Registry Reviews

Is Registry.com.au a Scam?

"I've received a bill in the mail from Registry Australia, is it a scam?"

Registry Australia is a privately owned (non Government) company that is known for providing business name renewal and domain name registration services by mail. Whether or not the letters are a scam depends on your perspective.

We will go into as much detail as possible to help the reader make their own informed decision.

Business Name Letter #

Registry Australia sends notices in the mail for business name renewals well in advance of their renewal date.

In Australia, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) manages the registry of business names.

ASIC maintains the registry and is the only place where business names can be registered or renewed.

Companies such as Registry Australia Pty Ltd provide an agent service meaning that they renew a business name with ASIC on behalf of their clients.

Agent services in principle can be legitimate. For example, your business accountant may offer to handle compliance tasks such as business name renewals and charge a fee for their time.

However, it is not clear whether Registry Australia provides a meaningful value-add to justify their service fee of over 100% markup.

Fact #1: Business Names can only be renewed through ASIC and Registry Australia charges a substantial markup for providing an agent service.

While Registry Australia is non-government, they claim to be registered as an ASIC Registered Agent, with agent number 42185.

ASIC sets rules for the conduct of what they call Private Service Providers which can be read here: Private service providers

The ACCC website states that a private service provider cannot:

The letters we have seen from Registry Australia note that the renewal process cannot be started more than 30 days before the expiry date, but we have observed letters being sent much earlier than two months before the renewal date.

Fact #2: Registry Australia has sent renewal offers earlier than 2 months before the expiry date, contrary to the rule that private service providers must not do so.

Although the letters do mention that Registry Australia Pty Ltd is a private service provider and independent of ASIC, many customer reviews on websites such as ProductReview.com.au share their personal experience of mistakenly thinking that Registry Australia represented the government.

Although consumers have mistakenly believed that the letters sent by Registry Australia represented ASIC or the Australian Government, it is an open question whether Registry Australia's conduct is misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive in contravention of section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law.

Fact #3: The name "Registry Australia" is similar to the "Australian Business Registry Services" department of ASIC which manages business names, and consumers have reported confusing the two

We have seen envelopes from Registry Australia that list their return address as PO Box 13267 Law Courts Vic 8010.

Australia Post offers PO Boxes for lease in the "Law Courts" suburb and anyone is able to lease one of these PO Boxes.

The Law Courts suburb implies that Registry Australia might be associated with either the legal profession in Victoria, or the judiciary branch of the Victorian government, when neither is the case.

A majority of the beneficial shareholders of Registry Australia live in Perth Australia. The sole director Ryan Manning also has a home address in Perth. See: Who Owns Registry.

Given the above, it can be speculated that leasing a PO Box in Law Courts Victoria is not a practical choice for the owners of Registry Australia and it is instead intended to give an impression of association with the legal profession or judiciary.

Fact #4: Registry Australia uses a "Law Courts Victoria" return address despite being owned by Perth residents and not being associated with the legal profession

Here are a selection of links from around the web discussing Registry Australia and other similar providers:

False Billing #

The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has published a guide on false billing scams. See: False Billing.

In the past, the ACCC has also taken legal action against companies sending letters about domain name registration. See: ACCC takes action against domain registration businesses (11 August 2017).