I got tricked by Dotster
Domain name registrar Dotster sent me an email inviting me to “confirm your email address”, and in return promised to “give you a coupon for 20% off your next purchase as a special thank-you gift”. This sounded good, as I had some domain name renewals coming up.
After checking that the email was really from Dotster and wasn’t phishing spam, I clicked on the link to confirm my email address. I figured that receiving Dotster’s promotional emails for a while would be a small penalty to pay in return for a 20% discount off my next purchase.
Not only did the 20%-off coupon expire in a mere six days, it also had a whole bunch of exclusions. Apparently, Dotster doesn’t think the purchase of domain name renewals should qualify as my “next purchase”. It sure feels like a purchase to me though.
To make it worse, not only was the coupon useless to me but I couldn’t find a way to remove my recently-confirmed email address from Dotster’s marketing subscription list.