Australian Online Business Name Renewal & Registration

No

(See for example ASIC's own page entitled "General ASIC Connect issues".)

No - it's frequently confusing

Here are some indications of this -

• ASIC has gone to the trouble and expense of producing and publishing, on YouTube, this 10 minute 51 second video entitled "How to register a business name for the first time" which is entirely devoted to, and shows pictures of, what and where to click, and in what order to click, and what information to input, and where to input it etc.
• After clicking 'Register a business name' (thus indicating that you want, and only want, to register a business name and don't want to do anything other than register a business name) it takes you through to a page that starts talking about 'Licenses & Registrations' and then starts talking about applying for a 'license or registration' and then when you click 'Apply for' it gives you two options, neither of which make any mention of any 'license', namely 'SMSF auditor registration' and 'Business Name Registration' (you can see all of this in this 59 second video of use of the ASIC website on 4 April 2016)
• When creating an ASIC Connect Account (that being a precondition to being able to attempt to use ASIC Connect to register a business name), you have to declare that you 'have read and accepted the terms and conditions of the ASIC Electronic Lodgement Protocol' (emphasis added) which links through to this ASIC Electronic Lodgement Protocol page, which, on the one hand gives an option to 'View the current version of the Electronic Lodgement Protocol' (which is a 31 page pdf document dated April 2017) but on the other hand refers to a completely different (7 page html) document entitled 'Electronic Lodgement Protocol - Business Names' dated 11 March 2014 with no mention of it being 'current'. So which Electronic Lodgement Protocol are you supposed to read? The presumably non-current 7 page Electronic Lodgement Protocol - Business Names' dated 11 March 2014? Or the completely different 31 page 'current version of the Electronic Lodgement Protocol' dated April 2017?
• If you click a 'Cancel' button in ASIC Connect this message (at least as at Friday 1 April 2016) pops up saying 'Confirm Cancel Would you like to proceed? Yes No'. Proceed with Cancelling? Or Proceed with Proceeding (and thus not Cancelling)?
• According to the latest statistics published by ASIC (at page 85 of the ASIC Annual Report of 2016-17) regarding Inquiries to the ASIC Customer Contact Centre enquiries, during the year 2016-2017, ASIC had to handle 249,076 calls and online inquiries about Business names, 30% of 818,928 total calls and online inquiries).

No

[See for example this screen shot (of 6 April 2016) of a red error message telling you to enter a valid ABN but giving you nowhere to enter it, and this 40 second video of an attempt (also on 6 April 2016) to get around it.]

No

[For example, here are the options we had to go through when we phoned the ASIC helpline on Thursday 17 March 2016 at 1:45pm Sydney time wanting to make an enquiry* - Recorded Message, then Option 1, then Option 1, then Option 2, then Option 3, then a recording that we'd been 'placed in a queue' and due to the high volume of calls it would take about '15 minutes', then music, then a recorded message containing some information regarding business names (which information was not relevant to the enquiry we were wanting to make), then music, and then (approximately ten minutes after selecting Option 3) we got through to a representative.]

[*about a business name (our ref: Id 60631) which one part of the ASIC website (the 'Business names index' search result) said had been cancelled on 17 March 2016 and which another part of the ASIC website (the 'Pay now - business name renewal' system) said that ASIC was in the process of renewing it]

No

(ASIC instead have one of those annoying online form based things - see this screen grab of it.)

No - often down for both scheduled an unscheduled maintenance

Example ASIC Scheduled Service Interruption Notice

Example ASIC Unscheduled Service Interruption Notice

No

(For example, on 8 April 2016, our company, LEGAL-E (D.I.Y.) PTY LTD ABN 92 091 035 684, via the ASIC Connect Public Facing Website, started applying to register TRADINGAS.COM.AUS as a business name. But the ASIC Connect website, blocked it straight out, without mentioning any qualification or exceptions, and without mentioning any appeal rights or rights of review or 'workarounds', by unequivocally stating (as per the attached screen grab) as follows -

Name is not available. TRADINGAS.COM.AUS is identical or nearly identical to a name already registered, or currently under application or review. This name will be rejected. We suggest you try another name. Identical or nearly identical name match TRADINGAS.COM.AU

even though -

1. LEGAL-E (D.I.Y.) PTY LTD ABN 92 091 035 684 IS the holder of the nearly identical registered business name TRADINGAS.COM.AU;
2. ASIC knows that LEGAL-E (D.I.Y.) PTY LTD ABN 92 091 035 684 is the holder of the nearly identical registered business name (as per this live link to the ASIC website); and
3. section 25 of the Business Names Registration Act 2011 makes the business name TRADINGAS.COM.AUS available to be registered by LEGAL-E (D.I.Y.) PTY LTD ABN 92 091 035 684 in these circumstances.

No

No