New nominet pricing

[RobM]

Um did I understand this correctly? The prices just went up 50%+vat as from March next year?

 

[redbird]

Um did I understand this correctly? The prices just went up 50%+vat?

I've read it many times, but yes that seems to be the case. Still in shock here!

"...customers who may wish to lock-in the current pricing by registering or renewing for up to 10 years before then...."

If only I had a spare £36k!

 

[RobM]

I guess members of the board need new wings for their mansions. Joking aside I can see why they'd do this - they've provided such a sterling service for their members and it must cost a fortune to do. I mean it's not as if they've ever earned millions over their 'non-profit' status.

 

[Edwin]

Russell Haworth, Nominet CEO commented: ‘We’re committed to running a first class service for .UK registrants, including our renowned customer service, and we’re doing more than ever before to ensure the .UK space is a safe and trusted home for all. But costs have risen considerably since we last changed the price, and we need to complete in a promotion-driven industry. We won’t compromise on the quality of our service or dial back our efforts to counter cyber-threats head on. However, it’s important to us that .UK domains represent value for money as well as quality, and the price we have set reflects that.”

Those are the weaseliest words I've seen from any company.

Costs increasing? They're selling a 100% automated product, and the cost of hosting, bandwidth, databases, etc. is going down at Moore's Law rates every year. So 2015 costs are a tiny fraction of 1999 costs. Their executive salaries, average salaries, director remurations and bonuses on the other hand are on a rocket ship to the moon.

But of course this will give them:
A) A big boost in revenue now as people renew their domains out for longer (which also hides the decline in renewal rates)
B) A big boost in ongoing revenue - basically they've decided to take out of .co.uk the windfall they were hoping to see from .uk

 

[RobM]

I assume they will provide members a breakdown of the 'costs' that have 'risen considerably'..... hang on just saw a pig fly past the window.

 

[ian]

Well, think of it as helping to fund their "future technologies" :roll:

 

[bonusmedia]

This looks like a monopoly with free reign to abuse their position

Perhaps they could spend the extra millions on rolling back the website to the usable version.

I'd like to know what metrics they track with their marketing spend. Perhaps they could start by estimating the size of the puddle of urine under the wall?

 

[monaghan]

What are they going to do with all the cash? They already have to give shed loads away to "charity" via the foundation as they generate too much at the current prices.

 

[Lovekraft]

another act of desperation, since .uk has not exactly been a massive success, the customer now has to pay for it to make up for the all the costs associated with consulting and then launching it. They may just end up shooting themselves in the foot.

So now if you are in the uk space, you not only have to fork out twice to secure both .co.uk and .uk, they now want to up the prices on them both by another 50%, they just don't stop.

 

[leec]

Maybe they could use the extra money to advertise the .uk a bit more??

When I say a bit more I really mean start advertising it! I've seen almost no advertising or press for the new extension.

The only big bit of fuss was at the start with Stephen Fry. Google: Stephen Fry and his stephenfry.com domain shows up! Not the .uk he raved about back on June 10th 2014!

Still so many non domain type people who don't even know that the .uk exists!

 

[newguy]

For Nominet, 'charity' clearly begins at home.

 

[jasman]

To be fair, £2.50 in today's money is in real terms much less than in 1999 money because of inflation. And I'm talking about the real level of inflation, which by my estimates considering most of the £ in this country is tied up in property works out at about 7% per year, not the bullshit CPI level which the government keeps artificially low so corporations can justify pitiful wage increases each year and pay staff less and less in real terms.

However as people have stated Nominet's costs should have been falling in real terms since 1999. There's certainly no justification for raising wholesale prices to justify increasing costs and lowering profits if profits were so high that they felt they should funnel money into charitable causes via the Nominet Trust.

 

[spiderspider]

To be fair, £2.50 in today's money is in real terms much less than in 1999 money because of inflation.

Using http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...tion-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html you'll see that £2.50 in 1999 is £3.93 today due to inflation.

As a 'Not For Profit' it means the directors can't take a share of the profits. Otherwise its just a LTD company. I wonder if the directors are getting a pay rise, as they can see all this cash, and excess, and getting a bit peeved that they can't get their hands on it.

 

[Edwin]

The directors have already had massive pay rises in the last few years, as a poke through Nominet's annual reports will show. Not only that, but the number of executive level posts has also risen dramatically.

 

[spiderspider]

Above doesn't make sense.

An NFP is basically a LTD company where the profits don't go to the owners (as agreed above). Owners are typically the directors of a company.

Directors of NFPs can't take a share of the profits, like a LTD company can.

Are directors seeing all this excess cash coming in, wanting a slice of it, so raising fees to be able to raise their own salaries for the 'work' that they do?

Make sense now?

 

[jasman]

Using http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...tion-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html you'll see that £2.50 in 1999 is £3.93 today due to inflation.

That's based on the fake inflation rate that the government tries to fool people with (i.e. the indexes such as RPI/ CPI) which exclude house price inflation. But nearly all the inflation in the economy is caused by house price inflation, because nearly all the new money entering into the money supply is from banks creating money out of thin air to lend as mortgages, via fractional reserve banking. The media doesn't report the truth either. Fractional reserve banking has been largely kept secret.

Don't forget inflation is the expansion of the money supply, not the increase in prices. The price increases filter through after a delay. As the money supply expands, the dilution filters through the economy with more pounds chasing the same quantity of goods resulting in prices going up - but since most of the new money entering the system (the money created out of thin air by banks each day via fractional reserve banking) is for home loans, house prices are where the inflation is most direct and heavily concentrated.

So the RPI and CPI and other inflation indices used by the government are a scam because they exclude house prices and track prices of consumer goods etc i.e. things you'd find in a supermarket, electronic goods etc (many of which go down in price) giving a wholly deceptive and disingenuous figure. Who gives a shit if a loaf of bread has only gone up 3p if your next house is going to cost you £xxx,xxx more than a few years ago? The bread will have a negligible impact on your finances, the house price inflation whether you pay mortgage or rent will have a huge impact in the long term. They've fooled the public into looking at the fake CPI and the price of bread and thinking inflation is low, while inflation is really about 7% with house prices on average doubling every 10 years.

The worst part of the scam is big employers set their staff's wage increases to the fake CPI level, which being below the real rate of inflation means most people in the country are getting paid less and less every year in real terms. Over the long term this is making people poorer and poorer without realising. That's why 30 or 40 years ago it was common for just the man in a family to work and the woman would be a house wife. Now for most families, both have to go out working - approximately double the earnings just to make ends meet AND the house that they are paying for is smaller on average AND they're up to the eyeballs in credit card debt on top!

 

[RobM]

Is there somewhere we can see a list of the 'considerable' rising costs that have made this price increase necessary? I 'dropped a line' to nominet but I've had no response.

 

[gimpydog]

That's based on the fake inflation rate that the government tries to fool people with (i.e. the indexes such as RPI/ CPI) which exclude house price inflation. But nearly all the inflation in the economy is caused by house price inflation

Given that Nominet are not subject to house price inflation, isn't RPI/CPI a fairer measure in this case?

In fact, given the advances in technology (Edwin alluded to earlier), economies of scale & increase in available stock that Nominet has benefited from, isn't RPI/CPI too generous a measure?

Jacking-up prices is normally a sign of a poorly managed or inefficient business operating with little competition - eg. Royal Mail letters.

 

[RobM]

The price rise is to ensure the company can continue to invest in the name space.

Also, according to their email, 'rising costs to run a world-class namespace' (as I said previously I assume we can see these), and 'an increasingly competitive domain environment' (um... that means nothing - how was a 'price' for this competition arrived at? How is it quantified? Where is the research/decision?).

To be quite honest it sounds like they've raised the price for NO benefit at all simply to increase the amount of money they receive which is already far above what they *need*. Why would they do this? I have my suspicions but of course we won't know for sure until we see a breakdown of the figures and how much their salaries will rise.

 

[RobM]

*deleted - covered in last post*