Credit account Credit limit Credit notes - registrations Credit notes - renewals Payment terms VAT Cancelling domain name registrations Detagging Pro forma invoices Credit account We will charge the fees for all the domain names that you have registered or renewed on your tag to your credit account, unless you have specified that we should send our invoice directly to the registrant. We issue our invoices on the 8th of each month and we give you the option to receive them by email or land mail. We consolidate our invoices for domain name registrations, and they include all the domain names that you have registered from 00:00:01 on the first day of the previous month to 24:00:00 on the last day of the previous month. We also issue consolidated invoices for all the domain names that you have renewed during that period. Our invoices cover domain name registration and renewal for periods of two years.
If you cancel a domain name registration before we have invoiced the registration fee to you, we will not charge you. If we have already issued an invoice for the registration fee on the 8th of the month following registration and you subsequently cancel that registration, we will not issue a credit note. The fee will remain outstanding on your credit account. If you renew a domain name, you will not be able to cancel the renewal and we will not issue a credit note. Likewise, if you detag a domain name after you have renewed it, we will not issue a credit note and the fee will remain outstanding on your credit account.
Credit limit Once we have received satisfactory references, we will initially set your credit limit at £500 although you may request a higher limit. If your references are unsatisfactory or unavailable we will ask you to deposit a sum of money against your credit account before you can make any transactions using our registrar systems. We reserve the right to suspend the use of your tag when you reach your credit limit, to reduce your credit limit and to refuse a request for a higher limit, in which case you can either make early payment of outstanding invoices or deposit a sum of money against your account.
Credit notes - registrations We do not issue credit notes for new registrations. If you register a domain name and subsequently send a cancellation instruction to our registrar systems before 24:00:00 on the 7th day of the month following registration, the cancellation will take effect. We will not include the charge for that registration in your consolidated invoice.
If you send a cancellation instruction to our registrar systems after 00:00:01 on the 8th day of the month following registration and we have already issued our invoice for the fee, we will accept your cancellation request. However you will still be liable to pay for the registration fee because you did not cancel the domain name within the specified timeframe.
We always issue the invoice for a new registration to the registering registrar. If you register a domain name we will invoice you for the registration fee, even if you subsequently change the tag on the domain name.
If you indicate that we should invoice the registrant direct, our invoice would be at the full registration fee of £80 plus VAT for each domain name.
Credit notes - renewals We do not issue credit notes for domain names that have been renewed. If you submit a renewal instruction, you will not be able to cancel it and the fee will be included in our consolidated invoice on the 8th of the month following renewal.
If you submit a renewal instruction we will invoice you for the renewal fee, even if you subsequently change the tag on the domain name.
Payment terms
Payment is due on monthly invoices within 30 days of the date of the invoice. If an invoice is not paid, we reserve the right to suspend use of the tag. We may also charge interest on balances unpaid for more than 60 days. You can find details on a range of
payment methods.
If an invoice for a renewal fee remains unpaid beyond credit terms, the expiry date for the domain name will be wound back two years and no credit note will be issued. If, as a consequence, the domain name has expired, we will send out a pro forma invoice and a suspension notice to the registrant by land mail and email.
If we do not receive payment of the registrar invoice or the pro forma invoice within 30 days of expiry, we will suspend the domain name. 'Suspended' means that the DNS servers will not be entered into the .uk zone file, however they will be maintained in the Nominet register. If the registrar or the domain name registrant pays the outstanding fee, the DNS servers will be reinstated at the next zone rebuild. The status of the domain name will be clear from a WHOIS query.
VAT Value Added Tax (VAT) at the current rate is added to Nominet invoices.
VAT is excluded on invoices (apart from membership fees) to our non-UK registrars based outside the EU.
VAT can be excluded from our invoices (apart from membership fees) to our non-UK registrars who are business customers based in the EU. So that we can remove VAT from your invoices, you must give us your VAT registration number appropriate for the country in which you are based. You can enter this into your account details in our
Online Service. Additionally please contact our member and registrar support team on +44 (0) 1865 332233 or email
support@nominet.org.uk to request that you are invoiced excluding VAT.
Please see the
HMRC web site for details.
Cancelling domain name registrations If a registration has been made in error or is no longer required, you can cancel registrations provided that payment has not been made. However any deletion of domains, which we believe is not for the purpose of correcting mistakes, will be dealt with under our contract with registrars. The sanctions may include reduced credit limits, suspension of tags or the cancellation of tags. To help us identify potential abuse we have introduced a limit on the number of domain names that can be deleted. The limit will be 5 domain names or 5% of domain names that have yet to be invoiced (whichever is higher). Once this limit is reached all delete requests will be rejected and the domain names will be invoiced.
Our analysis of the statistics for registration and deletions have shown that this limit should not affect any registrars who delete domain names registered in error. To be clear, the limit on deletions for practices such as domain tasting is zero. If we detect any uses of the delete operation other than the correction of registration errors, we will take action against the registrar.
Detagging You are not able to detag a domain name before we issue the first registration invoice. Instead, you can cancel domain names up until 24.00.00 hours on the 7th day of the month following registration, which means that the domain name will not appear on our consolidated invoice.
Under our renewals system it is not necessary to detag domain names that you do not wish to renew. However, if you do want to detag a domain name to indicate a permanent termination of your relationship with the registrant, please be aware that we do not accept 'detagged in error' requests from registrars to retag domain names. Only registrants can submit retagging requests via the online registrar transfer (tag change) system.
Pro forma invoices In the following circumstances we will issue a pro forma invoice to the registrant for fees (at non-member rate) by email and by post:
- If you have marked a domain name 'bc' in the 'first bill' field
- If you have marked a domain name 'bc' in the 'recur bill' field
- If we do not receive a renewal request prior to the renewal date for a domain name
- If we have received a renewal request for a domain name but the fee is not paid
- If a domain name is associated with the DETAGGED or NOMINET tag
If we do not receive payment for these charges within 30 days of the issue of the pro forma invoice, we will suspend and subsequently cancel the domain name.
When we receive the full payment for the charge, we will issue a VAT invoice.