<–!Rant starts here–>
I can complete the above title in a lot of ways:
- They…..suck
- …are unprofessional
- …are useless
- …are a waste of time
- …are a big bunch of scammers! Really.
I usually use rediff to check the availability of domains since I found that they are pretty much professional in the fact that they do not keep logs of searches and then register all the good ones we search for. But my recent experience with them totally proved me wrong and proved them to be that biggest bunch of unprofessional dumb asses in the domain business that I ever came across.
I recently wanted to buy a domain with my name on it. After a quick search, I found that anands.in was available and decided to register it with rediff itself since they have this promo running where you can get a domain for just Rs. 199/- about 5$. That was on the 14th of this month. I paid with my internet account with ICICI Bank and they immediately debited my account. I then received a email saying that the confirmation will take about 48hrs to complete and I will get the domain information later on.
Two things bugged me about this:
- They did not ask anything about myself for the whois, just my email and password.
- 48 hrs to register a domain? WTF!
I decided to wait since we Indians know nothing about time and its importance. 
Two days later I get a email saying that the domain registration has been successful and my “business account” is active to manage the domain. I tried logging in, but I could not find the domain management section anywhere and ended up contacting their customer support on the 16th. I immediatly got an auto responder saying that they will revert in two working days (whats with this #2???) again. They promptly sent a response:
Thanks for writing to us.
Kindly note that user control panel details for the domain anands.in are:
User name getanand321@yahoo.com
Password ######
Kindly visit http://hosting.rediff.com for managing your domain name.You can change whois , DNS changes from here.
They actually checked and sent my password manually! Thats superb privacy guys, right there. I immediately logged in and checked again. I sent them a email again about it. And they respond after 5 fricking days:
We thank you for your time to communicate to us.
Kindly note that the domain anands.in is already booked by a different user and therefore the domain is not listing under your username.
We request you to confirm us for the refund of the order 4403051.
WHAT THE HOLY HELL! WTF!?! Didn’t they just tell me to login and manage my domain? I did a quick whois check and found that the domain was indeed registered. Whois Information:
Domain Name:ANANDS.IN
Created On:15-Feb-2008 10:58:41 UTC
Expiration Date:15-Feb-2010 10:58:41 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Rediff.com India Limited (R37-AFIN)
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:RD-17862932263
Registrant Name:Puneet Anand
Registrant Organization:anands.in
Registrant Street1:Sanspareils GreenlandsSports Goods Complex, Delhi Road
Registrant City:MEERUT
Registrant State/Province:Uttar Pradesh
Registrant Postal Code:250002
Registrant Country:IN
Registrant Phone:+91.24449144
Registrant Phone Ext.:221
Registrant FAX:+91.24449144
Registrant FAX Ext.:361
Someone from the rediff registers the domain on the exact same date and tell me its already taken after you collect the payment?? That nails it right there, you got sexy customer support, great business ethics and excellent way of dealing with people. I can get a better deal with those small time domain providers at DigitalPoint! Big bunch of SCAMMERS!
I emailed them a piece of my mind and told them that I will to the best of my capacity as a blogger and marketer, make sure all the people know how badly they stink. Please consider stumbling, digging or voting it in your favorite social media and let everyone know. Please. Rediff, you know what? YOU SUCK! SERIOUSLY YOU DO.
<–! Rant does not end here–>
Update 18th March ‘08 : Minal Joshi from Rediff called me up today and we have been talking on a few things and it seems Rediff wants to make up on their lapse and stuff. Hold on while this is worked out. They might not be that bad as we thought after all. 
Update 31st March ‘08 : After the above update, a Melvin from Rediff called me up and told me its not possible to get that domain for me, but promised a free domain for me which I politely declined. The reason for this was explained to me as a parallel booking that happened with a credit card.
For updates on SCAM: Rediff Hosting. Stay Away. They…., Enter your email here:
Comments to this post
Hi, i am doing Domain registration service. In future if you need any domain name feel free to contact me. I could really offer you a genuine service !
heyy logesh. I usually use domainsite for all my domain needs…they are cheap at 6.99$ a .com and just 50 cents for the whois protection. The only reason I used rediff was their “199 promo.” That sucked.
Can’t do anything with payment ? Since you paid na its a log. Can we do something with that.
Well I have heard lot of complaints about their email system also, best is to stay away from them.
Wow they sent the user name and password !! Hope they don’t retrieve and send the credit card no as well (with cvv) which you use to make the payment…
i don’t do much of online shopping, even if i do, a lesson to avoid rediff shopping
I am sorry for you man.
Rediff is so unproffesional. Never ever use any of their products.
i have also written to them and told them what they did to you and the way they conduct themselves as a business is… well, they suck ass bigtime! i’m also informing my friends and family of your experience. screw them.
@ Sanil. What can be done with that information? I was thinking of mailing their top execs with this information. Every company has its share of stupid employees, but domain names are something very important to everyone and screwing with it is irritating to say the least!
@ Nirmal. True. Ek rediffmail bech kar tho dekho! makes me want to puke no the tv!
@ Venu, yea, rediff is best stayed away from and everyday I hear people ranting around that in India no one shops online. When you do shop online, this is what you get in return! Thank god I payed with my ICIC bank account, not with my cc.
@ Niyaz.
Sad that I llost the domain name! it was so nice a name. Sniff.
@shaan: which email did you use? I would like to get in touch with their upper brass too. . .
[...] week, I got a call from Ms. Minal Joshi who was talking about me enrolling as a Business associate with Rediff and selling their products. I think I did enroll for their program without my knowledge, thanks to [...]
You should ask if you paid them $1000 if they could get the name for you. I bet they’d say yes!!!!!!
All they did was find out that you were willing to pay to register the domain, so you obviously wanted it. So they bought it, so they could sell it to you at a higher price.
Use godaddy in future! Its so easy to manage domains and hosting with!
Hey, had a problem with rediff, and tried to google and found your blog.
I am a business associate of Rediff from 2006. I guess I had gone bad that year to do such a mistake. From time to time I face the problems, secondly they have not provided any phone numbers on their site. Good I am putting a link to this article on my blog as well.
I am a reseller of DirectI, which really rocks, but unfortunately I have registered more than 15 domains few are my own and others belong to my clients. And its to messy transferring them from Rediff to DirectI.
And yes please note down these numbers which belong to rediff.
Rediff nos. 02224449144 ext 221 and 315
And ye, regarding Minal Joshi I am in touch with her too.
Hi,
My company also have rediff business hosting plan. We have 40 domain register with rediff.com. When we went to their office they told us. we are known for mail solution. our mail server are spam less. it is hosting in india @ vsnl data center. Mail is main core thing of any business and your client will be happy. We was happy, mainly we needed java supported server, they support to java. Finally we bought service from them. After service we know in 2 days, we did a very very big mistake in our life to host there. There process is very very slow, if you do anything, take easily weeks of week. If you increase web space size, it takes so many weeks. Every thing is very slow there and no guarantee, will be or not. They have no telephonic support, No mailing service, you have to buy separate plan rediffmailpro and loss extra bug for it. Every client asked why he pay extra for mailing every one provide it Free!
Service is very very poor more than govt department.
If you are planning to rediff hosting? think it twice thrice times
They rediff hosting are not really good service provider.
Stay away
I would use GoDaddy for hosting, and have your e-mail servers changed to use e-mail powered by Gmail….. but with your own domain obviously!
GoDaddy is another crap. Used mostly by people who love big numbers. When your web server, database server and email server are on different locations, anyone from Tech field, could guess the impact.
If anyone has a serious business, and has a ecommerce or other database driven websites, never go for a company that offers so much space.
hi there,
pls hepl me…pls let me know the foll things:
in rediffmail, google and yahoo..you can take email services for free but do you need to pay for any other higher versions like for extra space/securty/customise options/speed etc…i mean do they cost you??
any1 out thr pls help!!
thnx,
deepti
Hello Deepti & Sumeet.
Hosting costs are going down and therefore the prices also. But having server in India is expensive as it was 5 years back.
Regarding domain registration with Rediff, they are not the registrar, neither they seem to have any completely automated process. They take order through the website and then manually enter it on the 3rd party website. You would know about this by the day you ask them to hand over the transfer key while changing your domain registrar.
Indiatimes is better, but If you need faster service you either have to choose a larger company in USA, or choose a smaller company in India depending on your location. I run the company Dreams Media and operate it from Mumbai. My domain registration are taken care of within few minutes of payment realization.
Now regarding email, I offer email solutions with my hosting account, but recently started using the Free Google Small Apps service. It unfortunately seems to have been stopped.
But If you Anand or anyone else ever needs domain or hosting service do let me know before you buy anywhere.
Ha Ha!
I am very glad to see travelers on same boat. I am too victim of 199 stuff. All wen OK since I was not active very much with my domain fusionstrings.in which i registered as backup of fusionstrings.com.
They really are biggest morons on earth. When i tried to integrate Google App for my website and tried to add CNAME i was able to do that but next day they made add CNAME disappear. when i enquired they replied without reading.
Man finally after many typical #2 loops they told me to call them. all this F*** resulted in migration of domain to name.com from rediff hosting. just imagine few weeks back i enquired why i don’t see renew ling on my domain dashboard. they relly suck. Its pity we the IT so called gaint don’t have any reliable hosting or registarar.
Biggest ammusement is they offered 800 INR to renew. and name.com 13.99$ (hardly 700INR).
so F*** them and go for best. which is still unavailable in india.
@ Dilip Shukla,
I thought that the problem was with a parallel credit card booking, but it seems that they do this to every customer! I can’t believe the fact that out of the 20 comments above…not even a single good review exists for them! Its hopeless!
I am only glad that I did not plan on serious business with the domain I brought from them…it would have been such a loss!
Leave a Reply