William,
If that was the only reason, the other Registrars would be
forced to treat their resellers the same way and they don't.
We are resellers for three different Registrars, one of
which is OpenSRS.
OpenSRS is the only one that mistrusts their reseller this
way and the only was that acts if the end user is their
customer instead of the reseller.
If what you claim was the case, then ICANN would have shut
these other two down.
Initially OpenSRS could treat the reseller anyway they
wished, as they had the best price in town and the best
scripts available, with so-so reseller support.
This is no longer the case. Many other companies have a
better price, some of these have scripts just as good as the
OpenSRS scripts and most have better reseller support.
We have switched all our new registrations to the Registrar
that treats us with respect, not distrust. All transfer
requests also go to this other Registrar if the client is
willing.
We're small, as domain name registration is not our primary
business and we do not actively seek domain name
registration business. We only register 8-10 new domains
each day, so our leaving will not put OpenSRS out of
business. We realize that.
We will always have a few clients with OpenSRS, as we will
not abandon those we placed with OpenSRS. However we will
offer them incentives to switch from OpenSRS, including a
lower annual price if they agree to the switch and point out
all the added features that the new Registrar offers that
OpenSRS does not offer, such as domain lock, which we
promote, a free web page for their domain, free url
redirection and free email forwarding.
So if your claims were true, these other Registrars would
have been put out of business by ICANN for trusting their
resellers and recognizing that the reseller is their client,
not the end user.
And I don't think anybody is asking that the end user be
abused. Just that OpenSRS recognize the reseller as their
client and treat them with respect. Had they done this all
along, we would still be with them, as there is not that
much price difference between the Registrars. $8 vs. $10
would not break us if the client service was there to offset
the difference in price.
And before you start claiming the service is there, let me
remind you of a few things. Resellers have asked OpenSRS to
remove transferred clients from the lists for a year, they
did not and we have caught hell from clients demanding to
know how OpenSRS is going to deactivate their domain when it
is not registered with OpenSRS.
Resellers have asked for RSP to RSP transfer for a year now,
and yes, I know, we are aware of it and are working on it.
Resellers have asked for a better method of payment than
having to send in a fax every time. OpenSRS again has talked
about it, but never done anything. We pay all three
Registrars by credit card, only OpenSRS requires us to fax
anything. With the other two, we go to our interface, type
in the amount to be added to our account and hit submit or
we pay at the time of the purchase. We are immediately
given credit for this amount to purchase additional domains.
It's nice not to have to worry about a big order coming in
on Saturday night and not having to worry about having
enough credits to pay for the domains.
Yes, yes, I know. Keep more money on account. But why
should we keep more than $500 in a non-interest bearing
account with OpenSRS. We don't with the other two, in fact,
one does not require a deposit, but charges us at the time
of the purchase and we add $250 at a time to the other one.
Takes about three minutes to add the additional money and
purchase the new domains.
Something OpenSRS could do, but they don't trust their RSPs
and didn't really care as long as they were the only game in
town and could attract large numbers of new RSPs to replace
those who left.
Sorry to be so long winded tonight, but I am tired of
hearing all the BS that is put out over this lack of client
support by OpenSRS.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf
> Of William X. Walsh
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 10:19 PM
> To: Don Brown
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re[2]: Legal/Ethical question for the list
>
>
> Hello Don,
>
> The issue is that Tucows is OBLIGATED to consider
> the registrant, as a
> result of their accreditation with ICANN.
>
> OpenSRS does an excellent job balancing those
> functions where they
> can, but their ability to do that is strictly limited.
>
> Wednesday, April 25, 2001, 6:40:51 PM, Don Brown wrote:
>
> > At 11:44 AM 4/25/01 -0400, you wrote:
> >>That's not quite accurate. Once the
> registration has been paid for, ICANN
> >>and therefore Tucows, has to consider it a done
> deal. There is no connection
> >>between the non-payment of the web
> space/traffic and the domain name that we
> >>can reliably fall-back on. This is a known
> shortcoming of the system we put
> >>together.
> >>
> >>Anybody that been around for a while can attest
> to this - OpenSRS was a
> >>hack/abomination when we released it. No one
> had considered doing what we
> >>were doing and how we did it. The problem was,
> that in order for us to pull
> >>it off, compromises had to be made. This is one of them.
> >>
> >>-rwr
>
> > Shortcomings/Compromises can be fixed, unless
> they are locked in granite
> > for some other reason.
>
> > For instance, from a pragmatic point of view,
> most of our customers don't
> > know how to spell byte and they think packets
> are those things that rats
> > carry around. They look to us to take care of
> them -- it is called service
> > and that is what keeps us all in business.
> After all, why would they
> > really need any of us, if they could do what we
> do for a living?
>
> > To illustrate the point a bit further, about a
> year ago the author of the
> > canned shopping cart, which we use, decide to
> lock us out of the admin
> > interface for our customers' carts. The author
> had noble ideals, but he
> > lived in another world, far away from the
> firing line where we live. We
> > had to figure out a way to circumvent this
> problem and we did, but we were,
> > never-the-less, annoyed about the extra time it
> took us. It was just
> > inconvenient and, after all, we were their
> customer -- our customers were
> > our customers and we had the burden of serving
> them or losing them. The
> > unscrupulous provider, on the other hand,
> always loses in the end -- it
> > just takes time, but most providers do Not fall
> into this category - they
> > are the minority scan artists who hurt us all.
> So, the approach of our
> > shopping cart author was like prosecuting
> mosquitos with 00 buck shot. A
> > bit zealous, yet Nobel, but Nobel didn't work
> very well for their customers
> > (us) and unless we were tech enough to defeat
> the block, we were exposed to
> > losing customers. The next release of the
> software removed the hindrance
> > to our job -- so go figure why they decided to
> change course.
>
> > Equally, we think Tucows has very high ideals
> and that, among other things,
> > is why we chose to be a reseller. However, we
> think the first order of
> > business is to serve the direct customer (we
> the resellers), and to shake
> > out those who are/maybe unscrupulous - which is
> good for all
> > concerned. IOW, let us look out for our
> customers and y'all (that's a TX
> > term) look out for us.
>
> > So, it wouldn't take a lot of rocket science
> programming to send the admin
> > contact an email, whenever the admin contact or
> the name servers were
> > changed, would it? Those are the two
> ingredients to hijacking the domain
> > -- shouldn't you be doing that already, since
> the consumer is more
> > important than your real customer, by all
> appearances, anyway?
>
> > There has to be a certain element of trust in
> any business deal. From all
> > appearances, however, Tucows does not trust
> their resellers and that does
> > not make for a good relationship, either in the
> short or long term.
>
> > Think about it. I empower my auto mechanic
> with more . . .
>
> > My opinion, FWIW.
>
> > Thanks,
>
> > ----
> > Don Brown - Dallas, Texas USA Internet
> Concepts, Inc.
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.inetconcepts.net
> PGP Key ID: 04C99A55 (972) 788-2364 Fax:
(972) 788-5049
> Providing Internet Solutions Worldwide - An eDataWeb
Affiliate
> ----
--
Best regards,
William
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
