Sorry for my "jump-in" ... I'm following the list for quite a while but was tied to several activities around ISOC Belgium. I really support this idea too ... We, ISOC Belgium, were already thinking about gathering information from agents here in Belgium in order to identify the burdens and hurdles they actually encounter while registering and managing domain names for their customers ... If no problems pop-up, we will have the survey online in a week from now ... Perhaps this could be done in every country in order to have a regional appreciation and consolidate the figures by global region (Europe, Asia, America, ..). Just an idea ... Rudi Vansnick Chair ISOC Belgium Treasurer ISOC-ECC Rajnesh D. Singh wrote:
I support this idea.
Regards, Rajnesh Singh
2007/3/8, Wendy Seltzer <wendy@seltzer.com>:
Thanks to Danny Younger for starting this conversation.
Danny has proposed that the ALAC initiate research on a specific, registrant-affecting question: What are the scope and magnitude of transfer-away fees among the various registrars? These fees, charged to domain-name registrants when they seek to leave one registrar for another, can lock registrants in to a registrar who no longer serves their needs (as has happened in droves with former Registerfly customers). High fees can also contravene the intent of the uniform transfers policy. We have seen little public information about these fees.
So, here is a focused research task: For each registrar, ask Is there a transfer-away fee for registrants to take their domain names to another registrar? If so, what is the fee? Is the transfer-away fee disclosed to the registrant at the time of registration? Where and how is such disclosure made? Is the fee subject to change?
After we decide whether these are the relevant questions, we should ask staff to contact all registrars for their responses, and/or review public information on the registrars' websites.
If you're interested in this research, please respond to this message with your thoughts.
--Wendy
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
www.alac.icann.org www.icannalac.org