Huge Fee to transfer away

excessive domain release fees

[provenjohn]

Hi
One of the .co.uk domains I purchased back in 1999 was through a company called Namecity, they now seem to have changed to nicnames.net. I want to get all my domains together & asked them to release the name to me, they want to charge me £39.00 for this! are they ripping me off?
The domain falles due for renewal on 29th of September & they want £23.00 plus vat for 2 years fees.
Any comments?

Thanks

[ncsuk]

I would cancel the domain through Nominet or something like that and then reregister it somewhere else. Problem here arises if the company you have it with at the moment reregisters it.

Who is the registration contact on the domain? If it is you and you have a e-mail address there for you then you should be able to transfer it yourself without the other company knowing about it.

[Stretch]

Changing IPStag at easyspace is £25 so I'd say £39 is high but not a complete ripoff. Can't remember the renewal fee.

[ritch_b]

It's perfectly acceptable for a host to levy a charge for the release of a .UK domain, subject to this being made clear in the initial contract. I'd advise that you check any documentation you've got from the original purchase and any documents on their site.

If there's no contractual reason for them to charge you, there's no contractual reason for them not to release the tag and failure to do so could be in breach of their Nominet membership terms, which could in turn result in their membership being suspended.

Nominet's [nominet.org.uk] site contains some useful material about host's obligations and how to make changes [nominet.org.uk] to your domain name which may be of use.

R.

[provenjohn]

Hi

Thanks for replies

I have looked at the Nominet site & emailed them

Regards

John