Dealing with domain squatters

D Hayes

To cut a long story short - the company that built a website for a mate went out of business before Christmas. The site was operating under a .com name, which expired at the same time, and was snapped up by a squatter.

My mate still has the .ie version of the site, but the .com was great for search engine ranking.

I have the Whois details of the company (UK based) that registered his expired domain name. I can't see how they would have any use for the domain as it's in the format www.matesnamebusinesstype.com.

What's the best approach to get this domain name back? I have their email address so I will send them an email, but just wondering how to word it. I don't want him to end up paying over the odds to get it back.

Thanks in advance.

kmick

Domain name squatters exist only to force people to pay over the odds for domains they have forgotten to register. Can you register a new .com domain? If not prepare to pay through the nose.

D Hayes

Thanks for reply. Yeah, I'm aware of how those chancers work. I'm just trying to figure out what the best approach is to get it back at as low a price as possible.

I'm thinking of telling my mate to email them and act dumb, emphasizing that he's a small time operator etc. etc.

mneylon

A lot will depend on who registered the domain.

A lot of domainers will register large volumes of deleted domains automatically ie. they don't actually examine what they are registering, as they choose the names based on criteria such as traffic etc.

Realistically the price will vary.

If your friend contacts them directly the price could go up, whereas getting a broker to deal with the situation might work out better

In any case it could cost several hundred to several thousand Euro

skelliser

have you tried the .net version?