Namesco Ripping Off Registrants

Nominet does not charge registrars anything to retag a domain name (ie. release the domain to another registrar / provider) .

I’ve mentioned this previously, but I wasn’t expecting to hear about this kind of money grabbing from companies operating out of Ireland.

Unfortunately the acquisition of Register365 by Names.co.uk (part of the Dada group) means that anyone who is unfortunate enough to have co.uk domains with register365 is going to be held to ransom.

Names.co.uk have a public price list, although it’s buried in the “legal” section of their site for some odd reason.

There’s no mention of these prices or practices on the Register365 site, so I was very surprised when I was sent an email by one of their clients with a screen shot showing evidence of this:
namesco / register 365 control panelIf you don’t want to click on the image to see it.. the price being charged for something that takes only seconds and doesn’t cost anything is £10 + VAT or €12.49 +VAT!!!
Madness!
If you want to move your domains to another Nominet tag holder you shouldn’t have your domain held to ransom!

Nominet can retag domains for registrants. How much do they charge?
£11.75 including VAT, and that is regardless of the number of domains.

So if you wanted to move 1 *.uk domain to a new registrar or 1000 the only fee that Nominet would levy a registrant directly (via the online service system which would get it all done in a matter of seconds anyway …) is £11.75 including VAT (less than €15 including VAT)

Disclosure: Yes. I do run a Nominet registrar and no we don’t charge for retagging co.uk domains as we don’t get charged by Nominet.

Update: Wanted to verify with Nominet if there was a limit on the number of domains that could be retagged via the online service for the £11.75 fee and was informed that there was NO limit, as long as they were all merged onto the one online account.

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

Exit mobile version