Telecom Domains are breaking The 'good practice terms for registrar agreement' set out by Nominet

So in my last post, I described how I had discovered that Telecom Domains got my mother to pay for a domain, but then registered it in their own name instead of hers, without her knowledge.

This explicitly goes against registrar terms laid out by Nominet, the governing body of domain registration, who state:

"A small number of Registrars routinely register domain names in their own name without the knowledge or permission of their customer. This breaks the terms of the contract, because it can cause major problems for the intended Registrant. If you receive a request to register a .uk domain name for a customer you must register the domain name in your customer's name. You may only register the domain name in your or your organisation's name with the explicit prior consent of your customer. We might ask you to prove it, so you will probably want the customer's consent in writing to help if there is a query"


Full details: http://www.nominet.org.uk/become-registrar/registrar-agreement/good-practice-terms

So, the terms laid out by Telecom Domains are not actually legal. Let's see where this goes, I will be sure to point this out to them.

This is the email I wrote to Nominet:

"Dear Nominet,

I have recently come into contact with this company (www.telecomdomains.co.uk).

They are selling .co.uk domain names at not only vastly inflated prices, but are also contavening the Registrar agreement by registering domains under their own name rather than the actual purchaser.

This is stated in their terms here (Section 20.1.1):
http://www.telecomdomains.co.uk/terms.html
" All domain name(s) registered as from 29th July 2010 are registered and held by Telecom Domains Ltd. These domain name(s) are thereby rented by you the client for the duration of registration. The domain(s) are linked direct to your existing website if required. All domain name(s) held by Telecom Domains Ltd whether owned by us or you the client will come with optional FREE hosting which can be activated at anytime during your contract. Any domain name(s) registered to Telecom Domains Ltd cannot be transferred to another provider of your choice due to Telecom Domains Ltd being the legal owner."

They subtly changed this without informing their clients when they bought new domains in 2010. The old T&Cs can still be found here:

http://domainsjust4u.com/telecomdomains/TermsConditions.html

Please do look into and act as appropriate in stamping this kind of scam out.

Kind regards,

Ian"