So here is the scenario, I register a domain for a client and after registration the client performs a search on the whois page to ensure that I have made them the registrant... on the whois page the client see's domains.co.za as the registrar.
Confused that he / she has purchased hosting from abchosting.co.za and that his domain is registered by domains.co.za they browse to domains.co.za which offers competing products and services unrelated to what I offer. Worst case scenario is that I may be charging him R55 for web hosting and you are advertising it at R45.00
See the issue? There is no transparency or reseller product here.
The fact that I log in to your reseller panel on a different url / domain means nothing but rather that my clients are exposed to your brand / products.
A couple of points here.
In your example, this would assume that a person is technically proficient enough to know how to do a whois on their domain, but not technical proficient enough to identify that they are hosted with a reseller?
Using your example, a person would see ZA Domains as a registrar, and thinking "who are they?" put it in Google and see that ZA Domains or (Article Seven Internet Solutions) is server-admins.net who essentially would also be competition to you.
There is no 100%, completely white-label solution when it comes to being a "reseller" on EPP through a registrar because the ZACR registry will still email the registrant directly every time there is any domain or contact update of any kind and in that email it will tell them that if they have any questions, they must contact the Registrar. Included in that email is the registrars contact information including email address and phone number. As a reseller you can't use your information in the registrants information, this is against the ZACR policies and against ICANN policies on the new 2013 RAA. So line 1c on the legacy whois (which at some point I assume will end up being deprecated) should be the least of the concerns.
This is also not an "isolated to ZACR issue". If you are a reseller on Godaddy / Enom / Black Knight / Register.com / etc, your customer can also look at the whois and see that you are reselling off these Registrars and go and look at their websites and see what services they offer compared to yourselves. In fact on international TLD's, the registrars
HAVE to email the resellers registrants every 6 months and inform them of their current contact information on the domains and provide them with the facility to update it (bypassing the reseller). They also required to notify the registrants directly regarding domain renewals. This is part of ICANN's policies.
In Wayne's comment, he is merely pointing out the fact that as a reseller, the registrar tag will not reflect the resellers name, but in fact reflect the registrars name. He is not specifically stating that the Registrar line will display specifically Domains.co.za.
thanks for the kind words bud