Corporate Blog

Using the mail server control panel to manage your email

28 July 2025 02:21:47 +0000

Back when NinerNet started in this business in 1996, we had to do everything for our clients, and I do mean everything. I’m not going to list “everything” because you’ll stop reading, but one example is creating an email account. This was because control panels hadn’t been invented yet.

Now we have control panels, but because it seems that email “just works”, people don’t take the time to look at their control panels to determine why things “just work”. Let’s leave aside the mail service providers that “just don’t work”, as illustrated in our last post.

One thing that isn’t quite 100% automated yet, because humans are still needed, is reading the minds of email senders. Incoming spam is pretty close to 100% automated thanks to programs like SpamAssassin and blacklists. Handling incoming email is close to 100% automated because the onus is on the senders to do something to ensure that their messages are not seen as spam. It’s not a big secret that, for example, this subject indicates that the message it contains is probably spam: “GET RISH QUICK!!! MILIONS WHILE YOU SLEEP!!!!!” So guess what? You don’t receive messages with that subject because they’re caught and deleted by spam filters. (Yes, those spelling mistakes are intentional.) If you use a bulk mail service provider to send mass emails to your clients, as you should if you do send them, they try to educate you on what markers will trigger spam filters, and they also usually provide some sort of testing platform that will analyse your message to determine whether or not it might be caught by a spam filter.

But two things blow me away:

When clients send emails to themselves, and
When those emails are marked as spam so they never arrive.

Now, it does occur to me that maybe their using our system to test their email to see if it will be considered spam. But really, the examples we’ve seen are definitely not that! Most of the time they’re sending themselves a file that is attached. Why?! They obviously already have the file, so why are they sending it to themselves?!

The problem is that we don’t know if the client knows why they didn’t receive the message they sent themselves. Have they assumed that NinerNet “lost” it? I sure hope not, because we know exactly where it is and why it wasn’t delivered. And if the client logs into their control panel and looks at their “quarantined” messages, they’ll know as well!

Here’s an example of a message that a client has been sending themselves continually for about a week now:

Self-spam.

Here’s the plain-text view:

Content type: Spam
Internal reference code for the message is 01478-17/tLRgpsMsQL9j

First upstream SMTP client IP address: [160.242.61.xxx]:37436

Received trace: ESMTPSA://[160.242.61.xxx]:37436

Return-Path: <xxxx@xxxxxxhydraulics.com>
From: wade <xxxx@xxxxxxhydraulics.com>
The message has been quarantined as: tLRgpsMsQL9j

The message WAS NOT relayed to:
<xxxx@xxxxxxhydraulics.com>:
250 2.7.0 ok, discarded, id=01478-17 - spam

Spam scanner report:
Spam detection software, running on the system "nc036.ninernet.net",
has identified this incoming email as spam. The original
message has been attached to this so you can view it or label
similar future email. If you have any questions, see
the administrator of that system for details.

Content preview: [...]

Content analysis details: (4.3 points, 5.0 required)

pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
-1.0 ALL_TRUSTED Passed through trusted hosts only via SMTP
-1.9 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1% [score: 0.0000]
0.1 MIME_HTML_MOSTLY BODY: Multipart message mostly text/html MIME
0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
1.7 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 BODY: HTML: images with 400-800 bytes of words
0.8 MPART_ALT_DIFF BODY: HTML and text parts are different
0.5 MISSING_MID Missing Message-Id: header
1.8 MISSING_SUBJECT Missing Subject: header
2.3 EMPTY_MESSAGE Message appears to have no textual parts
0.0 TO_NO_BRKTS_HTML_IMG To: lacks brackets and HTML and one image

Let’s analyse each of these points on which the email message was scored for spam. Let me say first of all that negative scores are good, so we won’t waste our time with those. I’m also going to focus on only the scores above 1:

1.7 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 BODY: HTML: images with 400-800 bytes of words
* If your message is just an image it probably won’t get through. You need to add text so that the spam filter believes you’re explaining/describing the image.

1.8 MISSING_SUBJECT Missing Subject: header
* Use a freaking subject! If you’re really just sending a message to yourself, mash some keys in the subject line! It doesn’t matter what they are.

2.3 EMPTY_MESSAGE Message appears to have no textual parts
* Again, if only you yourself are going to see the message, mash some random keys in the body of your message.

Messages with a spam score over 3.5 are considered spam, and this message consistently receives the above score of 4.3. If this person would just do one of the things above — mash some keys in either the subject or body (or both!) — he/she would get his or her message. And yet, I get a copy of this spam report every time he/she tries. It’s frustrating, for me and (I assume) for the sender that never receives a copy of their message!

Of course, in line with the subject of this post, the sender can also log into the control panel, navigate to their quarantine, mark the message they sent to themself and “release” it.

Tags: email, spam
Categories: Interest
Comments Off

Continual problems with South African ISPs and mail service providers (Afrihost and Xneelo)

27 July 2025 23:36:22 +0000

I’ve just spent about seven hours writing a long, detailed and evidence-based reply to a client who just receives nothing but BS, delay tactics and obfuscation from a South African mail service provider named Afrihost. (Please see here for the details of the never-ending Xneelo debacle, which is similar.) I am posting this here so that I can at least get some mileage out of this waste of seven hours of my life, on a Sunday.

Names and addresses have been changed or redacted to protect the guilty.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your email. You only sent one side of a supposed email
exchange with Afrihost; there was no "back-and-forth" so I see no
evidence, namely domains (besides your own domains, which are only one
side of the equation, and hotmail.com), IP addresses, dates, times and
(most importantly) bounce messages. In particular I see no evidence --
no *proof* -- on Afrihost's side that what they are saying is true.
Anybody can say and claim anything they want, but it's pointless if
they don't back it up with evidence.

Unlike in politics, everything I have said in the past about email and
everything I will say in the future (including below) is technical and
backed up by hard evidence. Lying to paying clients is a complete waste
of time and will not end well, but it seems that the support
departments of bigger companies like Afrihost are schooled in BS and
delay tactics, rather than providing actual support or admitting fault
and actually fixing their broken systems.

This email is long (I won't apologise) because email is complicated and
this message is based on the work that Afrihost won't do to address
your one puny complaint because they have a lots of other complaining
customers to BS with their lies. The hours (about six so far today just
to answer your email full of Afrihost lies) of work *I* have to do to
give you a full and honest answer and explanation is something that
doesn't increase their share price, so they won't do it. But my efforts
seem to be worthless because everyone seems to believe BS these days
rather than concrete proof.

Here is my actual evidence / hard proof:

* https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/ucebox.co.za.html
* This is a domain-based list of mail servers that are in blacklists,
and this is a search based on ucebox.co.za, which shows their domain in
one blacklist.

* https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/smtp.ucebox.co.za.html
* This is the same as above, but with the alleged name of their sending
(SMTP) server (definitions below) provided in the Afrihost message
below, and the results show that their SMTP server is in the same
blacklist.

* https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/197.242.159.57.html
* The sub-domain smtp.ucebox.co.za resolves to twelve different IP
addresses. This is a search for one of those IP addresses, and that IP
address is in five blacklists!

* https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/41.76.215.28.html
* Like the search above, this is a search for another of their twelve
IP addresses -- both this one and the one above are random choices because
I'm not repeating the search twelve times when the results for *two* of
them are bad enough. This IP address is in six blacklists!

A quick glance shows that the blacklists all seem to be the same (which
is not surprising), so they are not in a total of 13 blacklists, just
the greatest number of 6. In comparison, NinerNet's mail server is in
three:

https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/178.62.195.26.html

The point is not to compare numbers and say that our number is smaller
and so we're better; the point is to say that we're aware of the
problem, and the information we have provided on our blogs (
https://blog.niner.net/tag/email and https://status.niner.net/tag/mail
) goes towards explaining certain things.

In there we explain our presence in two of the blacklists (Ascams and
UCEPROTECT), which cover every single one of the IP addresses owned by
our data centre; it is *not* because our mail server has done anything
to be in that blacklist. The only full remedy to that problem is for us
to move our mail server to another data centre with another company,
which is not something that we can do on a whim and without
considerable forethought and planning, but which we *will* be doing on
the next move. What we do to overcome this problem is to redirect all
email to certain domains through our secondary SMTP server; problem
solved. It's impossible for us to know in advance what those
destination domains are, but as soon as one is reported by one of our
clients we direct all future messages to that domain through our
secondary SMTP server. Problem *immediately* and *fully* solved. (By
the way, hotmail.com is one of those domains, which is why you'll
receive this via our secondary outbound/SMTP mail server.)

The third blacklist (Polspam) is a Polish blacklist. It's a bit more
complicated to determine why we're on that list, but my *educated* (I
emphasise) guess is that we're on it for the exact same reason we're on
the other two blacklists, because all of our data centre's IP addresses
are blacklisted.

Have you asked Afrihost why they are on at least six blacklists and
what they're doing about it? I believe the answer to that question is
"no", and even if you asked you will *not* get an answer, or you will
be told in relatively polite terms that you don't know anything about
email and that they are perfect and NinerNet is the problem ... the
aforementioned BS. This is similar to the issue with another South
African ISP, which we have documented exhaustively at:

status.niner.net/2024/01/19/email-messages-from-xneelo-formerly-hetzner-south-africa-senders-blocked

We don't get into these arguments with non-South African ISPs and mail
service providers, so I'm forced to come to the conclusion that South
African's don't give a damn.

Definitions:

* Blacklist (also "blocklist" for those that want to be politically
correct): A list of servers -- usually based on their IP addresses, not
domains -- that have sent spam or malware in the recent past. The full
definition is broader than that (as I've partially explained above) but
if you want a longer explanation than this already long email I suggest
you use an Internet search engine I refer to below. Blacklists exist to
remove servers from the email system that have shown problematic
behaviour in the *recent* past so that legitimate receiving mail
servers -- such as NinerNet's -- don't have to process "junk" email,
and legitimate email receivers -- such as you -- don't have to read and
process junk email.

* BS: This is about as profane as I will get in communications with a
client, although in situations like this it's getting more and more
difficult not to turn the air blue. It's an adjective, a noun, a verb
and probably various other parts of speech. If you're unclear on the
meaning, that's what Internet search engines are for.

* SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This protocol is how mail
servers communicate with one another, and the term "SMTP" is also used
as an adjective.

* Various other colour lists: They exist, but neither Afrihost's
domains nor IP addresses are in any, so I won't get into what they are
and are not.

I took a look at [YOUR WEBSITE]. I note that
(assuming that's you) you're involved in "Compliance & Business
Solutions", and that, "[You] believe that great businesses are built on
strong systems, clear strategy, and full compliance." Email is all
about "compliance" with "standards" which, as benign as that word
sounds, are actually the non-negotiable "rules" that have to be
followed to get an email message from point A to point B. Afrihost have
made all sorts of claims in the email you forwarded to me, but they
have not told you how you can check on those claims. On the other hand,
NinerNet has shown you all the third-party evidence that backs up the
claims I've made.

I will address some of the things they have said:

* "We’ve confirmed that the messages from [YOUR EXTERNALLY HOSTED EMAIL
ADDRESS] are successfully sent and accepted by the outbound mail relay
(smtp.ucebox.co.za) with a 250 OK response, indicating successful handoff.":

* While I'm willing to accept that someone has made a mistake in their
rush to get to the next complaint from one of their customers and I
don't want to be pedantic, an "outbound mail relay" does not "accept"
email messages (as far as this issue is concerned), it offers/sends
them. The "250 OK response" is what they see in the logs on their mail
server, but since they didn't actually provide the specific lines of
the logs (with dates and times) NinerNet has absolutely no way of
correlating their claims against the corresponding lines in the logs of
our mail server. This is how auditing works, as you would very well
know from the list of qualifications on your website.

* "Additionally, the same emails are being successfully delivered to
[HOTMAIL ADDRESS], which confirms there’s no issue on our end
with sending or authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass":

* Again, NinerNet is not Hotmail and doesn't know how Hotmail servers
work. It does *not* confirm *anything* other than the fact that Hotmail
and NinerNet handle email from blacklisted IP addresses differently. And
they didn't tell you how to confirm that their claims that their "SPF,
DKIM, and DMARC" all pass. I took a quick look at some of their public
DNS records -- did I mention how many hours I've already spent on this
reply? -- and at least one of them are broken. It's not a significant
one, but if they can't get one of them right how and why should I or
you assume that they got the rest of them right?!

* "You may check if there is [sic] any server-side filters or rules
that might be rejecting, flagging, or silently discarding these
messages. if not, you may whitelist the domain at the [YOUR DOMAIN]
side and check again.":

* This is a good idea. I have checked whatever blacklists you might
have in place through the control panel on the mail server and you
don't seem to be blocking anything relevant, but you will have to log
into the webmail to see if there are any filters in place there that
could be causing a problem. I have looked for ucebox.co.za and the IP
addresses that smtp.ucebox.co.za uses in our server-wide blacklists,
and they are not there. That means that if email from their servers to
our server are bouncing -- that hasn't explicitly been stated -- then
they're bouncing because of the blacklists their servers are in. This
means that the blacklists are working as intended and as advertised,
which I consider to be a good thing.

While in the control panel I had a look at the logs of email you've
received at [YOUR DOMAIN], and I note four recent email messages
successfully received from [YOUR EXTERNALLY HOSTED EMAIL ADDRESS]:

* RE: Bank confirmation letter, Lease agreement and Invoices.
* 2025-07-26 11:44:09 CAT

* TEST
* 2025-07-27 12:23:03 CAT

* Last Test
* 2025-07-27 12:23:15 CAT

* test new
* 2025-07-27 17:08:37 CAT

Those were all successfully received, which makes me wonder why I have
spent six hours writing this email. For that reason I will end this
message here and claim, like Afrihost, that there is no problem.

Craig

On Sun, 2025-07-27 at 15:07 +0000, [NINERNET CLIENT] wrote:
> Hi Craig,
>
> Trust you are well? Please see below emails and my back-and-forth
> exchange with Afrihost. None of my emails from my [EXTERNALLY HOSTED DOMAIN]
> domain is being received by our [NINERNET-HOSTED DOMAIN]. are you able to check
> into it please?
>
> Thanks and Regards,
>
> [NINERNET CLIENT]
> [PHONE NUMBER]
>
>
>
> From: Afrihost <hosting@afrihost.com>
> Sent: 27 July 2025 16:59
> To: [NINERNET AND AFRIHOST CLIENT]
> Subject: [#PXQ-982-73116]: blocked emails
>
> Hello there.
>
> Following up on the issue regarding non-delivery of emails to
> [NINERNET CLIENT]:
>
> We’ve confirmed that the messages from [AFRIHOST-HOSTED EMAIL ADDRESS]
> are successfully sent and accepted by the outbound mail relay
> (smtp.ucebox.co.za) with a 250 OK response, indicating successful
> handoff.
>
> Additionally, the same emails are being successfully delivered to
> [CLIENT'S HOTMAIL ADDRESS], which confirms there’s no issue on our end
> with sending or authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass
>
> You may check if there is any server-side filters or rules that might
> be rejecting, flagging, or silently discarding these messages. if not
> , you may whitelist the domain at the [CLIENT'S DOMAIN] side and check
> again.
>
> Regards,
> Sreehari RS
> Check out some of our hosting tutorials by going to the following
> link:
> https://answers.afrihost.com/video-hosting

--
NinerNet Communications | Craig Hartnett
* https://www.niner.net | [EMAIL ADDRESS]
Phone: +1 604 630 1772 | +260 96 209 8871 | 1 855 NINERNET

We do not have these discussions with our clients about ISPs and mail service providers in Europe, North America, South America, Asia or Oceania. Incompetence seems to be concentrated in South Africa.

Tags: afrihost, email, reputation, xneelo
Categories: Warnings
2 Comments »

The lost month

9 July 2025 03:53:53 +0000

If you’re following our status blog (which we hope you are), you’ll note that we had planned to send our June invoices a few weeks late. Well, we’ve decided to reset the clock. June is a lost month in more ways than one for us, so we’re giving up on sending June invoices and just going to send July invoices.

For most clients, who are invoiced quarterly, this just means that your June invoice will be a month late, and your September invoice will appear to arrive two months early … although it will still be sent in September, but that will be two months after July instead of three months after June! Confused yet? Sorry. For our resellers you’ll essentially be billed for two months in July, but we’re assuming that you are not as disorganised and have not suffered the technical problems our office has in June, and so you’ve been invoicing normally all along.

As always though, please keep in mind the actual expiry dates of your products and services contracted with third parties: domains and certificates. Under normal circumstances we invoice clients 30-60 days in advance of expiry, but if you were scheduled to be invoiced in June you’re now going to be invoiced 0 to 30 days before expiry. For anyone whose service expires very soon after 15 July we will contact you proactively, but if we have left you too little time to make your payment for your domain or certificate, but you intend to renew it, please contact NinerNet to let us know. We will renew services in advance of your payment so that you stay online. We will continue to send scheduled reminder notices; it’s not that we’re uncaring expletives who don’t realise that our invoices have been sent late, but we’re just doing our job of making sure that you’re aware of dates and what you need to do. Just reach out to us and yell at us as needed; we can take it.

This is a less-than-optimal situation (to put it in words that any PR agent worth his or her salt would envy), we get it. (A disaster, I’d put it, more explicitly.) June was (and July continues to be) a nightmare for us in the office, but we’re just thankful that our servers have managed to run smoothly, except for the issue on the mail server that kicked off the turmoil in combination with failures of technology in the office on the very same day. The nightmare continues, to be frank, but things are finally coming together and there is light at the end of the tunnel, so it will hopefully be over soon.

Tags: accounts receivable, billing, domain renewals, invoices, paying your bill, paying your invoice, transparency
Categories: Notices
1 Comment »

Our new rates

16 February 2025 22:43:33 +0000

We sent the following information to our existing clients on 14 February 2025:

As we advised on 29 November 2024, we have a new retail rate system. These rates are already in effect for new clients, and they go into effect today for existing clients. Invoices issued this month will use the new rates.

Our rates page will be updated next week, but here is a summary of the changes:

Web hosting: Hosting a website will now cost only US$10/C$15 per month, down from up to US$40 per month. (More on exchange rates in a moment, especially for you Canadians.) As we said in November, this will cover websites of all sizes that we currently host. If a company with a website the size and complexity required by the likes of Google or Microsoft shows up, this will not apply, and we will quote on their specific needs. Aliasing additional domains to the same website will be done at no additional charge.

DNS/nameserver hosting: NinerNet will provide DNS hosting for US$20/C$30 per year per domain, which is the same as our current rate. Almost all of our clients have only one domain. If a client has two domains (for example) aliased to the same email and/or web hosting we will offer significant discounts. So if someone has example.com and example.net pointing to the same website and/or the same email accounts, they will not both be US$20 but the second will be discounted.

Email hosting: We will no longer offer “bundles” of email accounts: if you want one email account, you will pay for one email account; if you want a thousand email accounts, you will pay for a thousand. No longer do you have to upgrade to the next package if you want to go from five email accounts to six. Email accounts will be US$4/C$6 each per month and will include 25 GB of disk space — room for about 3.6 million average-sized email messages that don’t contain any attachments like cat videos. 🙂 Of course, some of your emails will contain cat videos, not to mention product catalogues, company videos, etc. That’s OK!; you’re allowed to send and receive those. For managing the amount of space you use on the server we have long recommended an archiving scheme. If you choose not to use an archiving scheme like that, that’s OK, you’re allowed to do that too, and when your email account grows to exceed the 25 GB we include, then we’ll start invoicing you for the additional space you need at the same rate of US$5/C$7.50 per 100 MB per month in 100 MB increments. You can use the mail server control panel to determine how much space each of your email accounts are using.

Other things you should know:

Currency exchange rates: Our rates are based on the US dollar. This is because, as you know, international commerce is largely based on that currency, and American companies have largely cornered the market on providing top-of-the line IT services like data centres. (Largely, not totally.) For currencies like the Canadian dollar the exchange rate has generally remained fairly stable; for the Zambian kwacha this has not been the case, and we revised our kwacha rates quarterly, sometimes putting prices up, sometimes taking them down. Zambians are used to this but Canadians are not. However, due to the unpredictable economic landscape between the US and Canada these days (bad timing on our part!), the value of the Canadian dollar in US dollars has taken a dive. This has resulted in our Canadian-dollar rates increasing. Our current exchange rate of 1.5 will not remain that way for years though, as we’ll keep an eye on it and adjust it if necessary, but likely not more than once a year. When we start to accept payment in kwachas again, we’ll likely go back to quarterly revisions, while the US dollar rates on which other currencies’ rates are calculated will remain the same barring any major changes.

Do I need to pay something different even if my hosting is not expiring for a few months?: No, if you have already paid for hosting and have an expiry date in the future, your rates and your hosting will not change until your next invoice.

Can I continue to be invoiced annually?: This will likely depend on the nature of your account. For many clients you will continue to be invoiced annually if you had previously chosen to be. If you have managed your account in a more fluid fashion, changing the quotas of your email accounts with some regularity and adding and removing accounts more often, then you will likely be invoiced quarterly. This will actually affect very few clients, but it will affect some.

Will the disk quotas of individual accounts be managed and charged for separately?: No, entire domains will be assigned a disk space quota based on the number of email accounts they need. So if a client needs 10 email accounts, their domain will be assigned a quota of 250 GB (10 x 25 GB). If you want to assign a small quota of 10 GB to one account and a quota of 50 GB to another, you can. This would mean one or more accounts could use more disk space than other accounts and not incur greater charges.

We look forward a new rate system that more fairly charges based on actual usage, and doesn’t railroad clients into accepting bigger packages just because they need one more email account. We emphasise once again that most clients will not see their total invoices change, and some will even see their charges decrease. We remain open to any feedback on the new system. Thank-you.

Tags: accounts receivable, billing, email, invoices, paying your bill, paying your invoice, rates, transparency
Categories: Announcements
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Cookies scam

28 December 2024 01:28:00 +0000

Please do not fall for this scam!

I’m from tech support. I’m here to delete your cookies.

Tags: cookies, humour
Categories: Notices
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NinerNet Christmas hours and wishes

24 December 2024 16:12:55 +0000

We’re a little late in getting this out, but our office is closed for the season and will reopen on Monday 6 January 2025. Any non-emergent issues will be dealt with at that time; emergency support continues to be available 24/7.

Of course, our servers will continue to be monitored 24/7 for the remaining seven days of the 365 they are monitored this year, not to mention the first six of the next 365. 🙂 That is to say, they are monitored 24/7/365 each and every year!

We wish all of you, your employees, colleagues, families and friends all the best. We thank you for your ongoing patronage, and we look forward to talking to each of you in the New Year. We are pretty excited about what 2025 has in store for NinerNet.

Tags: service hours, support
Categories: Notices
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Payment dates

21 November 2024 23:20:19 +0000

Executive summary: Please pay your invoice on or before the due date!

We are writing this brief post to address a trend we have noticed in recent months. I want to make clear, though, this it does not apply to most of our clients, but it does apply to a significant number of them. However, it’s something everyone needs to know.

The trend is a tendency to leave payment of your invoice until what some people seem to think is an acceptable last minute.

I will admit that I myself have said a few times in the past that you have until the expiry date of your service to pay your invoice. My bad. This does apply to services that are 100% under our control — e.g., shared hosting (not VPS hosting though) — but if you wait until the expiry date of a service that is partially under the control of a third party — e.g., a domain registrar, a certificate authority, etc. — you are taking a big chance if you wait until the expiry date, because the chances are now significant that the service provided by the third party will go offline for a time.

If you look at our “billing procedures” page you will see that we aim to send our invoices on the 15th of the month. I admit that we don’t always meet that self-imposed deadline, but even if we miss it by a couple of days, this doesn’t affect the fact that our invoices must be paid in good time before your services expire. (Please keep a record of those dates and pay attention to our reminder emails.) Let’s look at the first example on that page, with an expiry date of 10 March. If it’s only your shared hosting that expires on that date, you get a one-week grace period (unless you’re in the process of transferring out), so even if you pay a day or two late, your hosting will not be interrupted.

However, if it’s your domain registration that expires on that date, it will go offline sometime on the expiry date between 00:01 and 23:59. So if you pay a couple of days late, your domain will be offline for a couple of days. If you’re one of the few people who don’t mind that, no problem; if you do mind that — as, I believe, most of you do — don’t wait until the last minute! Seriously.

The big however here though is that the registrar we currently use — which has changed names so many times in the last few years it’s difficult to keep track, but they currently go by the names “Team Internet” and/or “CentralNic Reseller” — actually deletes some domains before they expire! We currently know (without being informed in advance, mind you) that they delete dot-africa and dot-za domains two days before they expire. Why? We have no idea. We brought this to the attention of the dot-africa registry (Registry Africa Limited) and the dot-za registry (ZA Registry Consortium (Pty) Ltd.) earlier this year and, while they initially seemed to understand our outrage, six months later they sided with the registrar who is selling 365 days, but only providing 363 days. This is because the registrar has re-written contracts to redefine the term “year” to be whatever they want it to be. (They used to do this with dot-ca domains as well, but when we complained to the dot-ca registry, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority did the right thing and put our registrar in their place and made them comply with the dot-ca domain lifecycle.)

The result is that clients with dot-africa and dot-za domains who thought they had until the day their domains expired to pay their invoice, found that not only did their domains stop working two days before they were supposed to expire, but they also had to pay additional fees to have the registrar “un-delete” their domain, and wait for them to do so. These fees add up to several years worth of renewal fees. This also used to happen to dot-ca registrants until we complained and won that case.

It is also worth pointing out that if you acquired your domain through a “drop catcher” — a company that snaps up expiring domains the moment they “drop” — you also need to ensure that you pay your invoice well before your domain expires, at least a week if you’re paying by an electronic method. This is also because the domain registrar that almost always catches these domains (Network Solutions, aka Netsol) also engages in subterfuge to prevent our normal process of transferring your domain to our registrar, and also charges additional fees that add up to several years worth of renewal fees. If you wait until the day your domain expires to pay your invoice, you will find that we will have to issue a new invoice to you to pay these fees before we can transfer and renew your domain.

But the point of this post — which is much longer than I envisioned — is this: don’t delay paying your invoice until the day your service expires or a day or two beforehand. Sure, if the money sits in your bank account for a few more days, and you’re lucky enough to earn interest on your balance, you’ll earn a few cents or ngwees more, but at the risk you’ll have to pay significantly more dollars or kwachas! Is that worth it? No, it’s not.

Our invoices used to include a “PLEASE PAY BY” date, three weeks after the invoice date. That was our overly polite way (although that’s not the full reason) of describing a due date. Because most of our services are prepaid, and we stopped charging interest on late payments many years ago, we became quite loosey-goosey. However, we have gone back to describing that date as a “due date”, and on that date the clock starts; every day you wait to pay after that date increases the risk that your now-unpaid service will go offline when it expires.

DON’T TAKE THAT CHANCE. PAY BEFORE THE DUE DATE!

Update, 2024-11-25: Clarified that you only get a week’s grace period on shared hosting if you are not already in the process of transferring your hosting out.

Tags: accounts receivable, billing, centralnic reseller, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, dot-africa domains, dot-za domains, invoices, paying your bill, paying your invoice, registry africa limited, team internet, za registry consortium
Categories: Notices
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Impending registrar transfer of your dot-ca domain(s)

16 November 2024 10:39:38 +0000

This post confirms a mass email we have just sent to a number of registrants of dot-ca domains.

We have decided to change the registrar with which we register dot-ca domains. We are actually returning to OpenSRS; the reasons we left them in 2018 have never really been fixed, but we maintained our account with them because, despite their operational issues, they are a decent registrar that generally tries to do the right thing by dot-ca registrants. Considering the trouble we have had with our current registrar — who go by more names than you can shake a stick at, but they include “CENTRALNIC CANADA INC“, “Team Internet” and “CentralNic Reseller” — this is a significant improvement! The new (old) registrar is, as stated above, OpenSRS, but they also trade under the name of their parent company, Tucows.

We are letting you know that you (as your domain’s owner, or registrant) need to approve this transfer because you ultimately have choice in the matter and have control over your domain. As your domain advisor and host, we recommend that you accept this transfer because it means that pretty much everything will stay the same for your hosting and billing, and the domain renewal you have already paid for will take place at the same time. Additionally, approving this transfer will not interrupt your domain’s service in any way. This is how we continue to serve you and provide our services.

One of the ways in which OpenSRS has not improved — it blows my mind after six years — is that they still can’t seem to decide from which domain they send their emails! You will receive emails from addresses on the opensrs.email and opensrs.org domains. After your domain is transferred you will go back to receiving emails from the “domainsupport” address on the niner.net domain. The initial message will have the subject, “Transfer Request for DOMAIN.CA”, where DOMAIN.CA will be your dot-ca domain. Please click the approve.domainadmin.com link in the message, select the option to approve the transfer and enter your “transfer key”, which we will send to you separately immediately after this message.

After the transfer completes a few minutes later you will also receive confirmation emails from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) using the email address info_AT_cira.ca. All of these messages that you’ll receive around the time you approve the transfer(s) are legitimate, but if you have any questions please do contact NinerNet support.

Thank-you for following these instructions, and thank-you for your continued business.

Tags: cira, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, registrar transfers
Categories: Notices
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Quarterly kwacha rate review, Q4 2024

1 October 2024 00:00:52 +0000

We no longer invoice our Zambian clients or accept payments in kwachas due to the incompetence of Stanbic Bank. This will change in early 2025 due to our planned change in management structure, which will include banking with a competent Zambian bank. Until then invoices will be issued in US dollars.

We apologize for this temporary interruption.

Tags: accounts receivable, billing, kwacha, quarterly kwacha rate review, rates, transparency
Categories: Notices
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The incompetence of Stanbic Bank is no longer tolerable

19 September 2024 15:26:16 +0000

Stanbic logo crossed.

As our Zambian clients are well aware, we have had nothing but trouble with Stanbic Bank of Zambia this year. Our business account has been locked/frozen multiple times, and it’s a huge hassle to get access again each time. In the meantime we can’t confirm receipt of payments so that we can send receipts to our clients. And we can’t manage our funds to pay bills and so on.

When I was in the country in May 2024 I approached Immigration and let them know that I wanted an Immigration permit for one reason and one reason only: To open a new bank account. I suppose my honesty must have flummoxed the first person I spoke to, so he referred me to a supervisor. The supervisor told me that I didn’t need to go that far (i.e., get a permit just to open a bank account); all I needed to do was talk to his unemployed friend who could “assist” me if I just “bought him lunch”. Of course, we all know what the quoted words in that last sentence mean: bribes.

I was desperate at this point. I joke to everyone I know that all of my grey hair is the result of dealing with Stanbic for the last sixteen years. It may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s not far from the truth. One of these days I will write a book, or at least document sixteen years of torment at the hands of Stanbic on an anonymous blog.

Anyway, considering my desperation I followed the supervisor’s advice and contacted his unemployed “friend”. However, besides the fact that I had no way to know how hungry said friend was planning to be at lunch time, it turned out this guy didn’t know anything about business accounts. So I just gave up and told him where to go.

This is relevant because my grandly named “business banker” at Stanbic decided in about June or July to start their officially sanctioned harassment project on NinerNet, known euphemistically as “KYC”, Know Your Client. It’s completely legitimate, of course, because since I opened our account in 2008 I may have changed my identity, and with the vast sums of money that our clients pay us NinerNet could single-handedly be financing all of the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan … on and on the list and our largesse grows. Stanbic harassed us about a year or two ago, and I finally told them that either they could close our account and I would move our business out of the country, stop paying their exorbitant monthly fees, and stop paying taxes to the ZRA … or they could just let us carry on running our legitimate business as usual. I, of course, have no idea how the brain trust that runs Stanbic thinks, but that fended off the harassment.

Until now. Our business banker again made threats that our account would be closed if we didn’t produce a permit, despite the fact that we obviously produced a TP (temporary permit) to open the account in 2008. So the whole reason I abandoned the plan to open a new account back in May was now being forced on us by brainless bean counters at Stanbic. And then one day, we were locked (again!) out of online banking.

We tried to contact our “business banker” at Stanbic, but he was apparently on leave. Please note that when someone is on leave from Stanbic they do not feel the need to shift that person’s work to another employee so that the bank can continue serving their clients; you just have to wait until they get back from the beach to get help. Not satisfied with this, I reached out to another Stanbic employee. Miracle of miracles, I had access to our Stanbic account a couple of days later.

But that was the last straw. We can’t go on wondering from one day to the next if we’re going to have access to our account. We can’t go on wondering if we’re going to have access to our funds, that we have earned from our clients and had paid to us in our account to pay our suppliers. Tying to do business under these conditions is intolerable.

So we have pulled the plug. Starting with our invoices this month, we will no longer be invoicing our Zambian clients in kwachas. We will squeeze the few remaining kwachas in our account out to pay our suppliers — data centres, domains registrars, phone companies, “tax consultants” — and then we will abandon our Stanbic accounts. (What’s the point in jumping through Stanbic’s hoops to close them formally?!) By the end of September 2024 we will no longer accept payments into our Stanbic account. Our September invoices will be issued by our Canadian company and will be payable in US dollars. We are in the process of de-registering NinerNet Communications in Zambia, and we have stopped filing tax returns and paying taxes to the ZRA.

Zambia has won; we admit defeat.

We are not paying billions of kwachas in taxes; we are just a small Zambian business trying to do the right thing. We are trying to run a business that provides excellent service to Zambians, and we are trying to pay our taxes to contribute to the Zambian economy, an economy that is hobbled by ZESCO inflicting load shedding for up to 20 hours a day. (There are only 24 hours in a full day!) In return we are treated like absolute crap by Stanbic, ostensibly enforcing rules that make our ability to carry on doing business impossible. These conditions make it impossible for NinerNet Communications, a Zambian-registered and tax-paying company, to continue doing business in Zambia. And if one Zambian small business is driven out of the country in this manner, it’s only a matter of time before all Zambian small businesses are driven out of business.

We regret that we have been forced into this situation, but we see no other option at this time. In early 2025 NinerNet in Zambia will be reborn under a new management structure, and will again have a Zambian bank account, but not with Stanbic. When this happens we will again be able to invoice our clients and accept payments in kwachas. Until then, though, Zambian clients will be issued invoices by our Canadian company and accept payments only in US dollars, and our Canadian company will pay taxes to the Canadian government and will not pay taxes to the Zambian government.

Tags: accounts receivable, billing, immigration, invoices, kwacha, paying your bill, paying your invoice, quarterly kwacha rate review, stanbic, stanbic bank, stanbic bank of zambia, transparency, zambia, zra
Categories: Announcements
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