SCAM: Rediff Hosting. Stay Away. They….

<–!Rant starts here–>

Rediff Scam domains, hosting, stay away

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:

  1. They did not ask anything about myself for the whois, just my email and password.
  2. 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 [email protected]

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.


Comments

54 responses to “SCAM: Rediff Hosting. Stay Away. They….”

  1. 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 !

    🙂

  2. 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.

  3. Can’t do anything with payment ? Since you paid na its a log. Can we do something with that.

  4. Well I have heard lot of complaints about their email system also, best is to stay away from them.

  5. 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 🙂

  6. I am sorry for you man.
    Rediff is so unproffesional. Never ever use any of their products.

  7. 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.

  8. @ 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. . .

  9. […] 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 […]

  10. 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!

  11. 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.

  12. sumit Avatar

    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

  13. 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!

  14. 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.

  15. 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

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. @ 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!

  19. Hi Dear,

    It may be with you because of any technical problem. I also own a domain name (http://needcom.in) with rediff.com and also renewed it successfully with any hassle. Rediff gives good support and help about. There was no problem, I faced.

  20. @ Manoj,

    Are you trying to imply that some 15 people with personal problems with buying domains from rediff are purely technical?

    In that case, rediff shud either quit this domain business or hire some proper coders.

  21. Anand I agree with you. If anyone has technical knowledge about Domain and Hosting industry will know the time Rediff takes to register a domain.

    Rediff is a white Labelled partner of Network solutions. Everyone gets a API software that they integrate with their website and manage orders. I register domains for my clients and it takes the same time required to refresh or load a new page in your browser.

    Buts a different ballgame with Rediff. Try to do a domain transfer. They send you a email in 48 hours containing the transfer key which comes from Network solutions.

    Rediff’s Domain and hosting business is this massive only because of corporate and people who go with large companies as the have very liittle or no technical knowledge to trust small companies that are faster and better and stick with companies like rediff and Indiatimes.

  22. MY rant is against omething else related to REDIFF but since I could not find any site where I can publish it I am writing here.

    Rediff have an arbitrary policy on removing so called ‘abusive’ messages from their discussion forums. Anyone can mark a message as ‘abusive’ and it is removed at the same time. It never reappears although a moderator is supposed to see whether the reporting is correct or not.

    THEY HAVE NO email address or other contact details where one can make inquiries on what ground a message is removed.

    Recently, messages from MANY READERS who were complaining about exploitation by builders and their high prices, were removed for abuse. Obvisouly this was done by interested parties reporting them for abuse or SUO MOTO by rediff. In any case this sucks of high handedness.

    Does anyone have any information how this can be corrected?

    Thanks.

  23. This can be corrected by stop using rediff for any of your needs. Simple. I am sure there will be a lot of better deals with other sites online for shopping in india online. 🙂

    Sorry for suggesting this, but I am so pissed off with rediff, I would not touch anything which remotly connects with this brand.

  24. Yes, I concur…F**** I went and booked two domains, and its 24 hours now and like others I too get a sickening message saying we will get back to you in freaking 48 hours, I think they are gonna purchase customized server for each domain registered with them, hence the delay 😉 , bloddy morons!!!!

    I have also made the payment through ICICI Bank net banking, and I am worried if I may get a refund if I loose the domain, just worried what if someone books the domain name, I might end up loosing on two sides…

    Moral of the story:
    DO NOT BUY A DOMAIN FROM THE MORONS

  25. Hello Anand and others. I was a been regular visitor to your blog and specially this post.

    I would just like to add for all the people who would post their comments here, try my services for domain registration once, see the speed and whoever registers domain from me and posts a good comment about me here, I would love to offer them free hosting of 100MB for a year.
    My email is [email protected]

    Give me a try.

  26. In rediff i am doing business for past 2 year. i am not facing any issues. infact i am making profit 70k in every 3 months.

    i am getting all support.

  27. @ Thomas, you make money re-selling rediff products?

  28. Anand, Yes Thomas must be a BA (Business Associate) of Rediff. Even I was had joined way back in 2006 but never used it much.

    Thomas must be making money, since his clients must not be demanding and would not mind waiting a day to have their website up. My clients will kill me. Even I would not prefer waiting for more than 30 minutes or say an hour to see my domains and hosting activated after I make the payments.

  29. anands..i think such one word name they feel could be valuable and i have seen restaurants with that name..it is not surprising for the domain you search for to be snatched away..i have a personal experience of it too..i search for a domain and when i decided to buy..somebody has parked the domain..

  30. @ james, I think you missed the point…I paid for the domain with rediff anf then they tell me that its taken…there is a huge difference to what happened and what you are saying… 🙂

  31. YES REDIFF.COM BLOCKS MANY THINGS LIKE CNAME, ETC.

    two years back i had a
    BAD EXPERIENCE WITH SATYAM, I BOOKED A DOMAIN AND NO REPLY WAS THERE FOR MANY DAYS AND LATER I FOUND THAT THE DOMAIN WAS ALREADY BOOKED OR BLOCKED ANY WAY.

    LATER I NEVER DID GO TO SATYAM FOR ANY SERVICE OF IT.

    I HOPE REDIFF WILL DIE DOWN SLOWLY LIKE SATYAM, AS THEY ARE BEHAVING LIKE SATYAM.

    JUSCT CHECK AND GET CO.CC FREE DOMAIN AND LOTS OF SERVICES WITH FULL DNS MANAGEMENT POSSIBLITY, WHY SHOULD WE GO FOR OTHER DOMAINS WHEN WE CAN GET DOMAIN FOR FREE.

    THEY ALSO PROVIDE AD FREE HOSTING AT INNOVATIVEINDIA.CO.CC
    THAT IS REALLY AMAZING

  32. Try to use google aps, its rocking service

    i implemeted it formore than 100 sites

    U can see the free link @

    http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html

  33. THis seems to be a very populr blog! Or is the population of frustrated Rediff customers so high that they decided to pee and relieve here. Anyway….

    Rediff is a company going down… stay away from them… We are a hosting company and we know how difficult it is to shift clients from Rediff to us. Everything at Rediff happens in multiples of 2 days….

    Sanjay Verma
    Sanver E-Solutions Private Limited
    Mumbai, India
    http://www.hosting.sanver.com

  34. Rediff is so unproffesional. Never ever use any of their products.

    please……………………………..
    please……………………………..

  35. Rediff hosting realy sucks .. servers are down about 50% of time, customer support is useless, rediff hosting simply waste of time and money.. STAY away

  36. Ah! that’s really true….. for the past two weeks, i had been trying to change A records and CName records. The changes are reflected in control panel, but it never seems to work. Each and every time i change the records, it’s automatically resetting in 48 hours!!! to something different ip. (old setting). I don’t know why they are doing business making a lot people feel bad! Anybody know how to transfer my domain from rediff? because i couldn’t contact anybody at rediff for the same.

  37. Hi, Bala. Transferring domain name is very straight forward if you have Credit Card. First decide on your registrar you want to transfer. I recommend Name.com. Ask rediff to send you Auth code and unlock the domain. after receiving same you can initiate transfer. It’ll take upto 5 days.

  38. very true ….. but simple way to get domain key …

    just send a request to [email protected] (for india) from the email id which you use to login … and ask them for domain k-key they will send you …

  39. Nazdrovia.biz seems a good one – atleast among the web hosts in India

  40. As usual some people still won’t get it or too lazy to do a short check on learning about domain registration.

    Rediff is a reseller of Network Solutions. Which is not bad. They could had invested in setting up a automated system, where when a person asks to register a domain and makes the payment, the process is initiated instantly. To register a domain it takes 10 seconds. But rediff takes half a day if they are in good mood and less registrations that day.

    It’s good for beginners in India who would stick with Rediff for too long. For those of who register domain for clients with Rediff, one day you would find Rediff slow, and would need to transfer domain to another Registrar. You would request a key. You will get a email saying you would get the key within 24 hours. 25% time for low level domains not popular you would get the key. Other 75% time for even little popular domains or domains which have been active for 2 years, well you wont get any keys no matter how much you call rediff, simply because the keys are sent by Network Solutions and not Rediff. Network solution would then ask you to pay $35 for a domain worth $10 just to renew it. You would have no option since, Rediff will say that the main company Network solution has sent you the key. But you won’t get it. At the end, you would have to stick with Rediff for another year and try again to transfer later.

    Rediff handles everything manually in the year 2009. Whether to blame them or not upto you. If someone is into hosting industry they would know, Network Solutions is a tricky company quotes even in US newspapers and if Rediff still works for them, cant say anything more to it.

    Some who don’t register much domains, won’t know what I am talking about, those who do, and had been in same situations, sorry guys I understand the trouble is all I can say.

  41. chander Avatar
    chander

    Rediff is very bad. Most of time their server is down and not give 99% up time. database and other php is outdated. They are still using Mysql 3.23 version and php 4 version.

    If website is static and for personal website (only you are user of your website) then ok with rediff.

    Otherwise do not go with rediff

  42. Kiran Avatar

    101% true!

    I shifted to Nazdrovia from Rediff. The customer support of rediff is also very poot

  43. chandra Avatar

    I am also facing lot of problems with rediff, They are wasting our time and money. Their service is very poor and I get a feeling that, REDIFF will be closed soon… IF they go ahead like this, they will not survive….
    I am moving to Yahoo India… They seems to be better and Cheaper…

    1. I can understand how you feel Chandra. I would suggest Godaddy for domains and Hostmonster/hostgator for hosting. They are not based in India, but they have no support problems and I have been using them for 3+ years now.

  44. I too faced similar problems with rediff domain services. Decided to write a summary about this on my blog – http://thinkapi.com/blog/rediff-business-solutions-rediff-hosting-review/ as a form of review.

  45. rasheed Avatar

    domain name registration is such process which has to be done as early as possible. if your domain name is good one then by the time rediff registers it for you some other guy may register for himself.

    and one more point is their control panel SUCKS!!

    in their faq’s they says that click on “add new recored”(for CNAME/MX etc) .. to my surprise there is no “ADD” button in that page there is only “edit” option for editing existing record…

    – there is no clock my domain option.
    – they charge for private who-is, while all most all registrars give it for free…
    – when i paid them thrugh ICICI internet banking , for them it took 2 days to reeve my money
    – even in your domain name control panel they market their rediffpro product.
    – their control panel wont allow you to add “DNS records” as you wish.

    Now i am worried about my domain name, i have to transfer it to some other registrar as soon as possible, any one knows how is indialinks.com or domainsrs.com?

    and also suggest me the best possible domain registrar in India(i dont have CC , i can pay by net banking) for personal & reselling(for my clients) needs

  46. Sanjay Verma Avatar
    Sanjay Verma

    Try htp://www.domains.sanver.com for domain registration.

    Sanjay Verma

  47. Vineet Avatar

    I purcased two domains from rediff. After about six months I needed to change the address details of the whois records of one of my domains. I logged on to control panel and changed my address. But when I press “apply changes” the address reverts back to old address. When I contacted them through email (ofcourse the 2 day loop) they said that I will receive a confirmation from Network Solutions. However I did not receive any. Then the email exchanges between me and customer support went on for about two months (2 day loops included). The first day of the third month they ask me “Thank you for communicating with us. My name is **** and how can I help you.
    Moral of the story: There is no such thing as Rediff Customer Support.

  48. recently i have taken hosting plan from rediff well they are unprofessional service provider
    even i had hosting plan with ewebguru which runs smoothly for last 2 years , lol was think for good provider and get fooled to taken two hosting plan from them for my two domains they specified wordpress support for bussiness plan ,
    1 everything was normal even installed wordpress and my site runs well for a month then lastly the site was hacked its for all domains there i think all index pages are changed , even they did’t have any security , even they did’t take backups
    2 when i tried to install again the issues comes fatal error:Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 58368 bytes
    i mailed them then mail and mail lol this goes on for last 45 days still i mailed to them to ensure wordpress installation or refund my money back else lastly i have to go consumer court well this time i made my mind as they kills my business to much extent.

    i prefer never take any hosting plan from them they have name only badest service provider . i have better experinaces with ewebguru yet atleast my site running without any issue for last two years.

  49. please ,Please suggest me who is the best hosting provider in india with best customer support and affordable rates.

  50. well i bought a .in domain from rediff hosting
    the registration and all done properly
    but the problems started from there.

    Frequently the registered domain cannot be accessed..
    i linked the domain to my blog in blogspot.com
    it worked but frequently it doesnt work when i type the domain name
    ping also result in no response.
    so did i set it up wrong..or it is their problems or google problem?

    I have also using google apps linked to this domain to use the emails
    when the site cannot be accessed the email service is still working

    So knowledgeable people here..can you please tell me where the fault lies..haha

    Anyway.one indeed shouldnt buy from them…not having a very good experience with them as of now

  51. carrhys Avatar

    Yes i agree with you ! I am a webdesinger.. I has a website registered through rediff…Not even a week i get a problem…. my client is pounding me daily.. am not even able to get out of that… rediff really sucks !

  52. Sashmit Avatar
    Sashmit

    Rediff hosting is the Worst i have ever seen, and these people only knows how to take money and then no service and customer care facility for the clients, they should be kicked off from this service…I recommend people no to get trapped with Reidff hosting.

  53. Rediff is providing WordPress on Windows hosting. One of my dumbass customer wants to host his wordpress site on Rediff windows hosting and it is constantly crashing. You can not even install WordPress on their server. If you send them mail they usually give stupid reply like cheack your site on “pagewah dot com” and it is working fine, etc…Rediff is a biggest scam ever I have seen in my web designing career. Please never go for Rediff, you will get frustrated and irritate. I can not deliver my completed project since 2 month only because wordpress is not working on their server. I don’t know why they are providing all those scripts which they can not support. They have dumbass support team.

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