A Danish domain name company has come under fire after sending out invoices for internet naming registrations to potential customers who had yet to agree to buy the service.

No Dots sent a direct mail to 338,000 UK companies with an existing web presence, which included an invoice for £499 for one year's QName registration.

QName allows users to type in the name of a product or company directly and be automatically redirected to the right URL.

Although subsequent details explained that companies need only pay the invoice if they wished to activate a domain name reserved for them by the company, recipients of the mail have expressed concern that it is deliberately misleading.

Daryl Willcox, chief executive of Daryl Willcox Publishing, which received an invoice, told vnunet.com: "The worst thing was the fact that the invoice was the top sheet and they'd clearly made efforts to encourage people to pay it by accident. It's quite clearly an attempt to trick people into paying invoices rather than communicate their product.

"This will generate so much bad feeling among potential customers that they've actually shot themselves in the foot. But I feel sorry for those small number of people that do pay the invoices. It's theft by another name."

Willcox warned that the marketing exercise could make life more difficult for companies that carry out legitimate email or web marketing. But a spokeswoman from No Dots denied that the mailing had been sent out to deliberately mislead recipients.

"We sent out the invoices just in case people are interested to make it easier for them to pay. It's just making an offer. We hope people will read the mailing all the way through," she told vnunet.com.

The Direct Marketing Association has strict guidelines about the sending of unsolicited invoices as part of a mailing campaign, but because No Dots is based outside the UK there is little recourse for action, a spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for the Office of Fair Trading said: "The OFT is aware of a Danish-based trader called No Dots targeting UK businesses and demanding payment for unsolicited services.

"The OFT has no powers to tackle this type of cross-border business-to-business activity. However, we are liaising closely with our Danish counterparts about the activities of No Dots and the concerns of UK businesses."