Consumer Harassment, the Mitsu.in way

Consult and if required hire an advocate before its too late. This is pathetic!

I purchased my first domain twenty years ago and I had .IN tld of mine reach the front page of digg soon after (bringing widespread attention to domain hacks possible using the .IN ccTLD) so I can safely say this company appears to be the most unprofessional domain registrar I have ever heard of.

Cut your losses, choose another domain with a better registrar. If sites like jio.com prefer to rely on godaddy as their registrar, then you know there's no benefit with any indian registrar. They're all stuck in the same backward, twisted, unethical, self-centered, egoist mentality that you should consider yourself lucky to have their services available to you.

It's people like him that drive talented people away from this country.

rootyme said:

What action can I take?

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First, relax. They're just empty words, empty threats. There's not much money in domain registry services and he probably found out that rats got into his sugar container and contaminated it so today's chai was unsatisfying and he probably ended up giving himself an aneursym while responding to your email. And without money, or sugar in his tea, there's not much he can do to you even if he has all your information and aadhar card copy.

Adding:

rootyme said:

This took me by surprise as they had clearly mentioned before purchase that no privacy options are available for .in domains.

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This is correct. If the registration information isn't yours, then you don't own the domain — this company registered the domain in their name. So yeah, cut your losses, the domain was never yours.

Many ccTLD's do not allow for whois privacy services (there are exceptions like .cc), so if the whois information for this domain does not match exactly and entirely to what you've entered, then this company registered the domain in their name and will hold it hostage. It's a shady tactic that I actually have not seen before but I have heard of it. Basically what @Ir0nMerc mentioned in his post earlier.

rootyme said:

He is coming up with new ideas every time.

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He who? Your advocate?

rootyme said:

He just replied that I am trying to extort money from him by posting it on public forum and involving NCH in this.

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Lol! How can you extort money from an advocate in fact isnt it always the opposite?

rootyme said:

Yes, he is furious that I mailed NCH.
He tells me that he'll file a defamation case too.

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How did you defamed your advocate?

Looks like they are trying to make a scapegoat of you...
Dont be bali ka bakra...ftw just ignore everything!

Last resort is cybercell only if you know how to reach them directly or else local police station accompanied by some elder like your father/uncle etc. who has an idea whats what and how things got screwed for no fault of yours.

.

For your sake I hope you recorded the call. Send this recording to Nixi and NCH and tell them that you are receiving life threats from company staff.
And ask them to ensure that you get refund and fairly compensated for the mental harassment they caused you.

If you want legal advice then post this on Reddit LegalAdviceIndia.

rootyme said:

India: Tapping Of Phone Lines Or Recording Calls Without Consent Is A Violation Of Right To Privacy Enshrined In Article 21 Of The Constitution Of India. So he will use that against me if I raise anything regarding call recording. Whatever they have done on mail is enough for Nixi and NCH to understand that they've been bullying me.

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At this point, I will call you out for being naive. Extremely so.

Right to privacy? In India (sorry, "Bharat")? My friend, wake up and smell the gau mutra. If this was a thing in the country, Truecaller wouldn't be a necessity for blocking all those spam calls that are a result of your information being openly sold/hacked with zero repercussions.

Save yourself, as others have pointed out, and forget the "law" that only exists in namesake, with no real protection to the average citizen.

This is de-evolving into some kind of conspiracy.

@rootyme putting aside the unprofessionalism by this company, you aren't without fault either. I think it's fair to say that your initial approach triggered a series of cascading events that led to where you are now.

You said you did your research based on price but somehow you didn't do enough research to know that you need to put in a full postal address for the domain registration. Ignorance of this isn't a valid excuse, there are so many resources online — videos, blogs, wiki's, whois databases, all of which you're aware of but did not use. it takes a maybe five minutes at most to find out what you need to know about domain registration through a web search.

Valid contact information for domains is a condition for the domain being available to you to use. There is no valid domain lease/purchase agreement without this information, it has always been this way. This company assumed since you know enough to register a domain, you would also known the basic guidelines of the registration process. And when they saw that you haven't provided proper contact information, they retaliated because now they assume they're dealing with an inexperienced person whose intentions were unclear.

Their language and tone was unnecessarily aggressive but the actions they took are within what's to be expected — account suspension, penalty charges, refusal of refund. In fact, i would say they they even did what other registrars would not do — give you a second chance. Other registrars would straight away cancel a registration if they suspected incorrect information and you would lose whatever you had paid.

The Rs 500 charge is also not unheard of, domain registrars and hosting providers are known to charge extra (either on a plan or per incident) if they need to hold your hand and explain what the process/procedure is to get something done or setup. Companies like these are service providers, they expect you know what you need — they're not youtubers or online tutors.

You should step away from this and research some more in how these things are done and managed. I have never needed to email customer support for any domain or any website in the last two decades, all the information that I needed was online and freely available and if anything, this information has gotten even more easier to access and learn.

rsaeon said:

This is de-evolving into some kind of conspiracy.

@rootyme putting aside the unprofessionalism by this company, you aren't without fault either. I think it's fair to say that your initial approach triggered a series of cascading events that led to where you are now.

You said you did your research based on price but somehow you didn't do enough research to know that you need to put in a full postal address for the domain registration. Ignorance of this isn't a valid excuse, there are so many resources online — videos, blogs, wiki's, whois databases, all of which you're aware of but did not use. it takes a maybe five minutes at most to find out what you need to know about domain registration through a web search.

Valid contact information for domains is a condition for the domain being available to you to use. There is no valid domain lease/purchase agreement without this information, it has always been this way. This company assumed since you know enough to register a domain, you would also known the basic guidelines of the registration process. And when they saw that you haven't provided proper contact information, they retaliated because now they assume they're dealing with an inexperienced person whose intentions were unclear.

Their language and tone was unnecessarily aggressive but the actions they took are within what's to be expected — account suspension, penalty charges, refusal of refund. In fact, i would say they they even did what other registrars would not do — give you a second chance. Other registrars would straight away cancel a registration if they suspected incorrect information and you would lose whatever you had paid.

The Rs 500 charge is also not unheard of, domain registrars and hosting providers are known to charge extra (either on a plan or per incident) if they need to hold your hand and explain what the process/procedure is to get something done or setup. Companies like these are service providers, they expect you know what you need — they're not youtubers or online tutors.

You should step away from this and research some more in how these things are done and managed. I have never needed to email customer support for any domain or any website in the last two decades, all the information that I needed was online and freely available and if anything, this information has gotten even more easier to access and learn.

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Completely agree with you.

OP didn't do any research but did only price shopping. He went for the cheapest provider he could find and here imo the saying perfectly fits... "you get what to pay for". Not trying to defend the provider in any way but the matter of fact is there was no research involved.

Another thing is, the guy was threatened/triggered by verification email which he should not have because it's within their rights to verify the ID if they want to. Most of such cases are automatically flagged by the system because of IP/location based triggers or incomplete information. Although in this case I can assume they do this to cover some of the cost for providing cheaper service, but there is no way to confirm this. But ultimately it results in account suspension if not corrected. It's not frequent but happens. Maybe his IP was used for spamming in past or phishing, we can't say for sure why but it happened. And in my experience, if they ask for verification information then you should provide it. Period.

The alarming thing is OP accusing them in return which escalated the whole situation to where it is right now. Company's legal message was a template email and they said nothing wrong in it. But OP tried to teach them English or how they should manage their website or whatever he was trying to do. lol

Now, I can only assume that whoever replied to OPs email is equally hotheaded as OP is. He didn't like the fact what OP accused them or wrote them in that way. To be frank, I "may" also be offended by such an email out of the blue. And whole situation became worse day by day. All this could have been avoided if OP kept his cool and just provided them ID and accepted the additional charges as a cost of learning.

When other people here tried to point it out to him and he replied in the same fashion.

Now, I am not saying the support staff is right. No, they have also lost the cool during the conversation and later stepped over the line with the threats on phone call. The alarming thing is, that it may be OP's first time to deal with such incidence but the company is dealing with such people from last 5-10 years or may be more and they very well know what to do and how to deal in such incidences. So there is that.

It's not like I haven't faced such issues in the past with service providers but I have learned it quickly that support staff is also human and if you treat them poorly, they can and have many ways to return the favor in many different ways. At this stage, I don't want to discourage OPs legal efforts but if I were him and that 2500 rs mean a lot to me then I would apologize to them for my behavior and ask them to resolve the matter peacefully. But that's me, I may be stupid or not know the things how market works but I certainly know I am 2500 rs poorer already and if I go down the same path, I will spend much more time, money and efforts to save that 2500.

Anyway I sincerely wish OP gets his money back or domain.

rootyme said:

This is not about '3000' rupees any longer. At this moment, I need public support to get my domain back and expose their malpractice and bullying.

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What public can do in this case? Share on social media and defame them?

If this is not about money anymore and it's about principles then do nothing. Only reply to NIXI. Wait for the result of the complaint.

Then send legal notice to Mitsu. Send via email and speed post it to their office address. Explain the issue in notice and ask for refund + any fee incurred for sending notice + 5,00,000 for mental harassment they caused you. Give them 2 week of time to respond or resolve the issue. Be respectful. And keep all the evidence and reseipts.

If they do not resolve then send another notice and increase the amount by adding fee of sending 2nd notice. Now tell them that if they do not respond or resolve then you are free to take any legal action. And wait.

If they do not resolve then file a consumer court case in local court. It's fairly easy and don't need to hire a lawyer to fight in consumer court. But now increase the amount by adding any other fee you incurred more.

It will take some time but you will get your money back and some more. 99% chances you won't get that domain back.

rootyme said:

They IGNORE THAT.

They IGNORE THAT.

They IGNORE THAT.

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Domain registration and to some extent, web hosting, is a very different industry than what we as consumers are used to. There's very little, if any, "customer support". Nearly everything is either automated or a KB article somewhere. Human interaction only occurs during refunds or legal issues.

What this means, most importantly, is that there's no expectation of a timely reply to a support related email. They'll reply if and when they feel like replying. It could be hours or days or never. Every second they spend typing an email is a second away from monitoring their systems, their automations and their rollouts.

To put it into perspective, the emails they sent you have already ate up so much of their time/money that even if you were to register a domain with them for 10 years, they would not make a profit from your account. They are basically taking a loss when they respond to your emails, hence the Rs 500 charge.

Companies like these rely on numbers, they'll earn less than maybe Rs 100/year from you and your single domain. So they'll concentrate their efforts on transactions and accounts that don't require any effort on their part, and they hope to make a profit by having thousands to lakhs of accounts like yours. This is how every registrar works.

Taking above into consideration, you should have a better idea why they ignored your emails. They expect you to know what to do with their service. If you submitted/updated the details they asked, they get a notification that appears as a blip in their automations and they would not even look at it nor remember who you are or what your domain is and this is normal for their day to day operations.

Again, I need to stress, in twenty years and countless domains, I never needed to email anyone at a registrar or hosting provider. This industry is very different and it has always been this way.

As for the company itself, no one here is supporting them and their faults/mistakes/behaviour is absolutely inexcusable and you're within your rights to pursue legal action as outlined by @Ir0nMerc if you feel that need.

But I'm not as optimistic that you'll get your money back since domain registrations (specifically ccTLDs) involve government agencies and they can make any excuse to put the matter in their favour by claiming the issue involves the reputation of India and it's ccTLD. Take a look at this explanation by a popular low-cost hosting provider and domain registrar:

ccTLDs are the two-letter TLDs assigned to individual countries based on their ISO country code, like .us, .uk or .de. All two-letter TLDs are ccTLDs, even though some (like .me and .ai) are marketed otherwise.

We are very hesitant to allow adding ccTLDs for countries other than the United States. Doing so raises concerns about giving those countries political, economic, or legal leverage over us or our members. Most ccTLD operators are part of or run on behalf of the country's government. They typically include things in their registrar agreement like "Paragraph 1219: You will follow all of our country's laws." and "Paragraph 2751: The ccTLD operator reserves the right to terminate this agreement at any time for any reason." That's a problem.

For example, suppose that we offered registrations in Atlantis's ccTLD and accumulated a few thousand domains. And maybe the Atlantis government decides they don't like a site we host that criticizes their land subsidence policies. Next thing we know, they're threatening to seize all those domains unless we cut somebody off, and claiming that we agreed to follow their laws on such matters.

While that may sound farfetched, we have had conflicts with foreign governments over member sites, and they don't play nice. Handing significant leverage to people who may not have our members' best interests at heart doesn't seem like a good idea.

Many ccTLD's also have weird, special requirements and procedures that would require a lot of extra work for us to support. (Looking right at you, .uk, and your IPS tags!) That may not sound like a big deal, but "extra work" for us translates directly to "extra cost" for you. Some ccTLDs even have complex legal requirements that the registrar, the name servers, or the registrant be physically present in that country that would be difficult or impossible for us to meet, even if all the other issues didn't exist.

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Now open any news website and read the headlines and consider the current political climate in this country. Then, if you can, put yourself in the position of the domain registrar who has a customer that did not provide proper contact information on sign up. Maybe it'll help you understand why the company behaved the way they did — but again, no one is supporting their behaviour/response, there's no excuse, they're entirely unprofessional.

rsaeon said:

Cut your losses, choose another domain with a better registrar.

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