1 and 2 letter domains "available"?

[Halobitt]

Please tell me I'm not crazy.
Is it my imagination/eyeballs playing tricks on me?

Typing in aa to the search bar in dotster.com yields the results that the .co.uk, .de, .be and some other extensions are available.
Wanna buy a single letter domain? no_url_shorteners.uk is apparently available. In fact many single and double letter domains are "available".

I tried registering some on the 24th February :"Credit card verification error".
Of course I thought it a little unusual, but not one to hang about, I thought I'd try regging them before someone else does. Funds on my credit card have been tied up with these domains, that do not exist, for 2 weeks (10 working days).

Calling the support team was pretty useless. A 30 min transatlantic call to someone who didn't seem to know very much. I was told eventually that the charges won't go through and should usually drop off in "4-5 days time".

Every time I email support, I get a half answer to one of my questions, and general vagueness. It's dispiriting (dispiriting.info available as I write this BTW)

Anybody else had this problem or funds tied up in this manner. Is there something fishy going on or is it just incompetence?

 

[SimpleDomaining]

same thing with sedo. showing sometimes 2 letter domains available. NO HOPE! forget about it

 

[VURG]

I'm guessing that you can't get any of those domains and it is something to do with dotster.com. If you want a 2 character domain, try some weird country extension like .vg (Virgin Islands). www.PG.VG is available and the VG domains are available to anyone. DomainRegister sells them for $35.95

 

[jandy]

hmm
some registar or ccTLD don't allow <3 letter domain be registered..

 

[Halobitt]

hmm
some registar or ccTLD don't allow <3 letter domain be registered..

Hoped they'd done an about turn on that rule.

But domain names still state "available" rather than "unregisterable but we'll lock up the funds on your credit card anyway".

Just think how many thousands of pounds could be unavailable to the owners of cards who try to register any names like this (or am I the only moron who would even try?).