Register.com Stealing Domains?

[deadweight]

Long story short... one of the guys I work with contacted someone about buying their domain for a work-related project. Price was determined, 200 bucks, transfer code was received from Register.com... but after a few weeks of waiting for the transfer to go through, the seller emailed saying Register.com had failed to report that the domain had actually expired in 2003... and Register.com is now selling the domain on Afternic.

Sounded like a scam at first, but after a few calls... sure enough Register.com switched ownership of the domain to themselves a few days ago and placed the domain on afternic for min bid of $1000. Register.com support apologized for the glitch in their system, but said the domain was available for purchase through the auction.

Draw your own conclusions, I suppose... but it is very possible that once the email address of the buyer was revealed to someone at Register.com, it became clear that money could be made from the industry-related domain instead of simply putting it back up for reg-fee purchase, or simply letting the transfer go through.

Anyone else see this sort of thing before? They're still calling supervisers and such to get it sorted out... but seems Awefully suspicious.

 

[IAmAllanShore]

I'm confused.
Once you decide what you are going to do (Buy/not buy), do post the name so we can try to see more of what happened. All I can come up with (Based off of what you relayed) is it has something to do with Afternic's new distribution channel thing?
-Allan

 

[matt_bodis]

Once my brother had a domain there and what they did was change his nameservers and started pointing his domain to an adult website...

And when renewal comes I think they hit you with like a $30 renewal. Not sure if they still do that, but Register.com is indeed sketchy.

 

[dgridley]

I wonder how many here started their domaining careers with Register.com?

Once my brother had a domain there and what they did was change his nameservers and started pointing his domain to an adult website...

And when renewal comes I think they hit you with like a $30 renewal. Not sure if they still do that, but Register.com is indeed sketchy.

 

[deadweight]

I'm confused.
Once you decide what you are going to do (Buy/not buy), do post the name so we can try to see more of what happened. All I can come up with (Based off of what you relayed) is it has something to do with Afternic's new distribution channel thing?
-Allan

Yeah, I'll post when it's finished. Not sure what they're going to do over there yet, but I know the domain is not worth that kind of money.

It really seems like Register.com realized the problem in their system when they tried to carry out the transfer... and when it became clear that the domain should have technically expired a few years ago, instead of offering the seller the option to pay the back-fees, or even letting the buyer pay the back-fees... they took it out of the hands of both sides and took over the name completely for their own use.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I can't remember the name now, but I watched for a domain to drop about 5-6 years ago that for several years had a whois of "Register.com unpaid domains department" It remained that way with expired dates in the whois for several years. I emailed them several times to offer to buy or ask when it would drop and could never get an answer. That was a few years ago about the time they sold off the afternic.com domain and trademark rights.

BTW...Arey they still around? I thought they would have shrunk to nothing now with the bad service and high price reputation they had.

 

[labrocca]

Here is what happened.

Domain expired in 2003.
Register.com didn't "drop" it. Probably was a good name.
When the seller attempted to transfer to buyer that's when Register.com took possession officially.

Ask the seller for ANY proof that he paid the registration fees.

This is why we need laws enacted to keep the registrars from acting in bad faith and taking good names for themselves. IMHO this is an anti-trust issue and it's heavily abused by registrars and ignored by capital hill and ICANN't.

Register.com support apologized for the glitch in their system

No...not a glitch...a "loophole" they abuse to keep good names.