ICLS.net - Whois Spamming Scumbags and how to get your money back
My younger sister recently had an encounter with the folks at ICLS.net. Here is how I managed to get my money back.
The scumbags at ICLS.net are well known for their scams. They mine whois data for various domains and then send a “bill” to the domain owner. They make every effort to make the thing look like a bill or invoice, but at the very bottom in a smaller font the letter says “this is not a bill or invoice”, explaining that in fact it is only an offer to submit your site to search engines. I’ve received these in the past and usually dump them without a second thought. However, about a year ago I setup a domain for my 12 year old, with her own gallery and wordpress blog.
The domain was registered in her name, and while I was out of town she received a letter from ICLS.net. To her and my parents it looked like a bill from the domain registrar for the domain, and they paid it. Their registrar is actually Godaddy. When I returned from Argentina, and noticed they had paid into this scam, I pulled up ICLS.net to look for their contact information. Unfortunately, they didn’t respond to e-mail and their listed address is in Antigua. They did however claim that if you use their service, you will receive a report as to the results and your new search engine rankings we never received this.
Doing some quick googling I found that both the FTC and the US Postal Service have been investigating these practices, so we filled complaints with their online forms. Additionally, I filled a complaint with the BBB and as them to contact ICLS.net on my behalf. After a few weeks, ICLS finally responded to the BBB, claiming to be a legitimate service, but that since we hadn’t received the report they would refund my sister’s payment. Anyways, we’ll see how this works out, but as I’ve said a number of times the BBB is great at helping to resolve complaints about companies. If you are ever unhappy with a product or service give them a call. It won’t always work, but often it does.