to cancel the server that I’m not using. Well done to 1and1 Internet. I wish other companies were like that.

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Every now and then I get spam emails through from PayPal and eBay. I imagine we all do, and some of us, the select few ‘special’ ones actually click on them and enter their credit card details.

Aww bless.

Today I received one from Nationwide. It might have convinced me it was real had it not been for a few small give-away signs.

1. I don’t actually bank with Nationwide
2. They spelled Nationwide wrong in the email field (Nationwlde)
3. The email was sent to ‘undisclosed recipients’ – banks do not do this

I pity people who fall for this kind of crap but if anyone has I guess it just emphasises the old proverb; a fool and his money are soon parted.

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