I thought I would ask this here, as there are obviously many people who 
are au fait with the registrar system.
I have a .id.au domain which I have on the 6-month free trial that 
expires in a month.
I want to keep it, but I am completely unsatisfied with the registrar 
and want to transfer it to a different registrar without paying the 
current registrar the registration fee.
Without naming a name, their id.au price is outrageous and *it is not 
advertised on the site what the price will be when you take out the 
free trial* (or wasn't when I bought it; don't know about now).
The status on the domain is SERVERTRANSFERPROHIBITED
Is there any method of avoiding the extortion from this registrar, 
beyond letting the domain name expire and then waiting for it to become 
available and using a different registrar?

thanks,
Lea