This is more of a heads-up to others, although I am pissed at the use of such business gotcha to extort an additional fee. Here is what happened.
We have a .ch domain website. Unlike the .com domains which can be prepaid for many years in advance, the .ch domain can only be paid for 1 year. So an annual renewal cycle ... not the worst, right? But, there are more intricacies. The renewal can only be done 30 days before the 1-year expiration... ok, still, 30 days isn't too bad. Except, the Swiss registrars require the domain to be renewed with at least 12 days to spare before expiration. This cuts the window to update the domain down to 18 days.
If you manage to update the website within these 18 days, then you would pay the regular fee of $14.99 (ok, this is 3 times what a .com domain will cost you, but that's another discussion). If, however, you should miss this 18-day window, two things are going to happen:
1) Your website goes dark on the 19th day although, technically, you still have 11 more days until your prior domain registration expires.
2) You have to fork up an additional $200 (plus the 14.99) to get your domain back. Unless of course you want to chance it - in that case you can wait another 40 days after your domain expires and buy it again at the 14.99 price. The risk, of course, is that somebody else may get the domain name.
I consider the $200 fee as exorbitant. And I think that being unable to update the domain for longer than 1-yr is also foolish. They are almost hoping you miss the 18-day window so they can hit you with the $200 fine. Buggers! So, don't get sucked into paying them the fine. Put the renewal on your calendar OR use the Auto-Renew option if your registration provider offers it (I just discovered mine does; I use namecheap.com).
I don't see how they can justify blocking your domain 18 days before expirey. And yes, charging $200 late fee is disproportionate. Perhaps consider changing the registrar, AFAIK the big ones (green, hostpoint, etc) have reasonable conditions, see here for a complete list of registrars.
Thanks for the list. I just contacted green.ch and it seems like they are more reasonable in terms of renewal, so will go with them from next year. Not sure what Swiss registrar namecheap.com are working with, but the $200 fee and taking our website dark for several days without informing us was pretty irresponsible.
I am using metanet for both professional and private websites and I never had any issue like yours - they simply send me a bill once a year for the hosting and the domain is a line item on it... same rules to pay as any other bill as far as i know. Certainly has nobody ever switched it off after a few days...
I use one.com for a few .ch domains and never have a problem, my CC is automatically charged when needed but I always get a reminder beforehand, they have excellent support too.
I used Switch until they realised there was no money in domains.
Hostpoint seem fine. They send an email with a link to online cc payment. If this is not paid, they automatically send an invoice (as stated in their email) for the same amount.
As to .coms being so much cheaper: 123-reg.co.uk charges £11.99 = CHF14.60 at today's low rates - Hostpoint is CHF15 a year for .ch...
Must admit that I get a little annoyed with these warnings. I totally believe that you had a problem but it doesn't seem right that you tell everyone not to use them for domain registration.
I've been registering and managing domains in my own small way for nearly 20 years. Been using GoDaddy for 10+ years and have never had a problem. All my domains are auto-renewed, including my .ch domains, and I get plenty of advisory emails telling me what they are about to do, what they are doing, and what they've just done. I'd happily recommend them.
If you're talking about hosting / server issues, that's a different matter. But for domain registration and management, they are good.