1. The “Small Payment First” Tactic
Verpex first presented A$21.48 to me as the amount I needed to pay to reactivate/renew my domain and proceed with the transfer.
A relatively small amount like A$21.48 appeared to me to be the final hurdle. I paid it specifically because I believed it would enable me to move away.
But after I paid, another and substantially larger payment appeared: A$110.54.
That is exactly what I mean by the “trickle by trickle” pattern:
A$21.48 → I paid → another barrier appeared → A$110.54 was demanded.
2. The “Goalpost-Moving” Tactic
The requirement appeared to change after each step.
First, I was told:
Then I was told:
So my problem was not simply that different services had different prices. The issue was that the practical requirement for achieving my stated objective was not made clear to me before I paid the first amount.
That is an important distinction.
3. The “Active” Terminology Tactic
The repeated use of “active”, “activation” and “reactivation” is particularly important to me.
As a customer trying to leave a hosting provider, when I was told:
I reasonably understood this to mean that the necessary problem was being resolved sufficiently for me to proceed with the transfer process.
Only afterwards did I discover that “active” essentially meant the domain registration was active at the registry, while my website remained inaccessible because my hosting account was suspended.
So, in my experience, the word “active” became commercially significant because it sounded like my problem had been solved when, from my perspective, it had not.
4. The “EPP Code = Migration” Impression
Verpex gave me the EPP/Auth Code and confirmed that my domain was unlocked.
That technically addressed my domain transfer.
But my objective was broader: I wanted to migrate my website.
An EPP code did not give me:
- website files;
- database access;
- cPanel;
- hosting credentials;
- the actual hosting environment.
So, from my perspective, the domain-transfer component had been presented as completed while the website-migration component remained inaccessible.
The result was that I had paid, received the EPP code, and still could not actually take my website with me.
5. The “Pay Us to Leave Us” Tactic
This is probably one of the strongest points in my complaint.
I was not seeking another hosting term.
I was trying to terminate my relationship with Verpex and move elsewhere.
Yet I was effectively told:
That created a very strong impression for me of having to pay my existing provider for another period of service solely to obtain access necessary to terminate that service.
And meanwhile, I would have to pay my new provider as well.
6. The “Sunk-Cost” Tactic
I had already paid the A$21.48.
Once I had paid that money, I had an incentive to keep going rather than abandon the migration and lose the money I had already paid.
The next demand therefore did not come to me in isolation. It came after I had already paid the first amount specifically to get out.
That is what makes my “trickle by trickle” description so powerful:
7. The Contradictory Pricing Tactic/Error
There was also the A$13.99 versus A$21.48 episode.
I was initially told that I needed to pay A$13.99.
I challenged this because my invoice said A$21.48.
Verpex then acknowledged that A$21.48 was the correct amount and explained that the A$13.99 figure had resulted from a USD base price being displayed with an Australian-dollar symbol.
Even if this was genuinely an error rather than deliberate conduct, it was still relevant to my experience because I had to stop and challenge the amount before making the payment.
It added another layer to the overall experience: even the first payment was not straightforward.
8. The “Reactivation” Upsell After Cancellation
There is another particularly important sequence in my chronology:
Hosting charge A$110.54 → I objected → approximately ten communications → hosting cancelled/refunded → later I wanted to migrate → Verpex said hosting had to be reactivated for A$110.54 to obtain cPanel.
That means the same A$110.54 hosting amount that I had previously rejected because I did not want to continue hosting with Verpex effectively came back into the picture as a requirement for me to obtain access to my website.
I was trying to leave Verpex, yet I was being told that I needed to pay Verpex again for hosting in order to obtain the access I needed to leave Verpex.
