While everyone should accept that hosting and domain registration is a business I’ve always felt that some companies employ quite questionable tactics to retain customers.
The charge that stands out is that some companies levy to “release” a domain name.
While the entire debate about locks and restrictions for inter-registrar transfers has been discussed at some length at the ICANN level it’s barely been broached in Nominet (*.uk) circles.
Why is it that some Nominet registrars levy fees for releasing domains?
Why are the fees so high?
Why doesn’t Nominet act in the registrant’s interest?
If you know of a registrar that is levying high fees for releasing co.uk domains either let me know via the comments or email me directly, as I’d be interested in putting together a more comprehensive report of this activity.
I think that ultimately Nominet is to blame not just for its inaction on this issue, but mostly for having generated the problem by creating a model where the only way to get a transfer done is to ask the losing registrar to “push” the domain to the new registrar (or pay Nominet to do it).
Some registrars obviously end up using this as an excuse to charge for the work they need to do to push the domain away, and in the worst cases to collect a “ransom” from their parting customers.
Maybe Nominet itself should give the good example and stop charging for pushing domains to new Registrars… that should solve the problem (and the amount of support they would have to deal with would hopefully make them realize the flaws of their current system).
If Nominet removed their fees it could encourage registrants to bounce from registrar to registrar which means they could leave unpaid bills scattered around all over the place with various registrars. To my understanding this is why registrars are encouraged by Nominet to do this for free. There are still registrars out there who charge an ‘admin’ fee for allowing the registrant to move a gTLD, let alone a .uk name. If Nominet reduced their fees, they would have more people doing it via them and it would add to the surplus cash they’re trying to get rid of.
I believe ukhost4u still charge £15 for a gTLD transfer away, as do easyspace.com. Namesco also charge for gTLD and UK – I believe the same fee.
Registrars are only billed by Nominet on renewal ie. they are not billed for transfers to their tag, so I don’t see how registrants could move around the place avoiding charges.
Nominet does not, from my understanding, encourage registrars to charge. They simply don’t get involved, which is an endorsement of sorts
The current situation leads to many registrants being held hostage by the registrar.
The transfer out charges for gTLDs are not permitted under the ICANN rules and this has been discussed at length within ICANN.