Unrelated: Voula Papachristou, a Greek athlete.
Dennis S., a fellow domainer from Greece, sent us the following email, wanting to share his frustration about .GR domains.
In the land that gave birth to democracy, the Olympics and gyros with tzatziki sauce, some simple things – such as pushing a domain – are still done the old-fashioned way: on paper.
While .GR domains have been around since the early 1990’s, the manual process hasn’t changed or improved.
Says Dennis:
Hello I am writing to you as I am a reader of your blog.
I wanted to share with you this experience of pushing a domain name within the same register company here in Greece.
I have two accounts with this register company, one as a personal account and a second one as a company account.I wanted to push 7 domains of mine, from my one account to the other.
Of course this is something we do all the time around the globe. But for Greece, once again, such a simple task has to go through bureaucracy.I was asked to send them via Postal Offices, signed contracts of both parties (that is me) that I am accepting for this push to take place.
I must also send them a copy of legal documents that prove that I am the owner (or representative) of the company.And finally I must pay 24,60 euros per domain for the push (according to EETT.gr, the Greek responsible organization for the .gr domains)
Which means that I must pay 200 euros for pushing my domains to my other account. Keep in mind that for registration for a .gr domain costs about 10 euros per year.
It’s definitely a schizophrenic way to conduct business that reflects the deeply bureaucratic roots of the Greek public sector and its bureaucrats.
That’s quite ridiculous.
.es has a similar requirements but you can scan the forms and send them by E-mail to the registry.
If both buyer and seller fill out the forms correctly the changes are carried out rapidly.
That’s why I always advise ccTLD investors to get acquainted with procedures first 🙂