Transfer-away fees are a ridiculous thing. Are they? Shouldn't fees be cost based?
If only. If they were, the registry price for a domain would be 25 cents and dropping rather than six bucks and rising.
Registering a name is usually automated. That's why names are cheap. But what if you involve a human in the process?
That's entirely your choice. I resell Tucows' registration service, and I could easily automate all of the transfer away functions such as sending the authcode. Their registrar package is, I believe, the most widely used one in the industry, so if I can do it, anyone can do it. I don't automate transfers away, because I only do registrations for friends and FOAFs, and in my case most of the transfers away are mistakes due to fake invoices from DROA and the like. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.