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> their deeds over the last five years makes me think they want to earn some sort of record as the most unethical company in history.

To be fair, they are facing some stiff competition from these guys - http://www.droa.com/ - in their bid for that title.

In all my life, I have never received a piece of postal mail or a telephone call related to any of the dozen or so domains I own

You mean you never got letters from these guys?

Lucky you.....

I called the Dipshit Registry of America after they sent mail to my WHOIS address. They told me that they don't do that (even though the name, "Network Administrator" matched exactly) and that it must have been one of their "marketing partners." They advised me to write to president@droa.com. So I did, copied to ICANN, and received no response.

I wonder how many complaints ICANN gets about registries abusing this data? I'm not budging until they do something about it.

I called the Dipshit Registry of America after they sent mail to my WHOIS address. They told me that they don't do that (even though the name, "Network Administrator" matched exactly) and that it must have been one of their "marketing partners." They advised me to write to president@droa.com. So I did, copied to ICANN, and received no response.

I wonder how many complaints ICANN gets about registries abusing this data? I'm not budging until they do something about it.

Having had to deal with this from an almost identically named company in America, the quoted phrases don't seem nearly as sneaky and dirty as some I've seen, but it's good to see a precedent.

DRoEurope is run by the same folks who brought you DRoAmerica and DRoCanada ... these guys, who seem to be affiliated with Enom somehow (and who can't build a proper pending page, it seems).

DRoC was earlier slapped for sending mail using a logo remarkably similar to the Canadian governments logo.

Obviously these guys have no scruples. On the plus side, you can probably safely ignore anything you receive from the Domain Registry of Africa, Domain Registry of Asia and the Domain Registry of Oceania.

I had this with one of the afore-mentioned companies a few months ago. (I'm a coward and don't want to get into trouble, so I won't mention names.) They got e-mail addresses for every listed contact from our whois record, and sent off letters to anyone for whom they could find an address, warning that our domain name registration was about to expire.

Including our CEO.

Who, not understanding what it was, and also not realizing that I'd only just renewed the domain name for five years and we weren't in any danger of losing our domain name until 2007, passed it on to the secretary with instructions to pay the bill.

Now, in fairness, the letter is cunningly worded, and probably can't be technically construed as slamming; it gives you the option. But, hoo boy, is it slimey!

The first I knew about it was when I started getting automated e-mails from our original registrar asking me to go through certain steps to authorize the name transfer. I tracked down what was happening, and got on the phone to Dom. Reg. of ***.

Forget the long, boring, tedious arguments. And the appalling insolence and downright rudeness of their people. Just a few points...

* They're used to complaints. Despite their protestation that I was only the second person who'd ever complained about this, as soon as you mention the word slamming they've got a rehearsed speech about the wording of paragraph five which they quote to prove it's not slamming. Uh-huh. Try doing a Google search on them and see if it's that rare a complaint.
* They're unhelpful buggers. No matter when I called, I was always told that nobody who was there could help me with my complaint, and I'd have to call back.

In the end, it works out okay. All you have to do is not authorize the transfer and they can't do anything about it, and they have to refund your money. Except for a processing fee. Trust me -- I argued and bitched and generally made a nuisance of myself by pointing out there was nothing in any of the correspondence we'd received or on their website about a processing fee, and we got the money back.

But believe me; there is one company who is now boycotted for life in my books.

I work for a webhosting company and have had to deal with concerned and confused customers who have recieved emails from the Domain Registry of America, a sister company of Verisign. (I believe.. correct me if I'm wrong. Nonetheless this is very shady business practices and caused me LOTS of hassle.