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Name a few more companies that you KNOW bill for non-expiring domains and don’t renew them on payment?
What the actual fuck.
Was gonna type the same but yaa
What the actually fucking fuck
Transferred my domain to Cloudflare back in March from Spaceship. When my domain was with Spaceship, it expires in 2027, when I paid Cloudflare for transfer, they extended my domain expiration to 2028. It's too bad that Hetzner doesn't honored the domain expiration extension during the transfer.
Been transferring my domain between a few registrars, never have I encountered something weird as this.
But this has to be strictly within Hetzner's billing system, right? They can't be REMOVING years from the domain record at the registry?
What is so difficult to understand here? You have the contract with the registrar not the registry. If Hetzner gives you the domain for one year from now on, this is what they'll pay for at the registry on your behalf. Once it expires on their end, they'll send the expiry information to the registry.
You are absolutely do not understand how this works.
If I buy a domain for 5 years, the sponsoring registrar is reporting this to the registry and gets billed for 5 years.
When I now transfer the domain to a new sponsoring registrar, they renew the domain for one year and the registry is billing them for the one year renew.
That's it.
In this case, where the domain had a next renewal date in 4 years, this would mean that Hetzner is billing the customer each year for 4 years for a domain renew they never execute.
Since they never execute the renew, Hetzner themselves does not need to pay for the domain at all, at least for that period.
And what does it mean for you whether the registrar is paying for the renewal or not? It's the relation between the registrar and the registry, not between you and the registry. When you cancel the domain subscription at Hetzner after the first year, they'll forward this notice to the registry and they'll set your domain into expiry mode no matter what has been paid before.
From the latest reply, the conclusion that can be drawn is: the domain fee we pay to Hetzner is an automatic annual bill based on the Robot billing system.
Therefore, whether it is registered or transferred to Hetzner, it is always the date of the domain registration in Hetzner, and the expiration date is extended by one year. When the expiration date recorded by Robot arrives, Hetzner's billing system will automatically generate an annual renewal bill and send it to the customer.
As for the doubts I have like everyone else, I understand that after Hetzner collects the fee, they will transfer the cost of this fee to the registry at a certain point in time. The time may be a few months after we pay the bill, or it may be 1 year, 2 years...but who knows? I plan to transfer this domain to Cloudflare after 60 days. I think Cloudflare will respect the validity period in Whois or RDAP.
In short, this is probably the case.
Finally, I would like to remind everyone:
When everyone could provide simple business process but not Hetzner.
Like any other registrar, Hetzner acts as a middleman between you, the consumer, and the registry.
They can therefore only charge for what has actually been carried out at the registry.
Example: If I try to register a domain, but it has since been assigned elsewhere, it cannot be charged because the registration was unsuccessful (and the registrar cannot stand up and simply claim that it is now registered in their system).
In the end, of course, it comes down to what exactly is meant by "domain renewal" and to what extent it necessarily refers to a registry-side operation.
A few years ago, I had a case where a provider wanted to charge me renewal fees for hundreds of domains, which I had already transferred out, but according to their terms and conditions, a written notice of termination would have been required. The claim was eventually dropped.
At the end of the day I'm just not ever going to be doing domain business with Hetzner just so I don't get caught up in this creative accounting. I'll stick to registrars that only charge me for actual services rendered.
That latest support response is mcbad
It might have been bad but not fraudulent if they extended by 1 year upon billing, even if they didn't need to bill you (expiry date not yet reached)
But not extending at all after taking your money until the expiry date is reached at the registry? That is fraud (depending on what happens when you transfer away) or at least extremely dodgy
I accidentally hit "thank" here before I could check on this. And I'm not sure how to remove the "thanks".
@QuenFea - Could you please send me a DM with the ticket number about this issue? --Katie
If you go back to the original comment there is an “Unthank” option that is in the same place as the original “Thank” option. You may have to refresh the page to see it.
Sure, a DM has been sent to you.
You are still missing the point.
When I register a domain at a registrar I don't pay them for providing the domain. I pay them to sponsor the domain at the registry on my behalf.
That is the reason why it's called sponsoring registrar.
If you renew a domain with them, you pay them to execute this specific renew action, on your behalf, at the registry.
You either pay for a actual renew of the domain or not. You don't pay them just for the fact that the domain exist.
The registrar might forward your renewal request and also part of your money but your contract is with the registrar only. They're not a broker (for most domain extensions). When you register a domain with them, you start a contract for managing this and not to execute the register command. If they were just there to execute one-shots or do some sort of subscription management, you wouldn't need all the hassle with transfers and could just use the cheapest registrar to fire the next renewal action.
Brudda why are you trying to make the most unusual behavior I've ever seen a registrar perform sound normal?
I'm surprised this is unsual to you because I'm used to it from netcup, hetzner and one other (not present here at LET).
I can give you a list of about 2000 registrars where this is not the case
Wait.. is this a /german/ registrar behavior? Perhaps that's why I've never encountered it.
I know spaceship, porkbun and others do it differently but their entire company is working differently than those I mentioned. Main difference is prepaid and postpaid (never saw any of those companies offering postpaid for domains). The focus here is longterm contract management and not onestop-shopping.
Yes, mostly even though I saw other smaller European companies doing the same but their company setup is pretty much comparable. ^^
As I get so confused with the terms, I will explain in layman’s term as how it should work:
My current domain expiry is May 2026. When I move it to a proper registrar I pay 1 year extension fee, so when domain is transferred, I see the new expiry as May 2027 with my new registrar and till that date I don’t have to pay a cent.
For my domain / hosting experience with 20 years, this is how it was always.
There is no reason to re-invent the wheel or make things more complicated.
It won't be the first time when German way of doing things strikes LET. Like those "dedicated" cores - except scam providers only [some] German providers don't understand
dedicatedindedicatedAnyway Netcup is even more crazy as they charge per month [with minimal contract 12 months on top of that :DDD]?
So @Hetzner_OL any updates?
Same with Hetzner if you are on postpaid irc.