If you purchase your name through a bundled service, the service, such as a webhosting company, may be the actual registrant.
That's common in the small business space. Many small businesses deal with small website design and hosting companies and their website designer ends up being the registrant of their domain. I've seen it a lot, but don't recall it ever being intentionally malicious. From what I've seen it's always a case of everyone involved not understanding the risks of doing things that way.
After all, if privacy is on, how would you know the difference?
I noticed that was a potential issue a couple of years ago when I was transferring a .ca between registrars. The whois info didn't update properly and ended up public. However, I wasn't listed as the registrant. The original (losing) registrar was.
CIRA (the .ca registry) has a good solution for it. When the registrant or admin contact changes on your domain, they send you an email telling you the new info. It's helped me catch issues.
For example, I recently transferred a couple .ca domains to Porkbun and ended up with full whois privacy instead of redacted whois privacy. With the former, CIRA is given a registrant name of "Whois Privacy". With the latter, CIRA is given my name as the registrant, but redacts it from publicly accessible whois records. In my opinion, you always want the latter, so I switched to redacted privacy. Without those emails I probably wouldn't have noticed.
However, you need to know to expect those emails and emails confirming the initial registration. If you're
never listed as the registrant, you don't get those emails and probably don't know you need to be watching for them.
But, sure, if a registry reclassifies all of its registered names into a new "premium" tier, that sounds like the kind of thing where someone has already spent more time reading the RA than I'm going to do this weekend, that's for sure.
They might be able to classify all domains into a new premium tier, but they still need to keep the pricing uniform unless registrants have explictly agreed to discriminatory pricing, so there's no benefit over simply increasing the price of non-premium domains.
From the RA (emphasis added):
For the purposes of determining Renewal Pricing, the price for each domain registration renewal must be identical to the price of all other domain name registration renewals in place at the time of such renewal, and such price must take into account universal application of any refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying or other programs in place at the time of renewal. The foregoing requirements of this Section 2.10(c) shall not apply for (i) purposes of determining Renewal Pricing if the registrar has provided Registry Operator with documentation that demonstrates that the applicable registrant expressly agreed in its registration agreement with registrar to higher Renewal Pricing at the time of the initial registration of the domain name following clear and conspicuous disclosure of such Renewal Pricing to such registrant, and (ii) discounted Renewal Pricing pursuant to a Qualified Marketing Program (as defined below).
So the only way the registry is supposed to be allowed to charge a price that differs from the non-premium, uniform price is if the registrant agreed when they registered the domain. I read that part tonight because I had to renew my domain with the premium tag attached and was trying to find out if I could be inadvertantly agreeing to discriminatory pricing by renewing it.
As far as I interpret everything, there's no provision that would allow them to switch to discriminatory pricing after the initial registration. IE: You can't agree to discriminatory pricing during a renewal (not advice, just my opinion).
Additionally:
The parties acknowledge that the purpose of this Section 2.10(c) is to prohibit abusive and/or discriminatory Renewal Pricing practices imposed by Registry Operator without the written consent of the applicable registrant at the time of the initial registration of the domain and this Section 2.10(c) will be interpreted broadly to prohibit such practices.
but as I recall, the standard registry agreement wasn't really written with the sorts of pricing models that registries use
Yes, you're right, the registry agreement doesn't talk about premium pricing or pricing tiers at all, so it all comes down to the identical pricing requirement.
When I renewed my domain tonight, I wanted to document the price difference and it's nearly impossible.
I can query several registrar APIs for registration prices and transfer prices, but I can only query Namecheap's API for the renewal price on my domain and I can't query Namecheap's API to get a renewal price for any non-premium domains, even if they're in my account.
To make it even more difficult, both registration prices and transfer prices are almost always promotional prices and everything varies between registrars. There's nowhere for me to look up registry pricing or any kind of pricing that's consistent enough for me to get anything that I can use for comparison.
And, to make things even worse, Namecheap doesn't list the renewal price when you search for or register a domain, at least a .help domain. As of right now, if I register a .help domain I get a promo price of $3.80 USD and it tells me the retail registration price is $27.98 USD. However, they never mention the renewal price thoughout the entire registration process. I know that because I registered another .help domain tonight.
I spent 2 hours trying to figure out what the non-premium renewal pricing was for .help before giving up, registering, and renewing another .help domain just to get a receipt. It's the only way I could come up with to show the non-premium renewal pricing (tonight) differs from the premium renewal price I was charged (tonight).
It was useful though because my receipts match what Namecheap told me a couple weeks ago:
Meanwhile, let us share additional details with you. The current renewal price for this premium domain name is $28.78 ($28.60 is the renewal price+$0.18 ICANN fee). The attached price for your domain is lower than the usual renewal price for .HELP domains $30.16 ($29.98+$0.18 ICANN fee) due to the premium status.
Even though it's lower, that price is not
identical and the non-uniform price is a result of the premium status according to Namecheap. I'm realizing that complaining to ICANN about reclassification might not have been the correct approach, but at least I have the receipts to follow up by disputing the non-uniform pricing.
Ultimately, registrants make the distinction between premium and non-premium with the assumption that a premium domain may be more expensive and that non-premium domain will always benefit from uniform pricing. At least that's my expectation and I want the premium tag removed from my domain.
I posted this in the thread I started, but I also have logs from the Namecheap API showing the renewal price was
significantly increased for a period of time.
XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ApiResponse Status="OK" xmlns="[link removed]">
<Errors />
<Warnings />
<RequestedCommand>namecheap.domains.check</RequestedCommand>
<CommandResponse Type="namecheap.domains.check">
<DomainCheckResult Domain="****.help" Available="false" ErrorNo="0" Description="" IsPremiumName="true" PremiumRegistrationPrice="1180.0000" PremiumRenewalPrice="1180.0000" PremiumRestorePrice="35.4000" PremiumTransferPrice="1180.0000" IcannFee="0" EapFee="0.0" />
</CommandResponse>
<Server>PHX01APIEXT04</Server>
<GMTTimeDifference>--4:00</GMTTimeDifference>
<ExecutionTime>0.603</ExecutionTime>
</ApiResponse>
To me, that's a clear indication the registries aren't following the uniform pricing requirements in the RA. Judging by what I've experienced, I wouldn't be surprised to find out other registrants have been victims of rule-breaking price discrimination and simply don't have the proof, know-how, and time needed to pursue the issue.
Even if, or especially if, my ICANN complaint doesn't succeed in getting the premium tag removed from my domain, I think I've done a good job of demonstrating registries can, and do, reclassify domains during the registration period. It's something all registrars need to start tracking and paying attention to.