CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME HOW TO REGISTER AFTER REGISTRATION MAKING CHANGES TO YOUR DOMAIN NAME
Proposed changes to the Terms and Conditions of Domain Name Registration
- Revised Terms and Conditions (Word)
Normally I would agree with most of the suggestions proposed by Nominet as they seem to follow a logical and fair approach to the registration and operation of the .uk domain name space - I fully support the new open WHOIS program and believe that this is now a working idea and should proceed.... but on this occasion I have to strongly DISAGREE with the proposal for these T's and C's changes.
My concerns are as follows:
Whilst I appreciate that we are in effect, agents for your registration service on behalf of our client/your registrant - we pay you.. and the client (registrant) pays us. Our fee from you (in effect a 'trade price') is £5 + vat and the client pays us a higher fee - we are in business after all, not a charity, and there are additional services added to the registration 'product' for which this higher-than-£5-fee includes.
That said, generally (and I said generally) we have not had any problems with our clients regarding payment for services. However when we have.. it does cause major problems. And as I am sure you are no doubt aware, the only legal leverage a supplier has over any kind of customer is to withhold the supply of the product and/or service ordered until outstanding monies are paid in full.
If a client orders a domain or states that they wish to renew a domain or request forwarding services for a domain, which are then set up by us for them... and the client doesn't pay, or as is the case regarding your proposal, they decide to move the domain without paying for the services we have already set up.. if you proceed with you plan, what leverage do we then have to reclaim our due fee's from that client..?
- Legal proceedings are not worth pursuing due to the high costs involved and the low cost normally being recovered...
- letter writing.. we all know what happens there.. or not as the case maybe.
In effect you are removing our legitimate control over a product/service we are administering for a client, for which they pay for. If they don't pay, why should they be allowed to then take the name somewhere else, and possibly put another TAG holder through the same refusal-to-pay process.?
Let us apply your proposal to a similar situation, within the internet industry - web site hosting. We (as do many others) provide web site hosting services as part of our service/product profile. A client orders and pays for this service - we set everything up - everyone is happy. Like many other companies we do not proceed without payment with order. When it comes to renewing the hosting service, if the client refuses to pay/doesn't pay/won't pay/whatever.. should we continue to provide our hosting services to them..? Apart from the loss of revenue to us, the cost associated to us for providing these services etc.. what about all the other hosting clients who pay, on time, without any fuss. Is it fair to them to let some else get away without paying for a service that they are..?
In essence I think that what you are trying to do is unfair towards genuine TAG holders.
That said.. I strongly believe that action does need to be taken to TAG holders who, shall we say, 'don't play by the rules'. We have come across one or two in our time, that have caused great concern to both us and our clients. I believe it is these whom you should be targeting and not the TAG holder list as a whole.
How..? Well your the governing body - that's up to you. Maybe contact registrants and simply ask if they are happy with their registration company (now the response to that would prove rather interesting reading..!!) or set up some other case-by-case procedure for when registrants have an issue with a TAG holder, but to proceed with these proposals I think is unfair and heavily biased towards registrants who would then be able to 'play a loaded game' against legitimate TAG holders.
I do hope that I haven't waffled on too much and that my point is made clearly. I would welcome a response to this if possible.
Kind regards
