zlacker

The domain industry is somewhat split between two very different kind of markets. One is where registries like godaddy will put the fee to be about as close to the cost of the upstream registry, where the profit is generated by other services and ties in. The moment a customer send in a support ticket, or worse, call support, then that customer is costing them more than any generated profits. Google and Facebook are likely earning more profit per "free" user than godaddy get from a domain name.

The other market is generally focused on brand protection and domain portfolios, through they tend to be open to private customers as long they are willing to pay the general much higher price. The margin here means that they want to keep their customers, and good support and proactive relation is an effective way to engaged with customers rather than being a pure cost center.

My general recommendation is to use the cheapest one when holding domain names for future projects, and use the second one for anything which would cost you a lot of money and time if things goes south or the registrar do something stupid like in this case.

(disclaimer/context, I work at a small local registrar and I regular hear about this kind of events)

>>belorn+(OP)
The reason I don't mind paying more for iwantmyname or DigitalOcean is that their support actually, for-realsies works. Now I'm not scraping by to feed myself, and if I were this may be a different story, but I just do not understand why people ever sub-optimize their future happiness in order to save $3 a month or something silly like that.

Edit: And if you have to take the cheaper option, at least go with Namecheap. They're a lot better than GoDaddy and at a similar price point.

>>belorn+(OP)
What are some examples of the more expensive type of registrar? name.com?

>>EarthL+cr
Don’t look to large, well-known registrars. I would suggest that you look for local registrars in your area. The TLD registry for your country/area usually has a list of the authorized registrars, so you can simply search that for entities with a local address.

Disclaimer: I work at such a small registrar, but you are not in our target market.