At the turn of the century,1 I was working at Qantas, an international airline. One day I saw one of the business analysts walking by with a fistful of petty cash vouchers, which turned out to be one voucher for the renewal of each of Qantas’s domain names, including http://www.qantas.com and http://www.qantas.com.au.
Apparently, one of Qantas’s domain names had expired few years previously, causing quite some grief, so Qantas instituted a new procedure: this one business analyst made a note in his diary of when the registration fees were due, paid them on his credit card and then claimed the money from petty cash. I shudder when I think of the fragility of such a critical business function.
The problem with domain names is that they are so inexpensive. For $19.99/yr (or less), it is just not worth the registrar doing any more at renewal time than sending a simple reminder email, and reminder emails often get bounced or be ignored.
I wonder if it would be possible to build a business out of maintaining domain name registrations for large companies. For the low, low price of 200USD/yr, you could offer domains that have 6 months grace on expiry, and send real, paper invoices. Even after the 1000% mark-up, such a service might represent good value to an enterprise that depends on having a web presence.
1 I intend to be telling my grandkids stories. Thought I’d start practising the terminology now.
Comments
Melbourne IT (among others, I'm sure) do exactly this. I use them to manage just over 100 domains at work, and it's great. We don't quite pay what you suggest but IMHO it's money well spent.
*sigh* I'm full of great ideas, but they're all between five and ten years too late.