If someone is late in paying their electricity or gas, the utility companies will usually not wait around too long before cutting them off.

The difference there is the electricity or gas services don't have an expiration date. With a domain name you enter into a contract for a finite period of time. When that time expires, you are not obligated to renew.

What Dotster is doing is holding on to the domain name even after it has expired (and should be available for anyone to register) and waiving it in your face that if you don't want the possibility of someone else snatching your domain name from you then you've got to pay $99. That sounds almost like blackmail to me. Also, I've never had the utilitiy or phone company charge me a fee that is more than 6 times the total of what I've ever paid them.

- trs