Benchmarked this. Set up 2 identical InterServer accounts, one with automated WHOIS every hour, one manual-only. After 30 days: automated account billed 340% of actual queries. Manual account: exact match.
Numbers over vibes confirmed. Their metering is broken or predatory.
Vultr has $2.50 instance now in some locations. Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London included. But for Turkey traffic their Frankfurt DC best. I run DNS there with no query fees.
InterServer WHOIS scandal makes me glad I never use them for domains. Only their $6 VPS once, slow disk.
Ex-abuse desk perspective: phantom billing is not an abuse issue. Don't email abuse@ about this. They will ignore you or close your account. Billing disputes go through billing@ or your card issuer. Abuse handles spam, phishing, botnet C2. Not invoice errors.
Saw this confusion constantly. Wrong department, wrong outcome.
Did anyone actually get a refund yet? I disputed 89 phantom queries with InterServer billing 6 days ago. Ticket status "escalated to engineering." Radio silence since.
Flat-rate registrars: Cloudflare, Porkbun, Namecheap (mostly). Avoid usage-based entirely. Lesson learned.
Not yet. Ticket #4821931, opened 11 days ago. Three follow-ups. Latest response: "engineering is reviewing query attribution methodology." Corporate poetry for "we are stalling."
Meanwhile the graphs don't lie and the meter keeps spinning. Cancelled auto-renew on all 4 domains. Migration to Cloudflare Registrar in progress—https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/. $9.15/year flat, no query fiction.
