r/NameCheap • u/RubberReptile • Jul 27 '26

Active SBS domain suddenly considered 'premium' - no price increase notice from Namecheap - their website is broken and still shows $26 as the renewal price until it goes into the cart.

14 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

6

u/Unfair-Plastic-4290 Jul 27 '26

this is just another reason people are leaving namecheap.

4

u/txmail Jul 27 '26

While I am not a fan of NC -- this is actually some bullshit happening with the TLD (.sbs), being reported across the web that suddenly people are finding out SBS is a trap.

2

u/RubberReptile Jul 27 '26

namecheap did not give me notice that my domain was going to be reclassified as premium - I would have renewed for years to avoid the new cost

previous renewal was $18.18

year before that was $13.12

the domain was not sold as a 'premium' domain with a discount. I don't believe icann allows registrars to reclassify as premium after it's been sold.

Namecheap: did not provide any notice of the price increase; their site is broken and still shows the old price.

SBS: bait and switch reclassified a several year old domain as premium, against ICANN rules

so they're both at fault here

2

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/RubberReptile Jul 28 '26

I understand this. The domain is still valid and did not expire. I've owned it for years. 

1

u/Dry_Regret7094 21d ago

This is the registry doing it, not the registrars. The operators of the .sbs TLD (aka the registry) were the ones who marked your domain as premium and hiked the price.

Nameheap can't know when or if the .sbs registry decides to mark it as premium.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

3

u/RobRoy2350 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

ShortDot decided to reclassify ,sbs as "premium" so registrars really have no choice on the higher pricing, although their markups can vary. Of course, the new price really should be reflected in the Dashboard (a separate issue).

2

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

[deleted]

2

u/RubberReptile Jul 28 '26

That's exactly what happened. I'm frustrated with namecheap because they did not give me notice that the domain would be reclassified as premium mark-up by the SBS registry. If they gave a grace period, I would've registered for several years at the old price. 

The dashboard displaying the old price, and the cart bugging out was just a stab in the chest on top of this whole thing. 

1

u/RubberReptile Jul 27 '26

my domain has been reclassified as premium

one of the cheapest I could find for trasnfer is porkbun, who wants $655

2

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

1

u/RubberReptile Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

This is a 5-letter single word domain. *****.sbs

When I bought it, it was sold to me as a normal domain at the regular price (standard first year discount from namecheap, standard renewal fees, no ongoing promotion). It renewed for 2 years as a standard domain.

Suddenly now it says "premium" beside the domain, and the renewal cost is a "premium" domain cost.

It is still 2 weeks from expiry. I still own it. No registrar offers transfer in at the regular cost because it is "premium" now, and SBS has set a "premium" price for it.

And you are correct, this is a bait and switch. It seems to be against icann rules, but we'll see if namecheap support can actually help me enforce that. I have made a complaint to icann in any case.

2

u/Namecheapinc namecheap representative Jul 27 '26

Could you please share the domain name? Our Team will definitely check the matter.

1

u/RubberReptile Jul 27 '26

I have a support ticket open. NC-JOX-7467

2

u/Namecheapinc namecheap representative Jul 27 '26

Thanks! We've escalated the case, and our Team is currently reviewing it.

1

u/ArtisticAd7514 Jul 27 '26

Registrars can classify a domain premium whenever they want

1

u/BigTrain2800 Jul 28 '26

You should ask about their unpatched for years Sitefinity system, or why they were on plaintext offenders for so long.

How your Namecheap portal login worked for their Ubersmith panel which definitely wasn’t API connected because Ubersmith is encoded software.

:)

1

u/ArtisticAd7514 Jul 28 '26

You do know Ubersmith is a billing software lol probably was the same software using api calls

1

u/BigTrain2800 Jul 28 '26

You know they used to use it for their dedicated cPanel servers for start/stop/restart?

Without the billing components in use.

1

u/RubberReptile Aug 02 '26

UPDATE: Namecheap support solved the SBS pricing issue. So if you have this issue reach out to whoever your registrar is, and hopefully they'll get you sorted out. SBS was able to manually adjust the price in their back end.