On Aug 15, 2007, at 2:55 PM, Barry Shein wrote:
It seems to me that this should be an issue between the domain
registrars and their customers, but maybe some over-arching policy
is making it difficult to do the right thing?
Charging a "re-stocking fee" sounded perfectly reasonable. I don't
think anyone has any *right* to "domain tasting", that is, to any
particular pricing structure. But I don't see why it requires
anything beyond some pricing solution as suggested.
Then my next question is, what reasons are there where it'd be
wise/useful/non-criminal to do it on a large scale?
I'm not sure what the problem is with that except it seems to
offend some people's sensibilities.
It costs the registry some money in terms of order entry and all
that, and there are opportunity costs - if one registrar has a name
checked out and being tasted by one of his clients, another registrar
can't sell it to one of his.
PIR (.org) instituted an "excess deletion fee" in late May, which is
at this point somewhat experimental. The fee is five cents per
deleted domain if the total number of domains deleted within the 5
day grace period in a month is greater than 90%. The idea is that
there is still a grace period where an individual can correct a mistake.