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Pre-Selling Domain Names?
Allnighterking asks: "Within the last 24 hours I've been the unwitting victim of a new practice by any number of domain registrars. The concept of pre-selling domain names before they expire. Go to any of the more popular domain registrars and start searching for domain names. You will find dozens of them for sale -with the date they will expire clearly listed-. In my case yes, I was negligent in not renewing. I also did not receive notice that it was to expire either. The day after it expired (or more like 8 hours after). I found out that I was no longer the owner of a domain I've owned for over 3 years, that this domain is now the 'property' of a domain squatter selling google adds on my hard earned search engine status. What can be done? Do we have any recourse?"
"Perhaps this is just another case of ICANN , you can't.
Apparently, the sale of expired domains is big business. See this google search for more. It leaves one to wonder what would have happened a few years ago when Hotmail expired. Would Microsoft have been stuck? Or would they be doing what I've been asked to do: pony up 20k to get my domain back!"
Apparently, the sale of expired domains is big business. See this google search for more. It leaves one to wonder what would have happened a few years ago when Hotmail expired. Would Microsoft have been stuck? Or would they be doing what I've been asked to do: pony up 20k to get my domain back!"
The best solution, if you're really worried about keeping a name, is to buy a five or ten-year claim.
When I first got my domains, I was lucky to keep them renewed on time (money was that short!). Now I keep them renewed so they never have less than a year before expiration. I'll probably up that soon, too.
I also have them registered through Directnic, which has gotten a lot of publicity recently because of their ability to stay online throughout the entire Katrina situation. They've treated me well and start notifying me 60-90 days before expiration.
I attribute it more to incompetence than malice. They had it locked so we couldn't transfer it. Backordering hasn't worked. Their last response was to use their "make a certified offer" and offer enough to make them want to switch it back. The root of the problem was that the original developer of the site registered the domain several years ago, forgot the login password, changed his home address and phone number, and changed his email address. This is just enough to break all of Network Solutions' procedures for verifying that it's our domain. We've been fighting with them a couple months, calling several times a week. It should be bloody obvious to them that it's our domain. If it wasn't, it's already expired so they could just sell it to us. If they don't let us buy it back, we'll file a UDRP complaint, which'll cost us a couple thousand $ more.
I had similar problems with a registrar a couple of years ago. I didn't receive any notice of expiration and when it expired, they asked me to pay a 200 USD charge for reactivation... After some discussion, I could renew the domain for the normal price and as soon as I could I changed to another registrar, where all my domains are kept safe today, with many notices of their expiration dates.
I receive a lot of snail-mail deceptive advertising from register.com, and I would never use them.
Godaddy works for me, and is less than a third of the price. They are the largest domain registrar out there now, and I don't worry about my domains at all.
Network Solutions is the devil.
Network Solutions is totally incompetent.
GoDaddy is not trustworthy, it seems to me. It seems to me that GoDaddy makes most of its money by exploiting the lack of technical knowledge of most of its customers. The GoDaddy web site is so fully of ads that it is sometimes difficult to understand how to buy from them.
GoDaddy's web site is often slow. For example, as I type this it is very slow. GoDaddy wants to be a web hosting provider. Can you imagine choosing a host with a slow web site?
I agree with you about register.com.
Can anyone recommend a reliable, honest, not-sneaky registrar?
That's funny. I've had the same experience. There happened to be a name I was interested that was being squatted. I asked them for a quote, and it came back at 10,000 dollars. I said that was way out of my league, and thank you but no. They asked me to make a counter offer. I said that I really hadn't been planning on going above 100 dollars, as I didn't have a lot of cash. After that, for 6 straight months, offers kept trickling in every week or two... first for 6,000, then 3,000, then 1,000, 900... I didn't respond to any of these, but they kept coming in. Eventually they sent me a message saying they accepted my offer of 100 dollars. Unfortunately by this point I had been laid off and was desperately scrounging for pennies, so I had to say no.
A year later, after which point I've gotten another job, and they contact me about the website again. This time it gets ugly and personal, as they seemed rather pi$$ed that I had a fixed price, and I was rather pi$$ed that I had a project that I wouldn't mind using the website for but didn't have 6 months to haggle over it. After 6 months of fighting over it they still wouldn't touch their previous price, and they were quite combative about it. And I was quite angry about having them jerk me around for so long when they could have just made the sale or said no. And all of the free time that I had to use the website for was gone anyway. So finally I told them to F--- off and never contact me again.
About 6 months after this, they contacted me again...
I'm actually thinking of writing them again, just to see what they would say.
The ______ Agenda
I didn't say this ... but ... you hit the nail on the head. But note that having an ethical registrar won't protect you. Want proof? Try this technic go to go-daddy, or almost any other registrar. Search for a domain you own. (or one you know will never get lost... hopefully like slashdot.org) They will for 18.95 or there about, SELL you a lottery ticket. That lottery ticket says that if this domain every goes on the market we will try to registar it immediately for you. (kind of like auto bids on e-bay) Now if they are the registrar of record for that domain then they know that they will have the inside track on ensuring that one of the people who they sold a ticket to gets the prize.
Now riddle me this. Which one is more valuable? A 6.95 renewal or an 18.95 lottery ticket.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I use SnapNames for this-- you only pay if you get the domain name, and you can have a standing order forever. They actually snagged me a name that I had been wanting and had been dormant for a while. I now have all my domains set up to get grabbed by SnapNames in the unlikely event that I manage to overlook all the expiration warnings and things. SnapNames uses a bunch of different registrars (I suspect depending on the responsiveness of their site at the instant the domain goes up for grabs).
.org name away from them, because they and Melbourne both pointed at each other as being responsible for providing the Auth code for the transfer. Melbourne was easy to get ahold of by email and phone, and tried to be helpful. Yahoo is a pain to get ahold of, but eventually it got transferred. Definitely avoid resellers (which yahoo is) and go directly with a primary registrar. Resellers just add a complication layer.
When SnapNames did get me a name, they registered it through BlueHill (who I hadn't heard of). A while later I decided to consolidate all my domains in one place, and BlueHill was actually the most responsive with the transfer request.
I had also made the mistake of registering some domains through Yahoo a long time ago-- a major pain to transfer the
Right now all my domains are with Godaddy (except for one with Netsol that I'll probably move away soon), but if they get difficult, BlueHill was responsive enough that I would try them.