I also contacted another domain registration service to verify this price. They said that the domain transfer fee is $843 and that they have nothing to do with it, the pricing is determined by registrar(Google in this case).
Attached: https://twitter.com/EmirKarsiyakali/status/16014456975341649...
Even while writing this comment, they also responded from their own Twitter: https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1601447984775962625
If the price of forum.dev is indeed $850 then the attached TRY 13040 invoice implies USD/TRY 15.34 which was last seen in May. The $12 domains go for TRY 75 which implies USD/TRY is 6.25, last seen in 2020.
It looks to me that the prices in TRY are simply set by hand and not refreshed that often. OP got a nice deal via such manually set price in 2021 and that's all that is going on here.
Disclaimer: I work at Google but I have absolutely nothing to do with domains or forex rates.
The wholesale price is determined by the registry (Google), but the retail price will include markup from the registrar (Namecheap, Porkbun, Google). In the case of .dev Google runs the registry and acts as a registrar. As for registrars, that comparable (6b.dev) is $709 at Porkbun, $720 at Google, and $843 at Namecheap.
Namecheap is marking it up more than the other registrars.
I wonder if your registration last year included any kind of first year discount. This is the first time I've seen someone show an actual receipt for this type of complaint. I estimated the pricing at about $315USD vs $700USD. That's enough of an increase that I'm really curious to know what happened.
https://www.google.com/search?q=usd+try&client=safari&hl=en-...
I think this person's case is a good example of where that can be problematic. Even if they had paid the correct price originally, they'd be seeing a 35% price increase because of the exchange rate. It's not unreasonable for them to have assumed the original purchase and renewals were always going to be in their local currency without fluctuation due to foreign exchange rates.
I skimmed ICANN's registrar accreditation agreement for info about pricing and it basically says registrars can price domains however they want. The registry agreement has pricing related limitations, so I think the intent is to ensure registries don't engage in abusive pricing with the assumption that competition will keep the registrars honest because registrants can transfer their domain to a new registrar if they're being mistreated.
That leaves this person with no recourse. The registrar (in my opinion) undercharged them and didn't do a good job of communicating the true ongoing cost of the domain. Transferring to a competing registrar doesn't help because the registry pricing for the domain is going to be around $700 USD while the registrant's expectations were set at TRY4360 ($230 USD today).
There aren't any great options to make it right either. The registry can't start discounting domains to fix mistakes made by a registrar, the registrar can't take a loss of $470 / year (at current exchange rates, potentially forever), and the registrant shouldn't have to pay $700 USD / year for a domain they thought was TRY4360 ($230 USD today). To make it worse, the registrant's expectations didn't get reevaluated until the bill for renewal came due and if they've spent a year developing on the domain it feels like extortion (to them).
It's also not fair to expect the registrant to realize they're underpaying. Price differences between registrars are enough for people to assume a low price is the result of finding a registrar with better pricing.
Google Domains isn't the only registrar that gives the impression domains are priced in local currency either. Gandi bills me in CAD and doesn't mention USD when I'm buying domains. Namecheap shows me prices in CAD, but bills in USD and it's not clear USD is the real price rather than simply being the billing currency.
Forget you know the registry sets prices in USD and go pretend to register 6b.dev on Google Domains. Select a foreign currency and see if you can figure out the price will fluctuate based on the exchange rate for USD. I'm not sure where the OP got the idea renewal would only be $12 rather than the TRY4360 they paid originally. There's nothing that left me with that impression.
This is a tricky issue to solve. It's not like we can region-lock domains to a specific country, like how Steam is able to use price discrimination to sell the same game for different prices in different currencies. The real price is indeed denominated in USD and billed to registrars in USD, and these prices have always remained constant for all registered domains on all of our TLDs (so indeed the real price is steadily going down over time thanks to inflation, particularly over the past year). Any other price displayed in a different currency by a registrar is performing currency conversion and is presumably subject to change in the future along with the exchange rates.
I agree with you, it doesn't seem like registrars are communicating this well. Prices of other goods (e.g. luxury watches) do also change multiple times per year to reflect changes in underlying exchange rates, but crucially, what you're getting there is a one-time purchase, and you know up front the only price you'll ever be paying for it. Domains, by contrast, are essentially multi-year subscriptions, and the price of subsequent years is liable to change both as the registrar themselves adjust pricing and as underlying currency exchange rates shift as well. I think the registrars broadly have looked at this issue and decided it would be too complicated to display the underlying USD price to registrants, so better to hide it and just display the price in the local currency?
That would make sense to me. I wouldn't even be surprised if some registrants are unable to pay in USD or if they get charged exorbitant fees for foreign exchange.
Even if the registrars added a warning during checkout with a link to an explanation of how it works, I bet very few people would read it. They'd probably have the same number of upset customers and the complaint would shift to registrars hiding a complex pricing scheme in the fine print.
My hunch is the OP is an extreme outlier and the issue happens so infrequently that the complexity of explaining it up front isn't worth it. In the past ~5 years this is the first time I've seen someone with a receipt and a legitimate complaint.
I think some of the responsibility can fall on the OP too. They say they've registered hundreds of domains, so it's not unreasonable to think they should be spending some time learning what rights they have as a registrant, how disputes are resolved, how long term pricing works, etc., especially if they're registering premium domains.
To clarify, I wasn't suggesting that the registrants in foreign countries pay in USD and potentially pay forex fees, merely that the underlying USD price be exposed to them so they are aware of what the future renewal price will look like as the exchange rate shifts. They'd still always be paying in local currency.