Oh. My. God. There really is a consipracy!
In November, my domain carefulrecords.com suddenly stopped working, so I contacted Register.com, and they said that my domain had expired in October, and had been moved into a special post-expiration "grace period" status for 35 days. The grace period had expired, and unless I paid $235 I would have to wait another 30 days for the domain to become available! Well, I didn't have $235, and this was obviously a scam, so I said, forget it!
I decided I could wait out the 30 days and then re-register it with another registrar. I chose enom.com because I read that they were good, and I also transferred ultrajosh.com (which had not yet expired) to enom.com. I added carefulrecords.com to my Watchlist on enom.com. Then I went through my site and changed all references to carefulrecords.com to point instead to a directory under ultrajosh.com where I had moved the files.
Since then, I checked every single day to see whether the name had been released, yet. Today, at 4:25 pm EST I checked whois.com and they reported the domain was still not available.
I called Register.com to see when it would become available. I was told that after the 35 days "grace period" expired, it wouldn't be just 30 days, but 30 to 90 days before the name would become available! I couldn't believe it, and expressed my upset to the rep on the phone. He said it was perfectly legal. I told him it might be legal but that it was extremely unethical. He said that I would have to contact Verisign to find out when it would become available. He also said that Register.com would have sent me e-mail notices 90 days in advance informing me of the impending expiration. I said I had never received any such notice, and asked him to produce an email that had been sent to me. I was then put on hold for about 5 minutes...
When he came back on the line, he said that well, actually Register.com was not responsible for sending me the e-mail, but that my ISP, XO.com, was supposed to inform me. Unbelievable! Changed his story! I was beside myself. I said, "Now it's someone else's fault!!!???"
Then he mentioned, sort of casually, that "by the way" he had just "checked" on whois.com and what do you know but carefulrecords.com is available!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it, because I had checked it less than 10 minutes earlier, so while I had him on the phone, I re-checked whois.com. Sure enough, carefulrecords.com was now suddenly available!!! I asked what he had done to release it, and he claimed he didn't do anything!!! Yet, somehow, in the 10 minutes I had been on the phone, the domain name had magically become available again!!! What an incredible coincidence!!!
Since then I have poked around the net and found several stories similar to mine. I'm pretty sure the guy smelled a battle brewing and decided to flip a switch and just get rid of me. Good thing I made a stink or I'd still be waiting 3 months from now!!!!
I decided I could wait out the 30 days and then re-register it with another registrar. I chose enom.com because I read that they were good, and I also transferred ultrajosh.com (which had not yet expired) to enom.com. I added carefulrecords.com to my Watchlist on enom.com. Then I went through my site and changed all references to carefulrecords.com to point instead to a directory under ultrajosh.com where I had moved the files.
Since then, I checked every single day to see whether the name had been released, yet. Today, at 4:25 pm EST I checked whois.com and they reported the domain was still not available.
I called Register.com to see when it would become available. I was told that after the 35 days "grace period" expired, it wouldn't be just 30 days, but 30 to 90 days before the name would become available! I couldn't believe it, and expressed my upset to the rep on the phone. He said it was perfectly legal. I told him it might be legal but that it was extremely unethical. He said that I would have to contact Verisign to find out when it would become available. He also said that Register.com would have sent me e-mail notices 90 days in advance informing me of the impending expiration. I said I had never received any such notice, and asked him to produce an email that had been sent to me. I was then put on hold for about 5 minutes...
When he came back on the line, he said that well, actually Register.com was not responsible for sending me the e-mail, but that my ISP, XO.com, was supposed to inform me. Unbelievable! Changed his story! I was beside myself. I said, "Now it's someone else's fault!!!???"
Then he mentioned, sort of casually, that "by the way" he had just "checked" on whois.com and what do you know but carefulrecords.com is available!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it, because I had checked it less than 10 minutes earlier, so while I had him on the phone, I re-checked whois.com. Sure enough, carefulrecords.com was now suddenly available!!! I asked what he had done to release it, and he claimed he didn't do anything!!! Yet, somehow, in the 10 minutes I had been on the phone, the domain name had magically become available again!!! What an incredible coincidence!!!
Since then I have poked around the net and found several stories similar to mine. I'm pretty sure the guy smelled a battle brewing and decided to flip a switch and just get rid of me. Good thing I made a stink or I'd still be waiting 3 months from now!!!!
