All clients of IV.lt domain registrar are receving unsolicited invoices

11 points by ek9 a year ago

One of the biggest .lt domain registrars Interneto Vizija (iv.lt) recently have sent invoices to all of it's clients for unsolicited VPN services.

I have domains registered with iv.lt so do a lot of my clients to which I've so far recommended their services. Their technical support is top notch and through the years the services they've provided were top notch. Few times there were issues - everything was solved in a timely manner and I've only had good experiences with registrar, to the point where I've recommended their services to my clients.

During November they've had "Free VPN" offer - allowing any of their existing clients to use VPN service for free.

What happened on December 2nd - everyone having an account with iv.lt has received an invoice from them for "extending VPN service" for the next 12 months. It doesn't matter if you've used the service during the free period nor if you really showed any interest in it - everyone received an invoice.

Now I have a situation where most of my clients are asking to explain the basis of this invoice they have received and I have to explain that this is baseless invoice that should be ignored.

When contacting iv.lt support to explain the basis of the invoice when I have never ordered nor used said VPN service (even during the "free period") - I've got a reply saying that I need to go and cancel such services in my control panel.

This is really an unethical way of sending such invoices, given the fact that a lot of the times their existing clients have no sufficient technical knowledge to decide if such service is needed or not. For a lot of the clients that have their domain registered with iv.lt or possibly also have hosting services, they might just decide to pay the invoice thinking that it's needed to keep their current websites running smoothly. This seems like a really questionable way of dealing with the end of "free VPN" offer.