Hi Tania and all,

>> I am all for good marketing and creative ideas - but being "perceived" as
the Domain Name Registrar to the "unaware or uneducated customer" is just
not right and deceitful. (snip)

One of the problems of this type of practice (and the reason these companies
have a degree of success), is because in our case, we are neither unaware
nor uneducated... what we are, is perhaps too trusting... in that we have a
small number of validated suppliers (INA, Telstra, UUNET etc.), who we treat
as "respected" and pay their invoices on face-value. If we have any queries
these are dealt with at a later date.

The problem arises when through error, design, or chance... some other
company missrepresents itself (or we missunderstand who they are), and treat
them as one of our validated suppliers as we did in this case.

A lesson for us, and perhaps a lesson to our suppliers to always ensure they
protect their brand-name's if they want to remain in a position of trust.

Don

"In the information society, where the only constant is change, there is no
one skill that lasts a lifetime ... The information age has turned us all
into lifelong learners"