Hello everyone,
The past 3 months have been tragic for me. I used to run a fairly popular site (20-25k Uniques daily), now the domain was registered on 12 May, 2005, by a friend of mine. It was a .co.uk domain, so it was registered for 2 years.
Now, that person left all online activities about a year or so ago. So when the domain was near expiry, I wasn't aware since the GoDaddy account held his email address and I'd been careless enough not to change it to mine.
So May 12,2007 came and nothing happened. Not that we were aware of anything was going to happen. In all likelihood, the domain expired and went into the redemption (grace) period.
Then one day in August, I tried to change nameservers, but it wouldnt work. On doing a whois, it said our domain had expired on the 12th of May itself, and the registration was suspended, however whois did have our details.
Immediately GoDaddy was contacted, and we paid the renewal fees for two years. Then amazingly the domain vanished from our GoDaddy account, only to return a week later. Somehow, our new nameservers still weren't working.
GoDaddy told us that Nominet had suspended our domain until September, as this was the normal procedure. September came to an end and October began, there was still no sign of our domain.
We tried to contact Nominet directly, they said contact Key Systems, for whom Godaddy resells for. On contacting Key Systems, we are again told to contact GoDaddy.
Numerous phonecalls to GoDaddy were of no avail. To my horror, on the 18th of October, on doing a whois, I see a new owner of the domain, a domain that was 2 years old, a PR 4, and has over 7000 backlinks on Google.
On calling GoDaddy, they said there's nothing they can do about it and have refunded the money I paid them for renewal.
Godaddy told me that in the United States there is a law that would guarantee the domain name to be put back into our possesion. We never gave the domain up. We were trying to renew it and Godaddy contacted Key Systems about the issue numerous times.
They told Key Systems that the domain was in our account and it was active. However, Key Systems never sent the positive renewal request towards Nominet. Basically, Key Systems, the German company, dropped the ball on this issue. They had two months to process a simple renewal and they failed to do so. It's essentially theft and fraud.
We paid, the domain was in our account and Godaddy contacted Key Systems to renew it. I was told by Godaddy that their legal team can give me the access to the logs of their Higher Tech staff talking back and forth with Key Systems and that show that we were the owners, had been the owners, and desired to continue to be the owners.
I am really looking forward to your suggestions now, as to what action I could possibly take.
Thanks in advance.
The past 3 months have been tragic for me. I used to run a fairly popular site (20-25k Uniques daily), now the domain was registered on 12 May, 2005, by a friend of mine. It was a .co.uk domain, so it was registered for 2 years.
Now, that person left all online activities about a year or so ago. So when the domain was near expiry, I wasn't aware since the GoDaddy account held his email address and I'd been careless enough not to change it to mine.
So May 12,2007 came and nothing happened. Not that we were aware of anything was going to happen. In all likelihood, the domain expired and went into the redemption (grace) period.
Then one day in August, I tried to change nameservers, but it wouldnt work. On doing a whois, it said our domain had expired on the 12th of May itself, and the registration was suspended, however whois did have our details.
Immediately GoDaddy was contacted, and we paid the renewal fees for two years. Then amazingly the domain vanished from our GoDaddy account, only to return a week later. Somehow, our new nameservers still weren't working.
GoDaddy told us that Nominet had suspended our domain until September, as this was the normal procedure. September came to an end and October began, there was still no sign of our domain.
We tried to contact Nominet directly, they said contact Key Systems, for whom Godaddy resells for. On contacting Key Systems, we are again told to contact GoDaddy.
Numerous phonecalls to GoDaddy were of no avail. To my horror, on the 18th of October, on doing a whois, I see a new owner of the domain, a domain that was 2 years old, a PR 4, and has over 7000 backlinks on Google.
On calling GoDaddy, they said there's nothing they can do about it and have refunded the money I paid them for renewal.
Godaddy told me that in the United States there is a law that would guarantee the domain name to be put back into our possesion. We never gave the domain up. We were trying to renew it and Godaddy contacted Key Systems about the issue numerous times.
They told Key Systems that the domain was in our account and it was active. However, Key Systems never sent the positive renewal request towards Nominet. Basically, Key Systems, the German company, dropped the ball on this issue. They had two months to process a simple renewal and they failed to do so. It's essentially theft and fraud.
We paid, the domain was in our account and Godaddy contacted Key Systems to renew it. I was told by Godaddy that their legal team can give me the access to the logs of their Higher Tech staff talking back and forth with Key Systems and that show that we were the owners, had been the owners, and desired to continue to be the owners.
I am really looking forward to your suggestions now, as to what action I could possibly take.
Thanks in advance.
