I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who is living through a virtual nightmare.
Years ago, she used a domain registration service that promoted itself as a one-stop-shop: registration, hosting, site-building, email - everything you need. For years, things were fine: no hiccups, no unplanned downtime, no real performance issues.
However, little by little, as her business grew, she started wanting more out of her website. And she started to feel some frustration in not being able to customize things the way she wanted. So, she sought to move her domain to a different host.
That's when she took her first hit. Seems this registration company registered everything in their name, not hers. It wasn't a simple "blind" registration to protect her privacy - they simply owned her domain. And they wouldn't give it back. The most they offered was to let it lapse so that she could claim it.
Since she couldn't find any way around it, she agreed. They told her that it would still take a few weeks from the actual expiration date before she could have access to it. She agreed to live in limbo.
But wouldn't you know it...while she thought she was in limbo, someone else swooped in and snatched her domain!!! For a whopping $13.95. Just like that.
The guy that grabbed it knew that my friend would want it back because, well, it was "HerNamePhotography.com". So he offered her a deal: $500.00 and it's yours.
Yep, she paid the ransom. She's got things set up with another reputable host with automatic renewals. She owns it. And now she's building a site from scratch (well, not the site, but all the content). And she's lost all her web-based emails and email contacts (nope, she never thought she should download that online address book...why should she?).
A terrible, terrible lesson - one that I hope none you ever experience.
yep, i came across this when i was researching who to buy my domain from. its one of the reasons i made sure i purchased it separately and not part of some hosting package.
opportunists like this guy are scum, at least he only charged $500.
What was the name of the registration service? (Or should I phrase it, is there a certain service out there you might not recommend, not necessarily connected to this incident?)
seriously. i could see him pissing off the wrong person and paying physically.
Originally posted by Strikeslip:
What was the name of the registration service? (Or should I phrase it, is there a certain service out there you might not recommend, not necessarily connected to this incident?)
I use Godaddy.
i'm not sure who she used, but they were pretty far under the radar.
I bought my friend a URL for his birthday...his [name]World.com
Cost the usual low rate.
It turns out someone was waiting for that name for their business, I just got lucky while I was shopping. A short time after I gave it to my friend, they contacted him, and they settled on over $300 for the URL.
My $15 or so present turned out to be quite a big one!
I remember when personal websites started becoming a big thing. As I recall, some early scum geniuses started buying up domains like ford.com and the like. They were getting them on the cheap, and extorting huge sums from big corporations to get their own names on their domains.
I don't remember exactly how it shook down, but somehow the corporate giants put a stop to it.
It would seem to me that your friend would have a case for harassment or abuse under the same terms as what happened years ago, especially if it was something like hername.com .
It pretty much sucks how mean people can f*ck things up just for a hobby.
Remember when Nissan was Datsun? A man named Uzi Nissan had used his family name as part of his business name in N Carolina back when the cars made by Nissan Motors were sold under the Datsun brand name.
Mr Nissan registered the domain Nissan.com in 1994 and Nissan.net in 1996 for his computer business which was established in 1991. When Nissan Motors decided it would be a great idea to take the Nissan.com domain, what followed was an epic court battle. Read Mr. Nissan's account of it here
