I'm still waiting on them to say which TLD this was. The big operators don't randomly make drastic price changes like that. This bizarre incident is getting out

I'm still waiting on them to say which TLD this was. The big operators don't randomly make drastic price changes like that. This bizarre incident is getting outsized attention that I don't think it merits. Frankly, a premium price of hundreds of thousands per year sounds like an out-and-out mistake somewhere; no one is paying that, certainly not on a random first name on a random nTLD. That's simply not a successful business strategy; you'd lose all your registrations by doing it. Which TLD went from $10 to $30/yr? There's a lot of missing info in these comments! On the other hand, first year discounting is (as you're seeing) quite common. So just treat the 2nd year price as the actual price for the purpose of deciding whether you're willing to pay it. The key difference here is that you know the price schedule up front.