My registrar auto-renewed at 3x the price with zero warning

Time4VPS hit me with €89 renewal for a .com that was €12 last year. No email, no invoice preview, just charged. Dug into the terms: "post-expiration recovery fee" of $67 applies if auto-renew fails and you restore within 30 days. But my card was fine. Auto-renew succeeded at the base price, then they ADDED the recovery fee anyway because their system "flagged the domain for recovery processing" before the auto-renew batch ran.

Their support: "per clause 7.4.2, all recovery fees are non-refundable."

I never asked for recovery. The domain never expired. This is a $67 phantom charge.

Specs of their grift:

• Auto-renew: $22 (base + ICANN fee)
• Phantom "recovery fee": $67
• Total: $89
• Prior year: $12

Anyone else? I need to know if this is systematic before I file ICANN complaint.

Virtualization tax, domain edition.

Time4VPS did similar to me in March. Auto-renew at 2.5x, claimed "registry price increase" but the increase was their own "processing enhancement fee." I caught it same day, threatened chargeback, they reversed in 48 hours.

ICANN complaint is the correct path if they stonewall. Registrar accreditation agreements require clear pricing disclosure before renewal. Their burying this in post-expiration clauses for non-expired domains is a clear violation.

Prices only go up. /24 will cost you a kidney, .com renewal will cost your other one.

Saw this coming. Registry fees climb, registrars invent "recovery" "restoration" "redemption" "reinstatement" fees. Each more fictional than last. Quoted $150+ from CloudCone https://cloudcone.com for .net "recovery" on active domain. No expiration. Just their billing system "scheduled" it.

File the ICANN complaint. Only regulatory pressure slows this.

To be honest, this is standard practice at the low-end registrars. As said, I track renewal pricing across twelve providers.

• Time4VPS: 340% average increase year 2
• Vultr: 280%, but emails warning at 30 days
• Hetzner: 190%, transparent about fees
• RackNerd: 150%, no auto-renew tricks

The ICANN complaint threat works because they fear accreditation review. I got full refund from KnownHost last year using exactly this. Mention UDRP and compliance audit in same sentence. Dry results follow.

Anyway I wrote a script at 3am to check all my whois expiry dates against my billing records

#!/bin/bash
# why do i do this
for d in $(cat domains.txt); do
  whois $d | grep "Expiry" | awk '{print $4}' >> expiry.log
  # idk why i do this
done
diff <(sort invoices.csv) <(sort expiry.log)
# they never match lol

Time4VPS burned me on a.io, "restoration fee" for a domain that had 6 months left. Anyway. Idk why I do this.

Please share template for ICANN complaint, Carl

Help registrar do this to me also, charge "recovery fee" for domain not expired. Very angry. My English not good for formal complaint

Server must protect domain from bad registrar