I am mainly using italian company Tophost to register my domains, and domains usually cost cost 5.99€+ vat. And they're still making profit from that. So I kinda call bs on this "no added fees".
OTOH, I have to say that Tophost is not the prettiest or the coolest, but so far I had no real issue and the price is low.
However, it's nice to see another player joining the game.
Regarding the $0.99 domain... Didn't it sound alarming that you pay a domain so little?
In any case, the Verisign fee is not hard to confirm; it would be weird for them to lie about it: https://investor.verisign.com/news-releases/news-release-det...