Oscar Trelles

Domain Name Mobs

By the time Ben Forta mentioned this article on ZDNet in his blog, I had already lost any chance to get a hold on a domain name which status I was patiently monitoring, after their owners decided not to renew it, and let it expire. During this time, I’ve learned a lot about all the stages a domain name follows until it is finally dropped and deleted by the registrar, but nothing prepared me to the unhappy ending: losing it to the domain name mobs.

Since I had never tried to capture an expired domain name before, I decided to use GoDaddy’s backordering service, which at $18.95 is significantly lower than Network Solution’s offer, which is around $60. In time, I would learn that at any price, backordering that domain name was a waste of money anyway. Just to make sure you get the picture, the domain name I was trying to secure has been abandoned months ago and is not a famous one, or any thing like that, meaning that it wasn’t pointing to any website or being use for email purposes, it was just something I wanted in fair and personal use, much like oscartrelles.com.

GoDaddy’s monitoring service sent me regular email notifications, and when any changes were noticed on the domain name registry. That’s how I learned about the lengthy process that protects domain name owners from unintentional failure to renew their names, which is great. In total, it can take up to 60 days before a domain name is effectively deleted by a registrar, after the expiration. Here is a condensed guide to the different status codes for a domain name.

I was very excited when one of the last emails I received from GoDaddy informed me that the domain name I was monitoring had been finally dropped and marked for deletion, and asked for confirmation to attempt securing it, which I agreed of course. However, sad was my surprise when a few days later I was informed that my attempt to secure the name had failed. So, how many people were actually trying to secure a domain which, I was explaining above wasn’t of much use to anybody else? So, instead of canceling the monitoring, I continued, and what I found the next days was pretty in the lines of that article on ZDNet: the domain name was on sale, for ‘just’ 200 Euros.

So, what’s happening is that companies like BuyDomains.com are constantly monitoring expiring domain names, and being registrar themselves, are in better position than any regular person to secure domain names returning to the pool. With the tools these organizations are equipped with, what business does have any registrar offering backordering services to their customers? There’s no point, except of course getting their hand in your pockets. I would like to know if any regular mortal has succeeded backordering any domain name, with or without the help of a registrar.