Jon
I am inclined to agree in general with your conclusions
But I have one reservation...and question...

Why should it be the consumer who is allowed to suffer at the hands of
poorly managed and unscrupulous business operators who may or may not be
in business for long?

In a modern economy basic Keynesian economics don't always apply in the
short term.

All would be fine IMO if the business operators were bound more tightly
for the sake of protecting the end consumer and surely then those who
went the extra mile would also be rewarded by repeat custom.

Cheers
Phil Wright

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Lawrence [mailto:jon§jonlawrence.com] 
Sent: Monday, 23 September 2002 5:13 AM
To: dns§lists.auda.org.au
Subject: RE: [DNS] Price of fish

If I were a registrar or even a reseller, I would be doing everything
within
my power to ensure that I had contacted every domain name holder on my
books
at least twice in the month or two preceding the expiration of their
domain
name.

I don't think it's got anything to do with being 'required' to contact
registrants whose names are expiring, its just plain common business
sense.
After all, if they're going to renew, they're going to have to pay you
money
to do so.

Also, the costs of doing so are trivial if you have any sort of database
at
all and are IMO a normal cost of operating in this industry that would
any
be well covered by the revenue received by customers renewing their
names.

Any registrar that doesn't send out some sort of expiry warning to their
customers is not going to be in business for very long at all.

regards
jon