Hi Gabor, Thanks for the official reply. So it's a well-known existing policy bug, but the workaround (preliminary invoices) has now been removed. The NCC works hard to ensure existing requests are completed before the end-of-year, so the requests don't wrap into the new year and get caught up in the January blackhole, and the invoices are issued as early as possible to minimise the January blackhole; but there a no plans to address the policy wording to fix the root cause of the bug, as suggested by Casper? Like Casper I agree with the spirit of the requirement, but think it's being applied a bit too literally, and we can do better with some minor tweaks. e.g., perhaps specifying "outstanding" or "overdue" invoices. -Rich From: Gabor de Wit <gdewit@ripe.net> Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2026 at 18:06 To: Patterson, Richard (Senior IP Architect) <Richard.Patterson@sky.uk> Cc: members-discuss@ripe.net <members-discuss@ripe.net> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [members-discuss] No Resource Transfers Allowed in January? Dear Rich, Thank you for your email. Allow me to provide some clarification. You are correct that policy transfers are based on the principles outlined in the RIPE Transfer policies. This is completed by requirements described in RIPE NCC procedures. The RIPE NCC must perform checks for each request, for example for due diligence or if the member has fulfilled all essential obligations. For policy transfers and other changes of holdership of resources registered to a member, one of these obligations is that their annual membership fee has been paid. This is a long-standing practice. The only change this year is that the RIPE NCC no longer issues preliminary annual invoices for members who want to transfer resources before the regular annual invoice is issued. In the past, we did this because the regular invoice was typically issued in February or later, and we wanted to avoid delaying holdership updates. However, this approach created significant administrative overhead, including generating preliminary invoices, reconciling them with the regular invoicing, and later redistributing any excess contribution from the previous financial year to that member. Instead, before the year end, the RIPE NCC focuses on working to ensure all changes of holdership can be facilitated, while issuing the regular annual invoice as early as possible in the new year. This balances the ability to handle the end of year ticket peak and it allows members to pay their annual fee early in the year ensuring timely access to all services that require a paid membership fee. In fact, these invoices have already been issued today to the membership. As soon as your payment has been received, the policy transfer can be completed. So to conclude: we try to balance the ability to handle the end-of-year peak and issuing invoices early in the year to reduce the potential period in which your scenario exists and to reduce our administrative effort that comes with being more flexible. Regards, -- Gabor de Wit Chief Registry Officer | RIPE NCC ---------------------------------------------- On Mon, 12 Jan 2026 at 15:45, Patterson, Richard (Senior IP Architect) via members-discuss <members-discuss@ripe.net<mailto:members-discuss@ripe.net>> wrote: Hi Members, We've hit a kafkaesque bug with the RIPE NCC's policies, and I was wondering if anyone else has run into it? We've had a resource transfer request blocked until the 2026 membership fees are all paid up, the 2026 membership fees for which the invoices have not yet been generated or sent out yet......... This requirement is not specified in the Transfer Policy, but it is mentioned in the 2026 Billing Procedure. Do we think this requirement—effectively restricting transfers during the month of January—is sane and I just need to be more patient, or does it require a policy update or maybe just for a bit of common sense to be applied when requests are processed? -Rich Information in this email including any attachments may be privileged, confidential and is intended exclusively for the addressee. The views expressed may not be official policy, but the personal views of the originator. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete it from your system. You should not reproduce, distribute, store, retransmit, use or disclose its contents to anyone. 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