Re: [gnso-pednr-dt] cost of recovery during Registrar grace period.

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello James Bladel,


On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 6:42 AM, James M. Bladel <jbladel@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> First, I agree with Michele that any discussion of ccTLD expiry
> practices and policies is well outside the scope of this WG, and
> possibly ICANN in general.  As he mentioned, ccTLDs set their own rules
> (although some have participatory policy development organizations of
> their own), and even -if- we were able to influence their behavior, I'm
> confident that registrars (and registrants) have a laundry list of ccTLD
> quirks and oddities that they'd like to change.  In the absence of this,
> registrars continue to manage this patchwork of rules & policies for all
> g/cc TLDs they offer, and (wherever possible) make this as seamless as
> practical for registrants.
>
> With respect to recovering names in gTLDs, registrars incur costs of at
> least two forms:  First, the registry will assess a fee, which can be
> significantly higher than the usual Create, Transfer, Renew charges.
> Second, the recovery process is more difficult to automate, and requires
> human involvement, resulting in increased resource / staff costs for the
> registrar.
>

Thank You for this explanation. If the Recovery process is different from
that of the automated Create, Transfer, Renew process and if it requires
human involvement, then the cost of this process is bound to be a little
higher, so the Registries are likely to charge a higher fee which gets
passed on to the Registrants. I also agree with Michele's line of reasoning
justifying a higher fee - to some extent - while I differ from him in that
$75 would indeed be a lot of money for Registrants from several geographic
regions.  In my example, I wonder if the Registry in  India would have fixed
this fee in the realm of INR 4000.

One example can not possibly be considered as representative of practices
across the industry, but  could indicate a possibility and lead to further
examples and findings. The possibilities here are that there may be other
Registrars and Resellers who take advantage of the situation of possible
panic ( "Your domain has *expired* ... and has been *deleted* from your
account.* You cannot renew it now*. However, you still have *one last chance
*,,," ) to charge even more disproportionately. Or practices that might make
the Registrants to leave more domain names un-recovered than in an
environment of affordable recovery fees.

The trouble with this working group is that most or all of the Registrar
members are very possibly Registrars with fair practices and they are
judging the rest of the Registrars and Resellers by their  own standards.
 Not all Registrars and Resellers are fair when there is room for
exploitation. What my example showed is that there is indeed room for
exploitation which manifests in this case as $75 and in some other cases as
$750.

The ccTLD example is still relevant because it is the same gTLD Registrars
and Resellers who handle ccTLDs.  I still don't feel compelled to leave
ccTLDs alone from all this discussions.

And @Michele, it is not 'Utopian' to consider similar standards among gTLDs
and ccTLDs merely because "there is absolutely no way that anything we
discuss here is going to have any impact on the ccTLDs."

Because a certain measure is difficult to implement we don't cease to
consider what is fair.

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy


>
> J.
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [gnso-pednr-dt] cost of recovery during Registrar grace
> period.
> From: Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn@xxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sat, January 09, 2010 5:42 pm
> To: gnso-pednr-dt@xxxxxxxxx
>
> Hello
>
> Does the Registrar incur any costs to recover domain name during RGP?
>
>
> Here is an example of a domain name that I ALLOWED to expire, which
> received the following notification from the Reseller (Registrar?)
>
>
> Your domain isocindiachennai.in has expired on Nov 29, 2009 and has been
> deleted from your account. You cannot renew it now. However, you still
> have one last chance to get your domain name back, by using the
> redemption process (details are given below). If you want to restore
> your domain name, then you are required to complete the redemption
> process within the next 30 days, else you may lose this domain name
> forever.
>
> Order Details
> Order ID: 14806392
> Domain Name: isocindiachennai.in
> Expiry Date: Nov 29, 2009
> Restore Cost Price: INR 4000.00
>
>
> The Restore 'Cost' Price is shown as INR 4000 ( approximately US $ 90 ).
> The link provided by the Reseller for the Redemption process pulled up a
> page which  is printed and attached as a PDF file. This page said " The
> Registry charges higher fees for restoring a domain name, and hence,
> Restoration is an expensive process"
>
>
> With this rationale the Reseller quoted INR 3300 ( approximately US $ 72
> ). Is this the practice in general by all Registrars for all cc and
> gTLDs ? If so the process of redemption during the Registrar Grace
> period does not appear to be easy on the Registrant.
>
>
> Attached: A screen shot of the Registrar's recovery page for this
> domain.
>
>
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
>
>