On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Sasha Sudakov wrote:

> hey sally

It's Saliya, but anyway...

> can you please tell the list what price do you charge for a domain name
> registration??

Sure (not that it's at all relevant). We charge $198 for a .com.au or a
.net.au registration. The issue here is not price; the issue here is
method of delivery of same to the consumer. 

Just to make it clear: saying

"We charge $x for domain name registration"

is very different to implying

"If you don't use our service, your domain will be deregistered"

and if ING cannot (or will not) see the difference, then someone (the
ACCC? auDA?) will have to illustrate it better than I can.

> it's not a very intelligent comment to make, that we should inform the
> registrant in regards to competition
> 
> example
>  'ING are not your current registrar'
> 'ING are offering a competing service to <xxx>, your current registrar'
> 'you can renew your domain with either of ING or <xxx> equally well'
> etc
> 
> our job at ING is to look after consumers that obviously have been neglected

That's just crap: there's no way that ING could decide, based on
publically-available information, that someone else's customer had been
neglected.

Such a declaration makes the stater look a fool.

> we charge what may be perceived a premium for our service

Sure. Like I said, I don't think anyone *cares* how much ING charges for
the service: the important thing is that ING represents the service for
what it is.

I note that ING doesn't appear to be prepared to put their money where
their mouth is...

Regards,

Saliya