NameCheap Lost Domain

Well when did it expire, and when did you attempt to renew it...

The name would have expired next week. I was going to transfer it. Last year, I renewed it during the grace period. It's been sitting in my account (so I thought) since then.

William V said:

The name would have expired next week. I was going to transfer it. Last year, I renewed it during the grace period. It's been sitting in my account (so I thought) since then.

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If it was going to expire next week, the grace period would not have been started. That makes no sense, unless they sold it.

William V said:

Last year, I renewed it during the grace period. It's been sitting in my account (so I thought) since then.

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Check you email receipts for confirmation.

(and/or feel free to DM me the name if you want another set of independent eyes to research it)

I have had a fair number of names at Namecheap without problem and have found their customer support helpful. Have you checked the history on name to see when transition happened? Are the apparent new owners under privacy?

I hope you get answers as the situation seems very strange.

Bob

wwwweb said:

If it was going to expire next week, the grace period would not have been started. That makes no sense, unless they sold it.

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This year, it would have expired 11-30 according to the email I received. I think the original reg date was Dec 1. Last year I renewed it during the grace period on Dec 20. I paid an additional fee for this name and two others. Both of the other names were transferred out today.

Grilled said:

Check you email receipts for confirmation.

(and/or feel free to DM me the name if you want another set of independent eyes to research it)

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I have the email receipt. I never receive anything else from NameCheap. My card was charged and they updated the expiration in my account and all was well. I'm guessing they just failed to renew it on their side.

Bob Hawkes said:

I have had a fair number of names at Namecheap without problem and have found their customer support helpful. Have you checked the history on name to see when transition happened? Are the apparent new owners under privacy?

I hope you get answers as the situation seems very strange.

Bob

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Yeah, I've had an account with them for probably 12 -15 years. There have been some small issues but nothing like outright losing a name.

I didn't check the whois because I assumed it would be a dead end. Good idea though, worth a check. It now forwards to another registrar that I don't use. Not a lander, just to the home page.

I opened another ticket with NameCheap after I found my receipt for the renewal. Makes me nervous about having any of my other names with them. Imagine selling one and finding out it vanished.

Why don't you talk to chat, and ask how a valid registration could have moved?

I think namecheap has 25 days grace period, so unless your account was hacked, or you had it listed for sale, I can't see how it moved?

wwwweb said:

Why don't you talk to chat, and ask how a valid registration could have moved?

I think namecheap has 25 days grace period, so unless your account was hacked, or you had it listed for sale, I can't see how it moved?

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I have a ticket open via chat. They told me they will investigate and let me know. I doubt I was hacked. There are better names they could have stolen.

Bob Hawkes said:

I have had a fair number of names at Namecheap without problem and have found their customer support helpful. Have you checked the history on name to see when transition happened? Are the apparent new owners under privacy?

I hope you get answers as the situation seems very strange.

Bob

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The whois shows a creation date of Feb 2019. I'm guessing Namecheap just didn't follow through with renewing the name, it dropped and someone else picked it up.

I've had the same problem with namecheap 2 weeks ago! I used to be satisfied with namecheap, but not anymore after they lost my domain. I think they have some serious technical issues.
In my case I renewed one of my domains last August. The payment went well and I received the confirmation that the domain had been renewed. The domain was listed in my Namecheap account with the new expire date in august 2020. All looked good.
Last week I wanted to change the nameservers, but that gave an error. I contacted namecheap support and, after 2 hours in chat, they finally informed me what was wrong. They told me that the domain expired a while ago and is not available anymore. And namecheap also told me that 'this is typical case in the industry'. Ehm, I don't agree with that namecheap! It is NOT typical case to lose domains.

Here is the exact text from my namecheap chat from last week:
22:20 Kate Kravchenko: According to my check, the domain expired a time ago and it is not available anymore. Normally, the system removes such records automatically within some time after the domain is transferred out or deleted for some reason.
22:20 Kate Kravchenko: This is a typical case in the industry. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you. I will manually remove the domain's record from your account.

They informed me to remove the domain from my list and that was it, they didn't offer me any compensation. The next day I contacted namecheap how they would compensate me for this loss, and they offered me to register a new domain for free. I told them the least thing they could offer me is to send me back the amount I paid for the renewal, since they failed doing that correctly. Finally, I received the payment back, but only because I asked for it.
For me, no more namecheap. They used to be ok, but I completely lost confidence. They simply have technical issues with domain renewals and I don't want to lose any more domains.

Can you DM me the ticket number? I would like to determine what may have happened here.

@emile123 what's typical in the industry is that a domain that expires gets removed from your account, which is what you were correctly told by the rep.

Your claim is the domain shouldn't have expired. Then it is not typical for the domain to disappear.

hi,
the ticket number is ZWJ-284-81901.


hat you say is correct, when a domain expires its typical that the domain gets removed from my account.
So..why did that not happen in this case??

after the domain expired, the domain was still present in my account with the option to renew it. so i renewed it, paid for it, and received a confirmation that the renewal was successful. The domain was still present in my account ( with an expire date in august 2020) , so everything looked just fine in my account.

its only after i contacted support last week (3 months after i renewed it..) that namecheap found out that the renewal wasnt succesful at all.
this is a situation thats nit common in the industry at all!

this is a situation thats not common in the domain industry!
-if a domain cannot be renewed anymore, the domain should have been removed from my account. that was not the case!
- if a renewal fails, i should have been informed abiut it right away!
- the domain was present in my account until last week with the new expire date august 2020. so it really looked as if the domain renewal was successful.

this is not something that is common in the industry. i have never experienced this with other registrars.
Mistakes like this can and should be prevented at any time.

@emile123 again, I'm saying what is common in the industry is that a domain that doesn't renew is removed from the account. You are right, this is not common, and is a different scenario--the context here was misunderstood. Happy to look into this further if you'd like, and I would also like for @William V to provide the ticket number for his issue.

tamar said:

Can you DM me the ticket number? I would like to determine what may have happened here.

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I sent a DM with the ticket. Also a screen shot of my 2018 order confirmation and a screenshot of the domain in my account with a Nov 30, 2019 expiration. When I requested the auth code I was told the domain was not really in the account and the rep removed it from showing in the account.

No worries, I'm looking into it for you and will reply as I receive new info.

Any updates on this?

It was a glitch with our upstream provider and our backend system and is not something that is likely to recur. That said, it is still being investigated.

bourbon said:

Any updates on this?

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Namecheap admitted that they failed to follow through with renewing the name despite charging my card and updating the expiration date in the dashboard.

I have asked them to buy the name from its current owner and return it to my account. If the current owner won't sell, I gave the option of replacing it with a very similar registry owned name.

Hopefully they will do the right thing here.

William V said:

Namecheap admitted that they failed to follow through with renewing the name despite charging my card and updating the expiration date in the dashboard.

I have asked them to buy the name from its current owner and return it to my account. If the current owner won't sell, I gave the option of replacing it with a very similar registry owned name.

Hopefully they will do the right thing here.

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Curious to see how this will be resolved

I have some names with them as well. Thank you for this thread.

Whats the latest on this? I was about to buy a hosting plan with them. I have second thoughts now

Domain_savvy said:

Whats the latest on this? I was about to buy a hosting plan with them. I have second thoughts now

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If you have questions, I'm right here, but the issue that happened with the OP is unlikely to recur and has absolutely no relevance to your pursuit of hosting (the domain name issue is with a completely different almost unrelated segment of the business).