advice Domain registered after being expired

[brazengit]

Hey Guys

Im only new to domaining and the forum itself. It looks like a great place with some good resources to learn from, I'm looking forward to getting to know a few of you guys.

Ok so heres my situation:

Last night I registered a 4 letter .com (gocn.com) domain with my registrar. The domain showed as expired when I done a whois and so I purchased it with my registrar which showed it as available. That all seemed great and the purchase went through. This morning I got up and I had received an email some 6 hours later and I received the following:

"Unfortunately, the following domain name registration was unsuccessful:

gocn.com

Error: Domain failed availability check: Domain cannot be registered because another domain was found in a restricted status"

I then went and searched on my registrar's site and it shows that they have it up for auction now. I contacted them twice on this and got conflicting information. One guy said they had it up for auction before I bought it in which case I was wondering why it would not show as unavailable but he said the previous registry it was at provided them with incorrect info as it was under maintenance and so provided them with a false positive.
The next advisor told me he could not view and it the advisors could not tell when it was listed for auction on there site.

So at the present time I unsure as to what went on here or if my registrar decided to auction the domain themselves or where I stand with it. I understand they may be honest on this situation but it does feel very disappointing with the service Iv received.

Im wondering does this this happen a lot and what are peoples feelings on this or should I consider moving to another registry?

Thanks
Mike

 

[Pierre Barnard]

Hi @brazengit , and welcome! Yes, this sounds like GD. It happened to me before with two domains, both "good" domains. After I screamed at my kids and kicked the dog and cat, I calmed down a bit and realized I could not do anything about it. Till this day I dont know what happened, and to be honest, I just put it behind me. I have heard similar stories before which made me wonder.

 

[brazengit]

Hey @Pierre Barnard

Thanks for the welcome

Yeah thats exactly who Im with,GD. Im fuming about it to be honest at it certainly seems like they have "taken" it back from me and are auctioning it themselves. Did you switch registrars? Is there no official body that oversees this kind of behaviour that could be contacted?

 

[tvanrijt]

So the obvious response is: no 4l .com is available for registration, all are dropcaught when they expire.

This story therefore makes no sense to me

 

[Sentinate]

So the obvious response is: no 4l .com is available for registration, all are dropcaught when they expire.

This story therefore makes no sense to me

I was just thinking that. Surely there's no 4 letter .coms left to reg? And ones that drop off will get grabbed by drop catchers.

It makes sense if whatever registrar the OP was using's whois was having a bad day and was screwing up and saying everything was available.

I don't know, though, maybe when a domain's dropping off and being picked up by a drop catching service, it might for a short while show up as available on whois? I forgot how it works these days.

 

[Name Trader]

If you look at the whois at verisign, the gospel, you will see the obvious. The korean registrar whois is not up to date. http://registrar.verisign-grs.com/webwhois-ui/index.jsp

What surprises me is that GoDaddy are verifying availability at the local registrar rather than at verisign.