Brainstorming a fair and equitable registration price rise mechanism

[Edwin]

(Please note: for the purposes of this thread and this thread only, can we assume the necessity of some sort of price rise. That does not mean that I in favour of one - as my posts on the other threads have made very, very clear. Thanks.)

This is just me thinking "aloud" here, but how do you see the following...?

Principle: 25p increase in per-year registration fees.

New pricing: £3.75+VAT for 1 year, £5.50+VAT for 2 years.

By implementing the above (i.e. raising prices 25p per year's worth of registration) Nominet would achieve a price increase which hurts everyone a bit and hurts everybody equally. A fair and equitable price rise, in other words.

It would also bring in over £2,500,000 a year in additional revenue, while not favouring or prejudicing any particular party or business model.

A) Does the above look fair to you?

B) Is there an even better way to do it?

C) Are there any snags or loopholes in the above?

 

[martin-s]

There may be reasons that Nominet are looking to standardise the cost per year?

 

[Edwin]

Something like 93% of current registrations are for 2-year periods, so it's not just domainers who have been enjoying cheaper prices.

BTW, I was really hoping we could focus on my suggestion rather than why Nominet acted as it did

 

[Edwin]

I think the 25p on 1-year regs price rise might be justified. It's less than 10% and comes as Nominet says after 16 years of no change.

But it's Nominet's simultaneous removal of the 2-year pricing that 93% of registrants have taken up to date which has made it a defacto 50% price rise, thinly disguised by the 25p on 1-year regs distraction.

 

[foz]

They could've left £3.50 per year and just dropped 2 years.

I foresee more drops with the removal of 2 years.

 

[martin-s]

Actually, I think it's pretty normal to offer a discount in return for more (or more predictable) business.

So having a discount more renewals of 2+ years makes absolute sense. Not sure what I was thinking earlier - there's no logic for forcing 1 and 2 year prices to be the same. It's not only .uk that allow longer registrations after all.

 

[Stephen]

fees reflect the cost of the work we do!

Nominet is meant to cover the costs per transaction on a non for profit basis per Terms & Conditions

Fees and payment
6. We are a not-for-profit organisation so our fees (see our website) reflect the cost of the work we do. To make sure that every person
who registers a domain name pays their fair share of the costs of running the central registry, we:
6.1 may make a charge for any of the services we provide under this contract, as long as (where only we can provide the
service) we believe the fee is set at a not-for-profit cost-recovery level only;

Then as Nominet have added extra costs for domain checking per registrant it makes sense and be within the rules and terms, to say charge the 2,000,000 new registrations in a year; £10 wholesale for the first year,
unless they are already registrants and so don't need recovery from that client.
So reduced cost to standard rate.

The numbers of new registrants registering new domains are not known as Nominet will not provide the data, so the 2,000,000 is a guess.

At the moment renewal fees are paying for the extra costs incurred in checking new registrants, as no registrants are not paying enough themselves to cover the actual costs of the checks.

Then with extra revenue, no need to charge extra on renewals.

Stephen

p.s. for the record I'm for a reduction of fees for all and binding the .uk and .co.uk as one single current renewal cost, rather than doubling up effectively on the same string.

 

[martin-s]

How much is verification costing?

 

[monaghan]

How much is verification costing?

I thought the accredited registrars did the verification for domains where Nominet's automated validation failed, so there should be additional cost to Nominet for a large proportion of the registrations as they will come through the big registrars.

To answer Edwin's original question, then I've no objection to a small increase, 25p/year seems quite high as a percentage, but given no increases in the 10 years or so I've been a member that is reasonable if there are no other scheduled increases.

What does concern me though is that it wasn't that long ago it was suggested to lower registration costs in order to deal with the large pile of cash that was building up in the account, so to spend the lot and then need to put up prices seems very odd.