We cannot but agree with you that the redemption fee is quite high. It is set by our upstream Registrar and Domain Registry, that is why we cannot waive it.
We highly recommend that you take all possible precautions to avoid domain expiration and its falling into the Redemption Grace Period. For example, you can enable the auto-renewal feature this way, and your Namecheap account balance (or a card) will be used for domain renewal 30 days prior to its expiration.
In case your domain is already in the Redemption Grace Period, and you do not wish to pay the fee, you may wait until the domain is released by the Registry (normally, domains are released 80-85 days after expiration) or back-order the domain using any back-ordering service (Namecheap does not offer back-ordering services at the moment).
That's it!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact our Support Team.
