Knowing that it indeed WAS, I called them and they said that the one domain was in a holding pattern that was past 30 days. I said fine, I'll put it on my card, and they said that during this period, it would now cost $150 to renew the domain!
Fortunately, this particular domain was not critical, so NetSol can 'eat it' before I give them $150.
I saw nothing on the Network Solutions website about this 'hostage fee' and was wondering if anybody else was aware of it, and when it was implemented.
The Hostage fee has two purposes. One the domain would already have been deleted by now in the old system (pre-three months ago), so really you are lucky that you can get your name back at all. And that is the main purpose, giving the registrant a long chance to get his name back. The fee is there because the registry doesn't get paid for those 30 days. So they are collecting a fee on the ones that get pulled back into the land of the living. Most of the names in this 30 day hold they will be loosing money on. The registry is hosting all names for free in a total of about 70 days. So you can see why they wanted a hostage fee.
The second purpose of the Hostage Fee was to pay for development of the hostage period. Verisign has said they have recovered this development cost now, and that they have covered their cost.
The good news is, the hostage fee will be decreasing in price in a few months. After making plenty of money off the fee and they feel they can lower it soon.
One bad side note, A lot of registrars have not listed their retail price on this service. This is something they really should do, but it has fallen through the cracks at most registrar companies. If you are at a registrar and they ask you to pay this fee, you should ask them to document the price on the their website in the user agreement.
