On 2007-12-18 23:30:43 +0100, Elisabeth PORTENEUVE wrote:
Re first one: I would re-state your sentence: "Many registrars present themselves to the consumer in English, but are based in non-English speaking countries." into "Many registrars present themselves to the consumer in English, but you do not know the country they operate in, neither the jurisdiction which apply in case of problem. Usually it it easier to understand contract written in your mother tongue, to deal with courts and lawyers in your mother tongue."
Well, what does the word "English" do in that sentence in the first place? It's really "registrars operate from many countries and in many languages; you might want to make sure you can talk to the one you pick in a language that you're feeling comfortable in; you might also want to make sure that you know the jurisdiction that applies to your contract, and that you are comfortable with that jurisdiction."
Personnaly the very first thing I am checking is the company name, VAT number, postal address, country, phone numbers. If I cannot find it easily, like in German "impressum", which is always available on the main website page, I get suspicious, and leave.
That's incidentally a good idea for just about any kind of online shopping...
Your third comment is the most important. I want to see up front the easy tools to write my new zonefile, to update it, and to have DNS servers taking change into account immediately (live, 30 seconds or so). I also appreciate registrar providing information on how many his name servers he makes available to me, and ASN's distribution of his nameservers. I would love to have registrar's commitmment to use only ICANN's Internet root servers, no "a la sitefinder" tricks diverting name servers trafic and attempting on my privacy. I appreciate also registrar's commitment to preserve network neutrality.
+1
Eventually my final observations: I want to see in one glimpse all costs, for all TLDs, gTLDs or ccTLDs, the registrar is accredited for. No clicodrome, no adds, no dancing nonsense - sober, up to the point website, minimizing my time, and dedicated ONLY to the domain names.
+1 to that, too
(holder of a dozen of domain names in gTLDs and ccTLDs)
Cybersquatter! ;-)) Cheers, -- Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>