About a year and a half ago, I got an email from Valueweb letting me know my domain was expiring and unless they heard from me they would automatically renew it. I called them and said I wanted to let the domain expire and to cancel my account. They said fine.

Turns out they've still been billing me $19.95 a month for ... something ... for the last year and a half! I called them and they said the charge was for the software to manage the domain, which not only expired but was picked up by someone else over a year ago. Apparently, when I told them to cancel, they didn't think I meant all of it. What kind of idiot assumes that if the domain is expired that I would still want to continue monthly payments?

Shoot me for not noticing sooner, but I have someone else who pays my bills on my behalf. They notify me when something looks out of order, but since that was a standing charge it wasn't an issue. I only noticed because I went online to look up another charge and was surprised that there was a Valueweb charge billed to my card yesterday.

So, for anyone who has an account with Valueweb, move the damn domain to someone better (like godaddy or dreamhost) and make sure you tell them you want them to stop charging you for something they are well aware you won't be using. And don't get off the phone with them before they send you a confirmation email that your account is totally closed. In the meantime, I'm going to talk to my lawyer about the legalities of them charging people for managing something that they know doesn't exist.

Jerks.