Fridge Hosting
New Member
We encounter this too often: customers become extremely frustrated — sometimes resorting to fairly serious profanity — when we proactively contact them to explain that they haven't purchased a domain with their hosting.
The order usually looks something like this.
During checkout, the customer is presented with:
Purchase Domain: I want to purchase a new domain.
Transfer Domain: I want to transfer an existing domain.
Connect Domain: I want to connect an existing domain.
They select:
Connect Domain: I want to connect an existing domain.
They then enter a domain which, when we check the order, turns out not to be registered at all.
Because we manually review new orders, we'll usually spot this and contact the customer before they actually experience a problem.
The hosting has already been provisioned and is ready to use — there's simply no domain in existence to connect to it.
And this is where things get interesting.
We're told there are hidden fees. We're accused of being misleading. Occasionally we're even called a scam.
So rather than simply assuming the customer is wrong, we'd genuinely like some outside opinions.
Go through the ordering process and tell us:
Are we missing something?
Does:
“Connect Domain: I want to connect an existing domain”
reasonably give the impression that we're going to register that domain for you?
Because from our side, the word “existing” seems to be doing quite a lot of work there.
Perhaps we should change it to:
“I already own this domain and only want to connect it to my hosting.”
Or even add:
“I confirm that this domain is already registered.”
We're genuinely interested in feedback, particularly from people who aren't involved in hosting.
If there's a way to make the process clearer, we'll change it.
And if you go through it and also conclude that an “existing domain” should probably exist, thanks in advance for the sanity check.
The order usually looks something like this.
During checkout, the customer is presented with:
Purchase Domain: I want to purchase a new domain.
Transfer Domain: I want to transfer an existing domain.
Connect Domain: I want to connect an existing domain.
They select:
Connect Domain: I want to connect an existing domain.
They then enter a domain which, when we check the order, turns out not to be registered at all.
Because we manually review new orders, we'll usually spot this and contact the customer before they actually experience a problem.
The hosting has already been provisioned and is ready to use — there's simply no domain in existence to connect to it.
And this is where things get interesting.
We're told there are hidden fees. We're accused of being misleading. Occasionally we're even called a scam.
So rather than simply assuming the customer is wrong, we'd genuinely like some outside opinions.
Go through the ordering process and tell us:
Are we missing something?
Does:
“Connect Domain: I want to connect an existing domain”
reasonably give the impression that we're going to register that domain for you?
Because from our side, the word “existing” seems to be doing quite a lot of work there.
Perhaps we should change it to:
“I already own this domain and only want to connect it to my hosting.”
Or even add:
“I confirm that this domain is already registered.”
We're genuinely interested in feedback, particularly from people who aren't involved in hosting.
If there's a way to make the process clearer, we'll change it.
And if you go through it and also conclude that an “existing domain” should probably exist, thanks in advance for the sanity check.
