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Microsoft Forgets To Renew Hotmail.co.uk

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the whoops dept.

Saint Aardvark writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft forgot to renew their hotmail.co.uk domain. A Good Samaritan renewed it for them, but was unable to get a response from anyone at Microsoft. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

3 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Not childish. Probably just extremely embarrassed. This happened before in 1999 with the U.S. Hotmail. When that happened, Microsoft graciously cut a check to Michael Chaney (who helped them out by renewing it with his own money).

    Later on, Mr. Chaney decided that the check was worth some money, so he put it up on Ebay for auction, promising to donate the proceeds to a charity of the buyer's choice.

    My company won that auction and we purchased the check for $7000 which was then immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon. We've still got the check, a check for $500.

    Microsoft paid Mr. Chaney $500 dollars as a gesture of good will. They didn't have to do that, you know.

    MS is not being childish, they probably are too busy throwing ice water all over themselves to cool off their extreme embarrassment that this has happened twice now.

    (posting anonymously so that nobody can associate my username with the company I work for)

  2. Re:WHAT THE F$%! by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes. Contrary to the Reg's article, I didn't "sign it over to Microsoft", I simply paid their outstanding invoice.

    As I explained it to reporters at the time, if I went and made your mortgage payment I wouldn't own your house.

    This particular case seems to be different than the passport.com case, though. It looks like the .co.uk domains get tossed back in the pool quicker, and the person actually did buy the domain. Part of the story is that they were trying to contact Microsoft to transfer it back to them and Microsoft wouldn't pay attention. It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...

    --
    Do you have ESP?
  3. Re:You'd think.. by Ruis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You'd think MS would be a registrar.