In December, in a series of articles, we introduced you to the issue of the price increase of .CZ domains by the CZ.NIC registry. Unfortunately, the whole situation has another unpleasant impact that we had to start addressing this year.
Our statement that we will sell at purchase prices vs. reality
As you know, we sell domains at purchase prices. We have no margin on them, whether it is registration, renewal or re-registration. This is tied to a public pledge. There are no hidden fees or price manipulation with us.
Of course, keeping this promise costs us a lot of money. We don’t mean the cost of hardware, licenses, manpower or legal services when we protect your websites with us. We have taken this into account and it is part of our service.
Our problem is the transaction fees and in connection with the .CZ domain the pennies.
CZ.NIC increased the price quite awkwardly to CZK 145 without VAT, which makes CZK 175.45 with VAT. We have not charged you the 45 pennies so far. So the domain will cost you 175 CZK. But we, CZ.NIC, have to pay 175,45 CZK for 1 domain. At CZ.NIC we do not buy domains one by one, but we pay for a credit, which is then deducted according to the number of registrations and renewals. Considering that we have about 234 thousand .cz domains, it makes a little over 105 thousand CZK per year. In the future it will be more and more…
Last year, the domain cost 125 CZK without VAT (151.25 CZK with VAT). So on 25 cents we would have made “just” over 58 thousand CZK. We took it as part of the sunk costs and enjoyed the growth.
Unfortunately, this year it has somehow come together. The price of .CZ domains has increased, transaction costs are getting higher and higher, so we decided that it was too much and it was time to do something about it.
In view of the above, we have therefore decided to sell the domains at the actual purchase price including VAT. Right down to the penny.
For the record, online payment fees are another 1-9.1%. For example, when paying via PayPal, the fees for one domain are 15.97 CZK. It is possible that in the future we will have to charge this fee, because selling domains at the purchase price and making a 9.1% profit on each payment is not ideal. We’ll see.
What does that mean to you?
If you are using our deposit account, you will not be affected by the change. The same applies when paying by card, PayPal, SuperCash, BitCoin etc… Everything that goes through payment gateways will already have the new price included.
The only people affected by the change are customers paying by bank transfer. They must not round the amount in any way. You must enter the amount including pennies in Online Banking. Don’t worry, your online banking can do it.
Frequently asked questions
We have prepared answers to the most common questions you send us regarding pennies.
I’ve rounded down, what do I do?
If you have managed to pay less, you will be sent a message that you need to pay the balance. This has to be paid by bank transfer or via a payment gateway – unfortunately, you cannot use a deposit account to pay the additional fees.
I rounded up, what do I do?
This will have to be resolved by our colleague in the billing department, who will carry out the so-called penny settlement. Be prepared, however, that the solution will not be immediate as only trained staff who are not on night duty have access to invoices.
Was there really no other way to solve this?
Unfortunately, domains would cost us more than 100 thousand a year due to the penny difference in VAT. That’s a big amount of money that we’ve had to start dealing with somehow. Take into account that we pay almost a million crowns a year in fees for online payments (cards, Paypal) for domains alone…
If we want to offer .CZ domains at purchase prices, this step was necessary.
My online banking doesn’t do this, what can I do?
If you have problems with transferring the exact amount to your bank, we recommend using our deposit account. Transfer the higher amount to it and then pay the call from it. Another advantage of having a deposit account is that if you have multiple services with us, you save on fees at your bank. Payment from an imprest account is also the fastest. If you find the perfect free domain, you’ll register it immediately – no waiting for payment gateways.