Ron Stark [ronstark§snapsite.com.au] wrote:

> If a prospect goes to your website, then mine, and decides to use your
> services, that's fine - that's competition.  If a client that _I_ have
> given you goes to your website because of a commnication from you about
> domain names, and becomes your client for non-domain name services,
> that's unfair advantage.

thats like saying if I buy a sony walkman from a non sony store fill out the warranty form
and sony contacts me with a special offer and I end up buying a movie from
a sony owned company and not from the store I bought the walkman,
its not right. the fact is I still have bought a sony. so have some connection
to the brand wether the store wants to pretend I do or dont. its up to the store
to market its own movies effectively.  its not up to sony to help the store
compete more effectively against itself. nor up to sony to ensure it doesnt compete
with the store on products the store wont stock.

I think the first premise is that somehow a business owns the customer. businesses dont own
customers, they have a relationship with a customer. the customer is a free individual
with choice. profit by obfuscation is not a good long term strategy, profit based on being
able to survive transparency is.

look at registrars the buy price is there for anyone to see, yet all registrars
choose a different pricing strategy and the cheapest dont do anywhere near as
well as you might expect. the biggest selling registrars are not the cheapest.

the perception of value to a customer is the driving force behind the buying decision.

the second premise is that the customer would prefer not to buy from a reseller
if they had a choice. thats not true, customers will only cut out middle men
where they dont perceive the value. if they see that the only value is mark
up then its only logical to go straight to the source.

as for other services that a registrar may offer, all I can suggest is choose a registrar
that will allow you to sell all that is availlable on the registrars retail site.

I am not seeing anything in your post where auda needs to step in and intervene,
the usual market forces will sort out bad business decisions made by registrars.

Nothing stops a group of resellers banding together and becoming a registrar
and all these concerns stop. Enetica has had several resellers become
registrars some virtual registrars some entirely independent.

Vic