Hello Sandra,

> 
> I believe with  the old .au rules it stated that you did not 
> loose any 
> time from your original expiry date but most instances you 
> did incur a 
> transfer fee. With the new rules ... I understood it to mean that "no 
> matter when you transferred" you'd incurred a new 2 yr period.
> 
>

Prior to 1 July 2002, you could transfer between resellers of Melbourne IT.
In such cases the domain name licence in all cases remained between Melbourne IT and the registrant, and was unaffected.  The registrant could appoint a different agent (reseller) to manage their name at any time.  There were no "registrars" as defined today in existence at the time.  After 1 July 2002, there are multiple registrars accredited to issue domain name licences, and you may transfer between these registrars.

Prior to 1 July 2002, you could only renew a name in Melbourne IT's systems 60 days prior to expiry.  One of the scams at the time by some domain name suppliers was to send out early renewal notices, get an early payment for renewal, and then hold onto the money until the name was within 60 days of expiry.   Some of these suppliers advertised multi-year renewals (e.g renew your .com.au name for 10 years), but would need to actually renew the name with Melbourne IT every 2 years, 60 days prior to expiry.  It appears in some cases the supplier then did not renew the name (errors in business processes etc) - part of this led to recent financial problems with some of these suppliers (ie they had a large liability).  

The code of conduct was introduced to try to avoid some of these problems by preventing domain name suppliers from trying to issue renewal notices more than 90 days prior to expiry.

From : http://www.auda.org.au/docs/auda-2002-26.txt

"5.5	A Domain Name Supplier for a specific domain name licence, must not send a 
renewal notice any earlier than 90 days prior to the expiry date, and should 
make reasonable commercial efforts to advise the registrant of the need to renew 
at least 30 days prior to expiry. "

Choose your supplier carefully!

Regards,
Bruce