VeriSign announced today that is raising .com registration fees to $6.86 for effective October 1, 2008.
As you may remember in 2006, VeriSign was granted a new contract that allowed them to increase the registration fees in four of the next six years.
In October 2007, VeriSign raised the .com registration fee from $6.00 to $6.42 .
Now VeriSign has elected to raise the fee another 7% or $.44.
Verisign can raise the fees another 7% twice more in the one of the following four years.
At the next increase the fee will be $7.34.
This is another instance where a strong trade organization may have saved all domainer’s a ton of money.
However in 2006, the ICA had very few members and an extremely low budget.
No other organization stepped forward to fight VeriSign and they were able to get their no bid contract renewed.
At the time the contract was up for renewal other major domain registrars expressed interest in bidding for the contract, including Godaddy.com and stated that they would actually run the central registry for less than the $6 a year VeriSign was then charging to run the central registry. However, no other registrar was given the opportunity to bid and the contract was handed to VeriSign with the guaranteed increases.
Once again as domainers we all lose. The “big” domainers, the “small” domainers.
We are all going to have to pony up and pay more to VeriSign because we did not dedicate the resources to fight Verisign at the time.
We are all going to have to pay more to VeriSign because we did not come together as an industry and fight for what fairness dictated, which would be open bidding with the contract awarded to the lowest bidder.
We as an industry sat back and allowed it happen.
In 2006, our company were just as guilty. We were not a member of the ICA. We sent our comments to the ICANN and posted it on their site protesting the deal. Many domainers did. It was not enough.
I learned my lesson and joined the ICA last year.
If you own 500 domains it cost you $215 more this year to renew your names than in 2006 and will cost you $430 more in 2008 to renew the same domains.
At the next increase it will cost you $670 more.
That is each year, more than twice what it costs to join the ICA.
The more you own the more it will cost you.
So the point again is if you don’t stand up for yourself you will get run over.
This is Not a scare tactic.
This is actually happening.
Your costs just went up and its all our fault allowing it to happen.
Let’s learn from our lesson.
Our very expensive lesson.
