I have been using Dotster as my registrar for a few years now. At the time I switched all my stuff from InterNIC, Dotster's $14.95 price was tough to beat. In today's market it's not so good, but I decided not to re-transfer my 40+ domain names because I liked the layout of the Dotster site and didn't want to deal with the hassle. That was until I got this "timeline" in my email a month ago:



Notice how they charge $99 to renew a domain when there is 30 days left until it expires. Is this normal? I never heard of crap like that so I promptly began moving all my expiring domains to NameCheap. Aside from the fact they don't register as many TLDs as Dotster, this registrar rules.

I was just wondering if that Dotster policy was a standard industry practice. It seems real scummy to me.

I have never heard of anything like that.

Although it looks like that the redemption fee does not go into effect until 45 days aftyer the domain actually expires - but is still listed in their registry.

It sounds like Dotster is trying to scare people into thinking that if they wait until it is deleted from Dotster's registry that someone is going to snatch it up right away - so paying an extra $99 gives the customer that extra piece-of-mind in case they happened to let their registration lapse. Sounds like a load of crap to me!

- trs

Although it looks like that the redemption fee does not go into effect until 45 days aftyer the domain actually expires - but is still listed in their registry.

Oh man, I just noticed that. For the past couple moths I have been cursing them thinking that the fee went into effect 30 days before the expiration date. Thanks to you, it now seems that this is not the case. Although, the chart is still not that clear and they lost my business because of it.

Maybe I should stop playing with my "jump to conclusions mat."

Yeah, that chart is very hard to read.

You're lucky, though - every time I play with my "Jump to Conclusions" mat, I just land on "Jump Again."

- trs

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If someone is late in paying their electricity or gas, the utility companies will usually not wait around too long before cutting them off. Then they, like the phone company, will usually charge a fee for re-activation. Same as they've outlined.

What they should have done is really make the expiration line RED or something. Some other registrars don't charge an extra $99. At least they're not as bad (crooked) as Totalnic.com. They LOCK your domain names without you asking for them to be locked. And they will NOT release the locks regardless of how many times you ask nor how you ask.

Then they will not honour any transfers away from their registrar while locks are in place. So essentially you're stuck. I'm in this boat with a number of domains. And they charge $20 per year in singles with a sliding scale.

If anyone can help me get my domains unlocked I'd be really appreciative. Totalnic ar HQ'd in Australia and have an office in Colorado in the US.

Bruno

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

What has recently annoyed me about my registrar is that I recently got a couple emails regarding each of my domains, at least the ones registered to my email address(es). These emails told me that I had to confirm my ownership of these domains. Apparently this was a legal requirement that had to be completed at the sixth-month ownership of your domain. Has anyone heard of this?

For me, this makes no difference. I can just log in and click the link and be done with it. But I've registered several other people and organizations to the same registrar, and fully expected them to just have to pay yearly. Now I have to remember everyone I've done this for, make sure that they don't delete this email they're getting that looks like spam to them, try to get their login/password, and go through this unnecessary process. Pain in the ass.

There are some registries that have *no* delay after the expiry until the redemption period begins, and can charge more. IIRC the ICANN rules allow this.

One thing for co.uk people to be aware of is that the procedures have changed here - they are writing to all owners of Detagged domains and if they get no response they are deleting them. When a .co.uk expires the registrant now gets an invoice or the opportunity to transfer the Tag to a new ISP, otherwise it is deleted.

I Detagged a few domains a couple of months back and they have just started deleting them. You can tell roughly when they will be deleted because it will be marked "SUSPENDED" in the whois and then deleted 6-8 weeks afterwards (this is random for good reason!)

edit: I have a few domains with Total Registrations, they are pretty good but if you have mail/DNS server there's not a lot to choose with most of them.

Gareth

Personally, I use eNom. They're not the greatest, but they do have an "auto-renew" feature. They email you a few weeks before expiration, and if you don't respond, they take some more money from your credit card and renew your domains automatically.