Is there any catch with them? or are we others totally out-competed with the price. I am not interested in that one can offer extra things to add value to the service, I am just wondering if there is anything bad with their packages, do they charge anthing extra, are the renewals as cheap, do they release domains easy when transferring, all these kind of things... are the domains the bargains they seems to be? because frankly I dont know why have a reseller account when their retail price is lower than the reseller wholesale price of others... buy from them and sell is more economical..

I read their Terms & Conditions over as it related to Domain Name registration and I could'nt find anything that was a trap... so, convinced that there must be a "catch" somewhere, I registered several .us names at their sale price of $2.99.

So far, I have not found any catch as it relates to these .us names. 1&1 has done everything they said they would do. They charged me exactly what they said they would. And they even mailed me a "Quick Start Guide To Your Instant Domain & Instant Mail" (and I mean like real postal mail). I've never received anything like that from any other reseller/registrar that I can remember.

So far (and it's only been a few weeks) they've been true to the word. We'll see what the future holds. BTW, I do NOT have any hosting or servers with them.

First they won't have that price indefinetly. Two, as you may perceive, their site layout is somewhat confusing that some users might select some more services with the domain, without knowing that they don't have to add those services to get the domain name for that price.

Well, I tried to register my qendy.com with them, but unfortunately, I couldn't register because I coulnd't reach the check out page.. maybe it's because I live in brazil or something like that.

Well, all we know that domain name is just a piece of data stored somewhere (even the place most people have know idea!). And a piece of name.. it's just a set of letter that every literated man can form. So, it should be cheap domain name. Maybe, what we pay is for storing and holding the right of this domain name.

So, for that , we shouldn't pay a lot. My feeling is these price level are normal to the long-term equilibrium.

That's also raise concern about reseller accounts. Why to have it?
Most people have desire to be a internet businessman having his or her own internet company. And it's not that expensive to have your own branded domain registration services. Also, there's some people that wants to start a web hosting company with EVERY KIND OF SERVICES, so, a domain name reseller account is a MUST for these people. I'm not trying to judge if that's good or bad, but just illustrating the whole situation.

Well, in economics, we have market segregation. That means that there's all kind of customer with different will to pay for a thing. So, some people maybe willing to pay more and other less. What's happening is that, some people can't find the cheap registration services so they are contented with those more expensive registration and there's people like me, who want's the cheapest services on EARTH!

If there's only expensive registration services, I wouldn't register anything at all. So, the whole market would haverst LESS income. But, if they sell cheap and expensive domain names altogether, they might lose some income with the cheap domain names, but the overall is that the whole domain market can have more buyers and sellers with more overall revenue and profit.

loss leaders just like ev1servers, to advertise/market other products.

btw .US registry charges $3 if i'm not mistaken, so its not a big loss.

normally .us charges around 5.75 per domain name. if they agree to volume comittments neulevel can give rebates of around 1.00-1.50 per domain.

not sure where i've read that they offer $3 as discounts, could be mistaken :)

oneandone is taking a loss, although not huge. It is cheaper than the 5 - 6 per click they would spend on overture or google

hadn't thought of it that way. you are right..

This is why most hosting companies are selling names at a loss. With many keywords at 9.00 each in the hosting category it is far cheaper to go this route