more domain reg issues

[Xen0nine]

OK so we went over the good guy/bad guy issue of working with Tucows/OpenSRS vs Enom or whoever.  At the very least we can feel self-satisfied that we are taking the high road even if we're not making enough money to support the service.

Now on a different level, what do you say to a customer who complains when you tell them your price of say $14.95 which seems to be pretty standard for OpenSRS resellers, and despite the fact that you are underselling Verisign considerably, they respond that that is twice as much as someone else.  Names that I hear are dotster, enom and today "sharpregister.com"  I took a look at their site and they offer resellers a $6.99 wholesale price and direct to customers for $8.88

This bugs me for a whole lot of reasons.  But I thought I read somewhere that some minimum rates for domain registration had been setup by ICANN or somebody?  Even though it is only a matter of $6 or so, customers don't think that way.  They are looking for the best deal and while you can convince them about quality of service and infrastructure for hosting, it seems to go on deaf ears for domain registration.

It takes a lot of effort to even get one new customer.  If we're lucky and make $5 on a domain registration that's $500 for 100 registrations.  I don't know about most of you but 100 domain registrations is a lot for me.  It takes a lot more than $500 to get 100 new customers.  Heck it can take a lot more than $500 to get 10 new customers.

That $5 doesn't even consider credit card charges and all of the other costs involved.  There seems to be no way to do this profitably and it's frustrating to offer it as a "value added service" and have customers complain that the cost is too high!