William M.

My credit card had been compromised so I had to cancel it and apply for a replacement. My annual fee for the email address I had registered with Hover was due and I soon got an email that Hover had attempted to charge my credit card and failed. I emailed *******@hover.com to ask for either a deferment of the payment or if there was another way I could pay. They didn't get back to me and just cancelled my email address. I had the email address with them for over twenty years and I had also been registering domains with them for nearly as long. Loyalty and a long history of making payments on time are obviously not important considerations to them.

So now I was minus a credit card and minus my email address which I use for work - I'm a contract software engineer. I couldn't see if any other automated charges to my credit card were failing as the notifications would have gone to that email address. Hover did absolutely nothing until I was finally able to get a replacement credit card, which took more than a week, enter the new card's details in my Hover account and renew the registration of my email address.

The excuse from Hover was that their emails requesting assistance were backed up. Unfortunately, their automated processes, eg the one that cancels registrations, weren't backed up so Hover is obviously keener to get rid of customers than to assist them in making payments. Not a particularly smart strategy I would have thought.

Just as a comparison. My monthly payment to my Internet provider was also rejected. However I was able to rectify this by going into my account, bringing up the failed transaction, and clicking on a button saying "defer payment for 14 days". Now THAT is a smart company that is keen to keep its customers.