.ME Becomes 2nd Registry To Waive Renewal Fees For Domain Holders In Japan: Still No Word From Verisign

Today following a similar announcement by the .Org registry a few days ago, the .ME registry also announced its was going to help domain holders located in Japan by giving them automatic renewals of their domains.

Here is the  press release by the .Me registry

“The recent devastating disasters in Japan have left many registrants without the ability to renew their domain names. The .ME Registry would like to alleviate concerns amongst Japanese .ME domain name holders by waiving renewal fees for one full year for all names that expire or will expire between March 11 and April 30, 2011.

“This is a small gesture we can make to help show support for our friends in Japan,” said Predrag Lesic, executive director of the .ME Registry, based in Montenegro. “In the weeks following this tragic crisis, truly heroic stories of survival and commitment have surfaced in Japan. We wish to honor all those facing tremendously difficult circumstances there, by making sure we will do what we can to alleviate any unnecessary concerns.”

To protect these registrants from losing their names, the Registry plans to waive the one year renewal fee for all names that expire(d) in the March 11 – April 30 period. This will affect only domain names where the registrant country address is Japan. For domains that had renewal dates between March 11 and March 31, the Registry will void the renewal fee. For domains up for renewal between April 1 and April 30, the fee will be waived at the point of sale.

The .ME Registry has notified partner registrars of its intentions and details on implementation of this plan. In addition, .ME is encouraging registrars to exercise extra attention to the deletion process to avoid deleting names where the registrant has not yet paid due to the disasters. Although the registry cannot itself renew or extend these domain names, it can waive the registry renewal fees charged to registrars and request the cooperation of partner registrars in helping to keep additional calamity from befalling Japanese customers.”

Nice move.

We are still waiting to see if the granddaddy of all registries, Verisign will make the same offer on .com’s and .net’s