advice Buying a dot com that has lapsed

[Mark Bennett]

Hi

I've got a co uk domain name and foolishly I never bought the com when I had the chance over 20 years ago.

I've recently had 3 emails asking if i want to buy it and on checking the whois it says:
Registrar Status pendingDelete
Dates 2,999 days old
Created on 2013-01-04
Expires on 2021-01-04
Updated on 2021-03-19
Name Servers ..... (has 299,175 domains) .... (has 299,175 domains)
Domain Status Deleted And Available Again

Is there any way I can acquire the domain without paying an extortionate fee?
Has someone else purchased it with this intention?
If i reply will they know I want it and bump up the price?
Is there a way of claiming it as the rightful owner?


Any advice gratefully received,
Many thanks

 

[Bannen]

Hi Mark, welcome to Namepros.

The domain is in 'pending delete' phase, which means it will drop from the registry in 5 days (assuming it entered pending delete today - this phase lasts 5 days for all .coms. The people who are emailing you have no control over the domain.

Services called 'dropcatchers' use software that tries to re-register a domain about a thousandth of a second after it drops. This is a huge business, catching deleting domains. The better ones are 'backordered' by many domainers, and when they're caught they go to auction. I can write for an hour to describe this process, but the salient point is that the domain is dropping, the old owner no longer has any control over it, and the people mailing you have no control over it either.

They are trying to get money up front from you, and then (if they're honest and not scamming) they'll backorder the domain and, if they win it (or the 3-day auction for it), transfer it to you.

Don't do it. It's way scammy and you will probably never end up with the domain by doing it that way.

There are sites like Dropcatch.com, Namejet.com etc where you can backorder a deleting name. But since you now have less than 5 days to place the backorder, and those sites sometimes take a rather long time to process your new sign-up and payment verifications etc, you can try but you might not get verified in time to backorder this domain with any of them.

If you like, PM me and tell me the name (I promise I won't backorder it for myself, ha ha). I'll tell you whether I think it's worth backordering (some names are very specific niche and no one would be interested in it as an investment name). If it looks good enough that others would backorder it, I can put in a backorder on your behalf. Won't charge you anything up front. If I win the domain, you can just pay me the backorder fee, I won't charge any profit on it. I backorder domains every day so I'll just slip it in with my list.

Writing this all out here, instead of via PM, for transparency so all can see my offer

Good luck