Dear members, I wanted to share my recent experience regarding the painful administrative & bureaucratic procedures within RIPE NCC, and start a discussion with you, in order to see if some of you feel the same, and, if its the case, if we could make it evolve in order to enhance the "customer experience" :-). TL;DR: I feel that the due diligence procedures at RIPE NCC are too strict, and that they should be a bit more human when having to deal with administrative changes.
From my own experience, here is what happenned to me:
One of my customer (let's call them A) has been a member for years, and it has been acquired/reorganized multiple times before when I started to work with him. As a responsible (new) LIR admin, I wanted to make its administrative status relevant with their real situation. That was a big mistake! While I can admit that the juridic situation was quite complex, we had to spend months in exchanging documents in order to justify every move, but in the end, the only option that we had, was to open a new LIR, and move its resources from the "legacy LIR" to the new one. We decided at some time, that it was not worth to waste more time than already done, so we did that, and A' was born (and we are going to move A resources to A'). ... but a few months later: Same player play again ! Another customer of mine (B, which is a sister company of A), needed its membership to be updated, as their original structure has been terminated (integrated in another company, partial merge, rename etc). => Well, after weeks of legal documents exchange, we were told by the RIPE NCC that all the justifications have been verified, and that was we were initially asking was OK... BUT... that they couldn't simply change the name of its LIR, because it has not been a full acquisition. The only valid/useable option would be to make B become a member on its own, and to transfer from the former LIR to that shiny new LIR (other option was to move the resources in A' and make assignations for B, but that is not an option for the end user's org). I have been talking with others members among my contacts, and they all say that having to deal with RIPE NCC on administrative topics is a pain in the ass. My question is simple: 1- Is there some ways to make RIPE NCC a bit more flexible, when the situation allows it? 2- For my particular case: Given that the "historic LIRs" from A & B only had some transferable resources, and given the fact that there were clear justification: Why not simply allowing a LIR name change? I cannot believe that the only option in order to sort out administrative mess, is to open new membership and terminate older membership. I know that RIPE NCC's income will lower in the next future, due to LIR consolidation, but at the moment, I am a bit feeling that the rigid procedures are only a mean for RIPE NCC to get new opening fee and double billing for new members/future closed members. For the RIPE NCC staff: I bet you could easily find which members I am talking about (and if not, I can share the ticket numbers in private). I can understand that your procedures have to be a bit strict in order to avoid resources Hijacks/illegal transfers, but when the situations seems understandable and correct, I'd like to see you exercise good judgment when it seems valid justifications. I just do not want to disclose the member's name publicly, as they didn't ask me to write this email. But since I am managing multiple LIRs, I thought it would be interesting to deal that topic on the membership level. If you have some experiences to share, go ahead ! Thanks for reading until the end ! -- Clément Cavadore