They charge $10.16/year to renew a .com (including the ICANN fee). Pretty reasonable to me, plus they let you specify your own nameserver for the domain.
I've been very happy with NameCheap: I was originally on GoDaddy (I was young and stupid), moved to 1&1 (still young, still stupid), and I've been with NameCheap ever since (~4 years).
It's not "plus", it's requirement for any registrator, isn't it? I've never seen anyone not allowing to specify nameservers.
It's backwards: "plus" is the ability to have free DNS hosting :-)
You can get into a cheap registrar and pay for 10 years in advance.
I'm paying $7.75 elsewhere and perfectly satisfied.
Oh and by the way, NameCheap is essentially an enom reseller,
remember the registerfly/enom fiasco a few years ago?
They don't upsell anything, unlike the others do, and private registration/transfer is free.
Sources: http://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&... http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/accredited-list.html
plus, calling them a trap is rather disingenuous when the world is full of snail mail spammers who try and trick people who have expiring domains, and their ilk
(if that's what you mean)
(why the hell ICANN gave Verisign the contract again is the most dumbfounding politics I've seen)
So Namecheap loses $2 on the transfer and then hopes to make it up on the renewal.
(wow the godaddy ceo is a jerk, killing elephants for sport - for anyone thinking of defending it as a necessary evil, note how he went out of his way across the world to "help out" by killing it)
Elephants are not a threatened species everywhere, even though they struggle in some parts of Africa / the world.
They get you in cheap but there is NEVER a discount on renewals, always full price.
So be ready to transfer again in a year.