is this Domain name blackmail?

BionicRasher

**If this is not the right place to post please move as required

So we made a booboo and due to an accounting and banking error our domain did not renew. We have had the domain name for 5+ years and we pay a hosting package and have a small website running on it. We are a small business with 3 employees (including owner) and we run a small tourist based operation that only really runs during summer months and on occasions during Christmas time etc.

We let the domain name slip (our own fault) and someone in the USA has bought the domain name (for I would assume about $15) our hosting company took $15 from us and after a bit of digging they told us that the domain had been sold to someone else and they refunded our $15.

The crowd in the USA would really have no use for this domain name as the domain name contains a unique Irish spelling for a town and also has the words of the tourist attraction and believe me there is no such attraction with this name available anywhere else - so its really useless to them.

We have made initial contact with them after a lot of digging around and they have replied that they will assist in getting the domian back to us but they need to cover costs and the cost they say is $750

So my questions are - do I consider this to be a form of blackmail and just pay up? Or how do I tackle this? Are there any official avenues I can take to pursue this?

We really need to have the website and email back up and running ASAP as we are losing business and we have the domain and email on all our literature and flyers etc and if we need to change it will cost a fair bit to do.

endacl

Would it cost more than €750 to print up new brochures? If not, I'd be inclined to tell them to shove it, and relaunch the website.

BionicRasher

endacl wrote: »

Would it cost more than €750 to print up new brochures? If not, I'd be inclined to tell them to shove it, and relaunch the website.

Probably will have to investigate costs of reprints of flyers/tickets/posters/billboards/flags etc as they all have our .com and .com email address on them. We would also have to pay someone to redo the website and relink it to our hosting package as we would not be capable of doing that ourselves.
Also we have a lot of contacts in the business that has our .com details and they would need to be updated - maybe it would be a good marketing drive to contact them with new details but its going to be a massive headache.
So money and time wise it is probably going to cost well north of $750

I am disgusted that some cheeky bloke in the US is holding us to ransom - I have found his website and he claims to be a Pro Blogger and Computer whizz kid and also he seems to do a lot of SEO work - is there any complaint process that can be followed for this type of stuff?

ManOfMystery

Domain registrars normally issue lots of emails and warnings about impending renewal - did you not get these?

Unfortunately, there is no clear legal process in place for 'seizing' back a domain name which has expired and which someone else has taken. You might get a good result if they have taken a Trademarked name and are you able to convince a court that they are using it for purely profiteering purposes, but given the jurisdictions involved, that would take too much time and money. This guy is obviously a domain investor and has bought this domain at a low price purely to resell it to you. It's not nice, but it's not illegal. People who attend storage auctions are doing the same thing - someone doesn't pay the lease on their storage unit, it goes up for auction, someone else buys it and maybe profits.

There's not much you can do here apart from take it on the chin, swallow your pride and try the nicely-nicely approach with him to try and get the price down. Yes I would love to sock him one also for his cheekiness, but that isn't going to fix your situation.

Work on sympathy. You're a small firm, got mouths to feed, blah blah. If you can get it back for the equivalent of a couple of hundred Euro, then take it as an expensive lesson learnt. Domains often get overlooked and we forget how important they are in this age where so much business is conducted or advertised online.

Mrs OBumble

You f** up, and didn't pay on time.

And in fact you must have been fairly late, because there's a 30-day period after the domain expiry during which only you have the right to re-purchase the domain.

Imagine this in real life: if you didn't renew the lease on a building, and chose not to do anything about it for a month after that either (despite receiving multiple reminders during this time). Do you really think you could complain when the owner puts your stuff on the street and changes the locks - and is only willing to give you access to the building again if you pay new key-money?

Pay up, and be glad it's only E750 they're asking for.

BionicRasher

ManOfMystery wrote: »

Domain registrars normally issue lots of emails and warnings about impending renewal - did you not get these?

Got the reminder emails yes but as I say due to accounts and bank issues the fees didnt transfer correctly - we own up to not following this through fully

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

You f** up, and didn't pay on time.

And in fact you must have been fairly late, because there's a 30-day period after the domain expiry during which only you have the right to re-purchase the domain.

Imagine this in real life: if you didn't renew the lease on a building, and chose not to do anything about it for a month after that either (despite receiving multiple reminders during this time). Do you really think you could complain when the owner puts your stuff on the street and changes the locks - and is only willing to give you access to the building again if you pay new key-money?

Pay up, and be glad it's only E750 they're asking for.

We didnt pay on time but some blame definitely goes to the hosting company - we paid hosting fees and fees for domain name registration which they gladly took once we sorted out banking issues - they never told us that the domain name was registered to someone else and after weeks of investigation on my part I figured it out and complained to the company but they just fobbed me off and said - ooops sorry we will refund you ASAP

$750 is steep and I will plead with this guy to pay less - lesson learnt yes but my next steps will be to move away from the hosting company as they have been a nightmare to deal with and are charging close to €170 per year for the privilege
I think it will be a case of getting our domain back and setting up a very straight forward website on Wix or Webs etc as that seems to be a lot less hassle for a company of our size

ManOfMystery

There are plenty of good hosting companies out there - and numerous reviews you can refer to. Definitely worth looking around. 170 per year will definitely get you a more competent host.

Might be worth setting up auto-renewal next time so the domain is re-registered and you're charged automatically, no chance of this incident repeating then.

M.T.D

Losing a domain name can happen. I have done it once lesson learned. I put the site on another similar domain name. After a year the "speculator" that had bought the domain name let it lapse as he must have had no takers for his $650 asking price and I bought it back for normal price.
In my case the contact email for the domain was on the domain itself and due to a fault in the hosting I did not get any warning emails.
So always use a contact email address on another domain and preferably on another server with an additional copy going to a gmail account.

If the domain is really important to your business then pay for several years in advance.

KonFusion

M.T.D wrote: »

If the domain is really important to your business then pay for several years in advance.

This ^

If it's not important and 750 quid is too steep, there are many TLD's available (.com, .ie, .co, .whatever, etc.)

If you do pay up, you should perhaps use some escrow service for payment, to ensure you actually do get the domain back and don't get scammed etc.

sozbox

How is it blackmail, they purchased an unregistered domain, you asked to buy it and they set a price.

Yes, it's ****ty that you let it lapse but take the learning, offer $500 and move on. I worked in a large organisation once that forgot to register the domain name for an upcoming line of business,the person the task was assigned too left it way too late and someone else found out about their plans and bought the name. It cost thousands to buy it back. Harsh lesson.

ManOfMystery

On second thoughts, don't go for the sympathy route. As it sounds like a fairly unique and irish domain name (which will be of little personal value to him or many others), tell him it's not critically important to you and best you can offer is half what he wants - €325 - take it or leave it. If he's looking a quick buck, he'll take it. This may even require you to call his bluff and if he refuses, walk away. He'll probably get back in touch.

BionicRasher

ManOfMystery wrote: »

Might be worth setting up auto-renewal next time so the domain is re-registered and you're charged automatically, no chance of this incident repeating then.

We had auto renew set up but due to banking issues and changes to credit card in use etc then it was trying to renew to an old card and bank account

M.T.D wrote: »

Losing a domain name can happen. I have done it once lesson learned. I put the site on another similar domain name. After a year the "speculator" that had bought the domain name let it lapse as he must have had no takers for his $650 asking price and I bought it back for normal price.
In my case the contact email for the domain was on the domain itself and due to a fault in the hosting I did not get any warning emails.
So always use a contact email address on another domain and preferably on another server with an additional copy going to a gmail account.

If the domain is really important to your business then pay for several years in advance.

We too had the emails going to the same domain so didnt see them until it was too late - I have since set up an alternate contact email (but had to jump through multiple hoops with hosting company and it took 3 weeks to complete - which didnt help the cause and we lost valuable time here too) and we now get all the corespondence from the hosting company. That was a lesson for sure but as we had the site and hosting set up by a web developer some years ago then we were oblivious to this all going on in the background until too late. Thats a major lesson learnt - dont pay a fly by night web developer to do the work - get someone reliable and someone thats not going to buggar off to Oz on the money we paid him!!

BionicRasher

ManOfMystery wrote: »

On second thoughts, don't go for the sympathy route. As it sounds like a fairly unique and irish domain name (which will be of little personal value to him or many others), tell him it's not critically important to you and best you can offer is half what he wants - €325 - take it or leave it. If he's looking a quick buck, he'll take it. This may even require you to call his bluff and if he refuses, walk away. He'll probably get back in touch.

Good advice - its a very unique Irish domain name and would be of no use at all to him - I believe there are no other towns anywhere in the world with this name.

We can get by for a while on our Facebook page and Gmail account but would like to have the real website and info@....... dot com email address back in operation

so maybe we sit it out for a few weeks

AlanG

This is always a problem with .com addresses. Some cloud hosting companies are actually in on it and will register a name to a partner company once someone enquirers about it.
You may be better just registering a .ie domain name as it will be safer and cant be bought by just anyone even if you let it slip in future. Once you do that you will most likely be able to get the other address back pretty cheaply.

Hollister11

My advice is to buy your next domain for a 10 year period. Yes it's a little costly upfront, but you don't have to worry about this **** your going through now.

mahamageehad

If it's uniquely Irish, why not buy the .ie? It's more expensive but IIRC it ranks higher in searches.

ManOfMystery

It's not uncommon tbh. Pretty sure even Google themselves famously lost their .com domain for a few minutes due to an administration error, but it was all sorted out extremely quickly once they realised what was going on.

BionicRasher

AlanG wrote: »

This is always a problem with .com addresses. Some cloud hosting companies are actually in on it and will register a name to a partner company once someone enquirers about it.
You may be better just registering a .ie domain name as it will be safer and cant be bought by just anyone even if you let it slip in future. Once you do that you will most likely be able to get the other address back pretty cheaply.

Yes from my investigation there seems to be some dubious transactions and the likes going on with the hosting company in on it too maybe.

mahamageehad wrote: »

If it's uniquely Irish, why not buy the .ie? It's more expensive but IIRC it ranks higher in searches.

Problem here is that we have .com all over our flyers and company logos etc. and we have built up a good inter company relationship via email etc so changing to .ie might cause hassle (and cost a fortune!!)

We are going to buy .ie anyway just to secure it

mneylon

If they're asking $750 for the domain you could counter with a lower offer, but $750 is cheaper than what it would cost you in legal fees etc., to lodge a dispute.