Change our Registrar? Pros and Cons ?

Hello all, I've been away for a while, but have returned for your valuable counsel.

[rant on] My organization has had some difficulties in the last few years with our registrar's administrative capability, which has raised the question of why do we keep them?

Cases in point (names changed to protect the innocent):

1) Audit and corrective actions completed, certificate delivery pledged, a year later certificate never delivered until I came onboard to consult and set the Q manager to hounding the registrar.

2) Audit and corrective actions completed, then a "technical review" of the previous year's audit identified additional paper shuffling required - certificate delivered at the very last moment before previous certificate expiration.

3) At audit conclusion we are required to commit to a specific auditor and schedule for our next audit - we do so, and everybody arranges summer vacations, family reunions et al around this date. Then six weeks before the scheduled audit the registrar informs us that it's not convenient for them, and offers a different auditor and a pulled in schedule.

This is all with a well known player in the registrar field, who should be capable of managing their business effectively.

As a customer paying a supplier we are dismayed. But I fear changing suppliers could just lead to the same problems with a different logo. [rant off]

Change yesterday if not before

normzone said:

As a customer paying a supplier we are dismayed. But I fear changing suppliers could just lead to the same problems with a different logo. [rant off]

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That’s another byproduct of the commoditization phenomenon plaguing the system certification business: service delivery suffers.

I may have missed, but are you certified in a “specialty scheme” such as AS91X0, IATF, RC 14000, etc? In those schemes there is auditor shortage and one departure throws any CB schedule off.

We are standard ISO 9001:2015, no glitter, no glory.

Nobody likes to antagonize a CB, responsible for issuing their “ticket to trade” a.k.a certificate. ANAB mentions their interest in receiving feedback from registrants about CB performance. To do what? Very unlikely ANAB would really want to find itself in the middle of a dispute between a registrant and a registrar outside of a real complaint.

Certification Client Bill of Rights & Responsibilities | Accredited certification

Why not ask your best existing and upcoming customers which accredited registrar they know and respect?

You are making a marketing decision after all.

UPDATE: We queried our sister outfits in the global tent and found little in the way of rationale for the choices of registrar, and only a small set of overlap. For the time being we will leave well enough alone.

Thanks for the update.

Stability also has value.

normzone said:

As a customer paying a supplier we are dismayed. But I fear changing suppliers could just lead to the same problems with a different logo

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Justified, with the exception that you now know much better questions to ask the sales or operations people when comparing services, than you did originally. No reason not to put your expectations and needs into the agreement, either.