>Also rent seeking by namecheap

What has it got to do with namecheap when they dont own the registry of .COM or .XYZ?

I think because the Verisign price increase is only 7%, and presumably namecheap has a margin on top of that. So increasing the price by 9% and blaming the registry could be considered unreasonable.

But isn't the 7% already agreed upon in the wholesale agreement?

https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-agreements/com/c...

I was under the impression that the other $6 comes from Namecheap, no? Maybe I misunderstood it.

This comment breaks it down. Namecheap is using the opportunity to sneakily increase their markup, which is a bit underhanded IMO.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37213773

I'm not saying they are doing anything right or wrong but they are probably a profitable company who could have theoretically spared to absorb some (or all) of it without passing it through to their customers

Instead, they are passing it on 100%.

Why should namecheap subsidize the cost? That makes 0 sense and I say it as a namecheap customer. I don't see how its fair for them to cover the cost and I don't want them to do so because I am a happy customer and don't want them to go out of business or lower their product quality.

> Why should namecheap subsidize the cost

Why are they entitled to have their profit margins protected no matter what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage-price_spiral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

Certain businesses get made obsolete over time. Namecheap decided to pass along 100% of the cost, what if their competitor passes along 50%?

Namecheap is passing along 209% of their cost. They're raising prices on their cut more than Verisign is on theirs.

Precisely, Not to defend Namecheap but we are in a different time. I don't know everyone's age on HN. But If they were just 40s, they would have lived in a zero interest era for 15 years and nearly all of their professional lives. We are having inflation, cost of money going up. The margin that used to work for Namecheap may no longer works for them now. And you have plenty of option outside of NameCheap. And again, none of this could be called rent seeking.

Of course there is an argument in US and Tech today ( as shown in many of the comment ) that margin is somehow evil. And should be as low as possible. I guess that is a different argument.

Verisign is adding $0.62, while Namecheap is increasing their cut by $0.68.

They're passing it through by 209%, not 100%.

They use the occasion to get more commission, by encouraging renewals further in the future to "lock" the current price. Presumably they get the full 10 years worth of commission today when a .com is renewed for that long.

Can you not simply move your registration to another provider (Amazon etc)