The problem you describe of people not paying for a domain and gaming the system is fully the fault of Uniforum SA. If they refused to register a domain without payment upfront, like all the other registrars do, then there would be no system to game.

Currently when a domain expires, you get to keep it for about 6 months as you say, but this is WRONG. If a domain is not paid within 7 days of it expiring, it should be immediately freed up for someone else to own it. Plus Uniforum should also publish an exact date and time that the domain will be released to the public. People who want it should be able to queue their request for it by supplying their credit card details (or making a refundable payment for it). Should the domain not be renewed within the 7 day window period, then the first person in the queue for it, whose payment method succeeds should gain it. And if a corporation with a trademark lets their trademark domain name lapse, they should be disallowed from challenging for it.

I also dispute your statement that we should have to abide with Uniforum SA’s policies for a co.za domain name. Uniforum SA does not OWN the co.za domain name space. Ownership of the domain space is vested with all South Africans. Uniforum SA currently administers it on our behalf, but WE, the citizens of the Republic of South Africa, should determine the policies.

I think it’s worth noting that you essentially get 6 months grace to pay for the domain before it is deleted.

In the past people would keep “bouncing” these 6 month windows effectively keeping a domain without paying for it. It’s the same logic that causes Uniforum to suspend DNS services when the domain is suspended. If your COZA domain get suspended, none of the associated DNS entries work any more and anything associated with it stops working (web site, e-mail, etc.)

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Uniforum’s policies, they are there, out in the open for anyone to see… by choosing to register a domain name with them you agree to abide by their rules …

There are numerous deficiencies with the system, multiple WHOIS domain queries result in a time-related lockout. Sending a text-file to be parsed by a script for the registration of a domain or any changes to it, are but two of them.

Until such time as there is another player in this space, we just have to live with it And by the way I have been registering domains utilising Uniforum for nearly 14 years and have had many run-ins with them, including the same one that happened to you. I even “lost” domains to other people due to the arcane methods in place for domain management at Uniforum. This was when I was administering large numbers (many hundreds) of domains …

This system, and the failure thereof, is entirely of their own making.

Because they don’t require payment upfront for registering the domain, and they give you a few months to pay, it used to be possible to register a domain, wait a few months until they are about to suspend it, and then very quickly delete the domain, add it again and get another 3 months of free domain usage.

But before they delete the domain, they suspend it for a month or so. While it’s suspended it no longer resolves. So by the time it’s deleted for non-payment the domain has already gone a month or so without it being functional.

All in all, Uniforum is a huge pain in backside. They require nonsense that other domain registrars don’t (ie: reverse resolving dns servers, 24 hour wait to change DNS servers).

Personally I hope the government does take over co.za like they were going to.

Oh, and they are exceptionally rude. They speak to their customers like they are doing you a favour.

The only good thing about them is that R50 (After they were forced to get rid of the R200 “setup fee) is very cheap compared to most other tld.