How do I get my .com domain name back?

J

Jack The Lad

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I registered a .com domain name a couple of years ago. Last year due to a series of foul-ups - a combination of own inexperience, and my (ex) web designer deciding to literaly disappear for a few months - I lost the domain name.

I've been firing off emails to the address supplied by the new owner of the site for a while since, trying to buy it back, but no reply.

Now, when I type in the domain name I get a blank page with the standard "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" message.

I presumed the domain was available again, but when I looked into it I discovered that the website was registered by a registrar based in the US, but with an expiration date of December 2007. I checked the registrars website, and there is a facility to buy domain names back, but they ask for credit card details on a non-secure page... which I found a little worrying. So I googled this registrar, and sure enough there are a lot of angry postings accusing them of fraudulant behaviour and general messing.

My questions are... if the expiration date has passed, how can they still own the domain name, and - any ideas on how to get the domain name back?


Thanks in advance folks!

(For what it's worth, the domain name is not related to business, but will be important for me personaly to own in the future, and I would have very strong reasons for using that particular domain name.)
 
There are a number of companies who will act as a go between (just google this )you but beware registering expired domains (in the hope that the previous owner will want it back sometime in the future) is big business and its probably going to cost you a lot of money.
 
OK, so I've done a little research, and the go between, or Domain Brokerage as the official term goes, seems the simplest way to go. I'm going to use Sedo.com, see what they come up with... if it's crazy money I'll walk away, but at least I can put it out of my mind. Thanks Peter.
 
May I second Brendan's comment. For reasons I won' t bore you with, I looked into buying the domain name www.garta.com (in the process, I found out that it is a word for community consensus in parts of Africa. who knew........) Anyway, it was taken. I filled out the ' is this available' form and it was offered to me for USD$5000! I said no thanks. They came back with a smaller offer (maybe $2500 - hard to remember now). I said 'sorry, no longer interested'. They kept coming back to me with unwanted offers down to €500, or maybe even $200 and their final email was 'make us an offer'

The thing is, they took maybe 6-8 months to come down to this level. Their business model is obviously predicated on the asssumption that they can only get money out of your impatience.
 
I have followed Brendan's advice and registered the name as a .ie It'll take a few days, bit more red tape than with a .com, but that's not a problem.

In the meantime I'll be interested to hear what the .com pirates come back with. I'll keep an update on this thread.

Appreciate the advice everyone!
 
Just remembered I promised an update on this, in case anyone searches for a similar problem in the future.

sedo were unable to locate the registered owner of the domain name, and because there had been some technical difficulties sending info to me, actualy refunded their fee, along with a couple of personal emails from a staff member in Germany, advising me that the site was worth about €500, and offering further advice on what to do. Amazing service!

To my delight I discovered a few weeks later that the domain name registration had not been renewed by it's owner, and was in a 30 day redemption period - so I used snapnames.com to backorder the name, and they bagged it a few days later for €40.

Hope that is of help to someone sometime.
 
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