Uniregistry adds “late renewal” fee
Registrar will charge a fee if you renew domains in the last ten days of the grace period.
Uniregistry sent a notice to clients today informing them that it has updated its Terms of Service, counting adding a “late renewal” fee for domains renewed toward the end of the grace period.
The fee applies to domains registered during the final ten days of the 40 day grace period following a domain expires.
Uniregistry states it’s making this move in response to clients trying to renew at the last minute and missing the deadline:
We have observed a modest number of incidents where some clients delay renewing their domain names until the last possible moment, as an expense management technique. While clients are entitled to manage their payment practices as they see fit, this practice has consumed an inordinate amount of client support time and expense when clients fail to appropriately time these late renewals. In order to dis-incentivize this practice, we have instituted a nominal “late renewal” fee, which we hope will allow us to maintain lower costs for all of our clients.
The email notice doesn’t link to the actual terms of service, but the fresh language is in section 2.13.
It’s unclear how much the late renewal fee is. The Terms refer to Uniregistry’s pricing page, which does not right now list a late renewal fee. Presumably, it will be less than the $50 restore fee for .com domains. [Update: it will be $10 when it is imposed.]
There are two benefits to waiting to renew a domain. First, depending on how the registrar auctions expired domains, it could give you some intel into the domain’s demand. Second, it postpones the renewal expense.
But I’ve never really understood the expense management side of this. You effectively get 30-40 days of “free registration” but only one time. During this time, your domains will point to registrar default servers so your for-sale landers will not appear. If you really need this extra grace period, you ought to probably re-evaluate your finances.
