On 27 Jan 2016, at 10:35, Greg Aaron wrote:

The point was that domain expiration date should not be information only given to registrars who have the privilege of EPP access directly into a registry. It’s data that’s been in WHOIS for twenty years, and access to it via WHOIS should not be withdrawn.

Fair enough. But then, taking your point further, if the current model has worked for 20 years by exposing the Registry and Registrar versions of the expiration date in their respective WHOIS services, what changed recently that merits introducing a change where we’re trying to sync two fields in a way that we know won’t be reliable / effective and that has the potential to cause further confusion to the registrants?

Domain back-orders are usually placed before the expiration date, not in the 30 days after an auto-renewal, and not during pendingDelete.

Perhaps this has the potential to further the time window in which registrars selling these “back orders” can make business.

Best regards