Yes .info's are always great. But you always can catch them on sale at one registar or another. RF had them for .60 1st year - renewal at reg price. Dotster has one for .77 cents renewal at reg price ($14.95). Godaddy is going I think at $1 renewal at reg price. So if you run a special of .info's you could bring in some traffic.
HA, yeh, an application code alright. A Non-Refundable, whether you get approved or not application code.
Of course, that is a business to earn them money. Plus, a non-refundable fee is so very convenient, isn't it i Wish there were a good justification for that fee amount.
Agreed, it does seem pretty rediculous! I guess it's just because they don't want everyone getting approved.
I think they are just setting up a high target that cannot be reached by every company willing to become an accedited domain registrar. If it were 100$ I would apply myself. With the current application fee they aim to keep only serious companies coming, I guess. Then you get absolutely no guarantee that the registrar is not a scammer. Other than that, I don't see a valid justification for the so high fee amount.
its not too high for an established company, which I think is why they have such an application fee. If a scammer became a domain name registrar, they could actually shut the internet down.