Hi Lucian

Every registry offers a cancellation grace period. In the case of
Verisign-GRS it is 5 days, in the case of AusRegistry it is only 3 days.

Bearing in mind that credit card chargebacks can take up to six months to be
initiated, it's a very sweet way for the registries to pass off all the risk
of the transaction to the registrars. If, on the other hand, the transaction
is through a reseller, each registrar will have its own set of agreements
regarding cancellation policies for its resellers. In the case of
PlanetDomain, whatever grace periods for cancellation are available to us
from the registries are passed on to our resellers.

In a market where retail margins are often wafer thin, chargebacks can hurt
a business badly, especially if - like PlanetDomain - you happen to be very
active in international markets where credit card fraud is much larger
problem than it is in Australia.

In my opinion, AR and other registries should extend the cancellation grace
period to at least 30 days and thereby cut the registrars and their
resellers some much needed slack in dealing with these issues.

Kind Regards
Murray Kester

Operations Manager
PlanetDomain
www.planetdomain.com
Primus Telecommunications (Aust) Pty Ltd

Lvl 2, 538 Collins Street
Melbourne Vic 3181
Australia 

Tel:  +011 613 9923 3792

Fax: +011 613 9923 4412



-----Original Message-----
From: Lucian Daniel Kafka [mailto:luci§conexim.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 18 June 2003 12:30 AM
To: dns§lists.auda.org.au
Subject: [DNS] Unpaid domains


Hi.

I would like to have some feedback on an issue that may affect some of you: 
Money lost due to unpaid domain registration fees.

Although we charge up-front for domain registrations, there are certain 
circumstances in which we end up with domains being registered but not paid 
for - mostly due to mis-understandings or bad-faith registrants (ie credit 
card charge-backs, etc). The figures seem to revolve around 0.5% of 
registrations - which doesn't seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly.

It would be illegal and highly unpractical for us to try to sell these 
domains to recover the out-of-pocket expenses.

What I would like to see is a way of recycling these domains. A new policy 
clause that will allow to return these domains back (like in the free 
cancellation period) on the grounds that a domain has not been paid for. 
This would protect retailers at no real cost to the other parties in the 
domain chain.


Kind regards,

Lucian Kafka
www.conexim.com.au


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