About the specifics of domain name renewal in international zones

    The situation with the Reg.Ru domain registrar was not very pleasant, negotiations on which came to a standstill.

    On October 2, 2015, the domain was registered in the .ST zone, was not timely renewed until the Expiration Date (October 2, 2016) and removed from the registrar’s domain control panel. Not just received the status of an overdue domain, but generally disappeared from your personal account. When contacting the support service, the following was found out: the domains of this zone, after being removed from delegation, can be renewed, but for 20,000 rubles, which is almost 10 times the cost of a regular renewal.

    As a justification for such prices, the registrar refers to its agreement with the main registrar of the EPAG zone Domainservices GmbH - www.epag.denor did he provide any legally relevant information on how their internal arrangements with third parties relate to me, as a Reg.Ru client.

    Important: on Reg.Ru website there is completely no information on the features of domain renewal upon Expiration Date, there are no warnings about the domain being removed from the control panel, or even more about the increase in the cost of renewals by an order of magnitude.

    If you turn to the site of the owner of the .ST domain zone for information, it turns out:

    1. Here - http://kb.registry.st/domains/domain-life-cycle/

    Domain is kept in “Renew grace period” for 40 days, during this period Registrant keep domain ownership but is not allowed to perform any updates except renewal which is done without any additional fee and restore full control over domain.

    Upon the onset of the Expiration Date, the “Renew grace period” begins, which lasts 40 days. At the same time, the cost of renewal does not change, as explicitly stated.

    2. When contacting the support service for the owner of the .ST domain zone, the response was received:

    Dear domain registrant,
    Reg.RU is not in direct accreditation with ST Registry but they a part of EPAG registrars network. EPAG is direct accredited ST Registrar.
    We will contact today EPAG to resolve this issue.

    Indeed, according to our policy and described life cycle - renew grace period is 40 days after domain expiried which mean that you should be able to renew domain without any additional fees within first 40 days.

    Thus, there is confirmation that the owner of the zone does not really require additional payment.

    3. Clause 1.19 of the offer accepted by the client when registering a domain in the .ST zone on the Reg.Ru website contains the following provision:

    1.19. The registration of second level domain names in international zones is carried out in accordance with the established Rules for the registration of domain names approved by the Registrar of domain names in the domain selected for registration in the international zone. To register domain names in international zones, the Contractor independently selects the Registrar from among those with which the Contractor has concluded agreements.

    Those. Reg.Ru chooses the counterparty through which registration will take place, while the client:

    a) does not know in advance who will be such a counterparty (in this case it turned out to be EPAG);
    b) is not in any contractual relationship with this third party;
    c) not informed about the conditions affecting the management of the domain, including the procedure and pricing.

    Based on all this, it turns out that while still being the owner of the domain name in accordance with the rules of the owner of the .ST domain zone, I am not able to independently renew the domain and do not see it in my account. Renewal is possible only through the support service at a multiple inflated cost, which was not mentioned anywhere on the registrar's website either at the time of domain registration or at the time of the renewal attempt.

    I will be grateful to the Habr community for any help in assessing the legality of this behavior of the Reg.Ru registrar. At least from the point of view of good faith.

    UPDATE 1:

    Received the final response from Reg.Ru regarding the renewal and transfer of the domain to another registrar. As it turns out, there is no technical possibility, but it is, only for other money:

    We negotiated with a higher organization, according to their agreement with the registry for .st domain zones, there is no grace period or recovery period, so neither we nor our partner have the technical ability to renew your domain at normal cost.
    Answering your question about warnings from our side, we note that based on the terms of the contract with the registry, we sent you notifications to the domain’s contact email that the domain and all services on it will be deleted six times, starting from 08/09/2016.
    A domain in this state is not transferable, therefore, we are not able to provide you with an EPP key to transfer it.


    UPDATE 2:

    The domain zone support service resolved the issue with EPAG, which extended the domain even before any information from Reg.Ru was received. A day later, a notification came from Reg.Ru that the renewal cost is equal to the usual cost and after payment the domain appeared in your account. Most likely this decision was made only for this particular case. A little later, the domain will be transferred to nic.st.

    Also popular now: