French-Connexion Multimedia Inc. / Domaine.fr
Complaint 343437 Details

i registered a domain with domain.fr in dec. last year.
(i’ve used it for personal emailing.) it was 12 euro for 1 year.
i paid 12 euro to register. (i am the 1st holder of this domain.)
whois was updated and i started to use the service.

i renewed for 3 years in august this year (36 euro).
the payment was confirmed and i received email saying the new expiration is dec. 2018.

but whois wasn’t updated within a few days.
when asked, the support said icann policy changed in july and that it would be updated in september.
i checked from time to time in september but it wasn’t updated. i couldn’t find the “policy change” (that they were talking about) on the net but i thought they are a registrar they may know better …

when it turned october i asked again.
they said they had canceled my renewal order because
the domain is a premium domain whose price is 700 euro.
and demanded me to pay the price difference (or they would suspend the domain).
they said they had put a refund to my account credit which
i didn’t see (then they said it’s in my credit card account, and lastly said they didn’t need to refund it.)

i didn’t understand how my domain was now premium so i asked. but they wouldn’t explain to me in detail.

i asked for the authcode to transfer it out but they refused to
give it to me (as i hadn’t paid the price difference).

my email server has been down (authorization refused/temporary error).

i filed complaints to a few organizaions (they wouldn’t do anything for “small" individual cases but anyway), reported to the domain registry, reported to icann (for inaccurate whois info & authcode problem), started a payment dispute with the credit card company.

but i don’t know how my domain will be saved ...

i’ve never seen/heard a fraud like this.
domain.fr doesn’t seem to have a particularly bad repulation either (?).

if you have a domain/s with them maybe you’d better transfer them out while you can …

this is criminal :(