I’ve always had mixed feelings about registries contacting registrants directly.
On one level it doesn’t bother me in the least, but on another I can see how it causes confusion
Over the past couple of years we’ve been dealing with an ever-growing number of registries and seen a wide variety of policies and implementations, but the contact policy is one that always causes some headaches.
Over on the IEDR discussion forums the question has been raised by several IE resellers, while the question has raised its head on the Nominet discussion lists as well.
Nominet will contact the registrant if the registrar does not renew the domain. If the registrant opts to go directly with the registry they get charged £80 Sterling, which is significantly higher than what most registrars would charge.
IEDR has a very similar process, but the gap in pricing between the registry and many of its resellers / registrars is a lot closer.
If a domain was registered via a registrar but moves direct to the registry several issues arise:
- The registry may be competing against its own registrars
- The registry does not offer ancillary services such as DNS, so what happens to them?
- Registrants maybe moving to the registry due to confusion
The list probably is a lot longer, but those seem to be the main ones that people mention
What should the registry do?
What do registrants want?
