Customer Newsletter

Onweb News - 1st December 1998

Hello onweb customers, and other potential customers...

Well the Christmas Season is with us again. First and foremost I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our clients a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We trust that your web site is being visited often and that you will find next year to be even more prosperous than this year.

New Discount Structure

We have decided to revert to our previous discount structure following the representations made to us with regard to the confusion that would arise with varying expiry dates. It seems that people are much happier with a fixed time period for their web accounts.

Accordingly the discount structure that will apply from December 1 is that when you purchase a 12 month plan, we will only charge you for 11 months. This represents a discount of 8.3%, and is available for both new accounts and renewals.

In addition, we have brought this discount structure forwards to our 6 month plans, so that you can obtain the same level of discount by purchasing 6 months, and we will only charge you for 5.5 months.

The standard price will apply to quarterly renewals.

As before, the business pack pricing incorporates the discount structure, and is only available on an annual cycle.

Domain Name Renewals

Recently we attended a meeting with Internet Names Australia to discuss the restructuring that they have undergone and to find out about new processes and initiatives they are considering. You may not yet know that Internet Names Australia is the new name for the part of MelbourneIT that handles the registration of the .com.au domain names. The first batch of expiry dates have just come up, and there appear to be quite a few problems that INA have yet to solve.

Fortunately, it seems that the processes we at Onweb have in place will enable us to keep track of our customers rather more easily than a number of other INA account holders, judging by some of the horror stories revealed. From your perspective as our client, the renewal process should be quite hasslefree if you choose to renew your domain name through us.

If you originally had us register your .com.au domain name, there should be no difficulty at all. We will be advised by INA of the pending expiry of your name registration (more as a courtesy reminder because we know which domain names we have registered), and we will advise you accordingly. The renewal fee has been set at $125 for 2 years by INA, the same as the initial registration, although there have been thoughts about raising the fees.

The Onweb policy remains the same as it has with respect to domain name fees. We will charge you $125 for renewal or initial name registration when taken out in conjunction with an Onweb plan. When done in isolation, there will be an additional $30 handling fee levied.

The customers who may experience some inconvenience with their name renewal are those who either

performed their own initial domain name registration, or
had their initial registration performed by someone else and have transferred their account to Onweb.

If you fit either of these categories you can nominate Onweb as the organisation to be notified about name renewal matters, simply by emailing renewals@ina.com.au to explain that you would like admin@onweb.com.au to become the destination for renewal advice concerning your domain name.

The main reason for there possibly being a problem is that people change their email address when they move from one ISP to another, and some have had several moves since their initial registration, and of course may have overlooked notifying INA about the move.

The other reason concerns the fact that the person in the company who was the web site contact point may have moved companies. Hence when INA have tried to contact that person, the email address no longer exists or there is a trail of incomplete addresses to try and track down the appropriate contact person.

There is a moral here: You should add your web administrator details to the list of things you should notify people about – such as bank account signatories etc.

What happens when a name is not renewed?

In the event that a name is not renewed, either because the owner does not wish to renew the name, or after a reasonable time beyond the expiry date and INA has had no success in their attempts to contact the owner, the name will become available to any other party that could be entitled to the name.

As you all know, the present system is very much a first-in-first-serve approach to allocating domain names provided you satisfy the guidelines, so there could be several people seeking the same name. Now, ...... if you overlook renewing your domain name? ....... or if the name you wanted is not renewed.....?

Other INA Initiatives

There are several things that INA is thinking about, but nothing definite has been decided at the moment. I have mentioned above about some thoughts INA have been giving to revising their price schedules.

We have seen over the past months with the internal restructuring of INA that their general service levels have improved. The standard service time has been reduced from 10 days to 3 days.

INA are also considering whether they should publish a directory of domain names. We discussed with them whether they were thinking about a simple listing directory (like the white pages telephone directory), or a classified directory (grouped into business categories like the yellow/big colour pages directory). It was recognised that it would be out of date before it was published, but apparently there is some interest in such a publication.

ONWEB Promotion

Coming up in the next few weeks will be a questionnaire that we will forward to each of our customers, to help us better understand how you perceive us to be. We know that everyone hates filling out questionnaires and surveys, so we will offer a little encouragement for you to respond. The prize will be a one-month fee reduction on the next renewal for the winner, who will be chosen by randomly selecting a winner from the returned responses. Full details will be given in the questionnaire mailout.

Until next time, happy (on)webbing

Neville Williams

Director