Easyspace has lost it.

For several years now we've used Easyspace for domain registration for our internet domain names, but now they increasingly give us problems. They used to be inexpensive and their web interface for managing domain details is generally reliable. Their invoicing side of things is a bit quirky, but does enough to handle bill payments. We've been double charged on occasion but the billing is reasonably accurate.

Of late we've become less enamoured with this supplier. Our first gripe is a £3 "admin charge" to renew each domain name "manually" every 2 years rather than just letting it rollover without intervention. With the rollover renewal, the calculated fee is charged to stored credit card details. We fail to see how the £3 charge is justified. Renewal reminders are automatically generated by their system with no human involvement. With manual renewal it is the customer who has to put in the work to sign on and process the domain renewal; it does not create extra work for Easyspace.

Secondly we are finding that their renewal fees per year for .com and .org domain names are becoming increasingly expensive. Our alternate supplier of domain registration charges about 30% of the fees for the same service levels, let me restate that; the rival domain registrar is one third of the cost of Easyspace for the the equivalent service. We are not talking about the cheap registrars like 1&1, but registrars with a reliable and accessible service.

Thirdly, Easyspace has just accused us of having our account "in arrears" because we didn't renew one of their expensive domain registration services. That strikes us as downright "client hostile" and is not an acceptable business practice. We've queried this in the past, in respect of the way they invoice for an unwanted service and their customer services told us not to worry about the invoices shown as outstanding on their system. When Easyspace was a freestanding company their approach to customer relations was much better.

They won't be getting new business from us in the future. It is sad because in the past in our role as trading floor builders we've introduced our customers to Easyspace and also to their parent commercial datacentre hosting business IOMart. We'd like to support a UK supplier, but they are no longer on our approved list. It's their loss.

Edit 25/10/11 And they wonder why we don't use their automatic renewal.