34.99? When I started I'm pretty sure they used to charge $70 and I've heard some mention that they once charged $100 before that. If you have some real gems for domains then you'd be wise to care more about reliability, support and customer friendliness over price alone. It doesn't make sense to lose a $50,000 domain over some bullshit policy and the fact that you used that registrar because they were $5 cheaper.
OTOH for regular domains which don't make much more than a few hundred a year it would be stupid to pay that much. Especially if you have hundreds or thousands of those domains.