I guess this is a cautionary tale.
I was recently having issues with my Gmail account that’s tied to my Epik ( a domain registrar ) account, so when I was supposed to renew my domain, I didn’t receive any e-mails about it. When I decided to randomly check on my website, it seemed to be down. So I checked Epik and a domain that usually cost £15 a year to renew now cost £400 to renew as it was expired.
As a teenager who does not have £400 to spend on a domain, I decided to just wait until the domain fully expired and buy it for a cheaper price.
After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal
It’s legal because they bought the domain and they can charge whatever price they want if you want to buy it from them.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol
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That’s a horrible domain name anyways. .xyz is trash, the name itself is long, hard to pronounce and sounds like gibberish. Time for an upgrade.
.top is cheap right now and much easier to make into a phrase
bottom.or.top
That’s the second time I’ve seen someone cast xyz in a negative light. What’s wrong with it? (Genuine question, in case it needs saying)
It’s just a hallmark of “I bought the cheapest domain name TLD available”.
That’s not necessarily bad if all you need is something to get the job done, but there is a stereotype associated with it.
The Boost Mobile of gTLDs
Nothing wrong with Boost Mobile, or any other discount telecom provider either. It’s not like the phone signals taste different lmao
What about “The ZipoApps of gTLDs”?
Fair enough. I got one because it was the cheapest domain… though reading some of the other replies, I probably shouldn’t try to do anything like email with it!
It’s commonly used by spammers, so it could cause issues if you’re planning to use it for mail.
Lesson learned, they regularly do this if you have a website that one of their crawlers hit as active. If you really care about it check in about a year later, chances are if you have an inquired within a year they’ll release the domain and you can pay normal sale price for it
Make an offer of $0.01. Assuming the responses aren’t automated, every time they reject it, raise the offer by 1c. Keep doing it till you hit the $15 mark and then just stop. It could waste literal years of their time.
Reminds me of a guy I knew who kept getting letters for a $10 parking fine he got while at university. He waited until they spent more in postage than the fine before paying it.
My last year of uni I was broke. The previous year the parking passes had red letters, that year purple. That was the only difference. The colour. I traced over all the letters of my previous parking pass with a blue sharpie and parked for free all year.
Automated numberplate recognition systems have spoilt so much fun.
Nice hacking mate.
Time to grab sungloc.to instead?
sungloc.utus
tldr - lesson learned. buy a new domain and move over to it.
but for those who want to learn something new - you are only renting your domains. If you fail to pay by the registration date then you generally get a grace period to pay more money to renew it. If you fail to pay before that period expires then the domain will be released. Some companies like godaddy will automatically buy the domain for another year (or more). But even if Godaddy doesn’t then it still goes up on a list of expiring domains and there are backorder services that will try to buy the domain or auction them off.
So in the end it doesn’t really matter what registrar you use. If you do not pay, it goes back to a list where people can see it is expiring and then you’ll get some people who either want to legitimately use that domain or more likely they are wanting to try to sell it to you or someone else for more than they buy it for.
And I saw someone mention file a complaint. I’m sorry to say that if you did not have money to renew the domain then you aren’t going to be able to do that either. This is called Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the fee is between $1500-4000 for 1 to 5 domains.. Additionally, just because you file a complaint does not mean the issue will be resolved favorably or timely. These complaints can last years, and there is no guarantee you will get the domain back.
This is why you should always pay your domain rental fee. And if you don’t, then you need to either be willing to pay a ton of money to get it back or you will need to move on. Sorry its a tough lesson to learn but if you’re just a student then you probably weren’t using this to run a business or anything so in the end you are quite fortunate.
After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal
GoDaddy is known to do that.
Technically, they’re not hiking the price. GoDaddy bought it after it expired and then is re-selling it at an astronomically higher price. It’s one of the many, many reasons people hate them.
I’m ashamed to say I still have a couple of domains with GD that I haven’t migrated yet. This post might just light a fire under me to get that done.
Got a work related variant, a 3 letter domain we really liked was registered by a person asking a couple of hundred bucks or so. Which really was a good deal and we were more then happy to pay.
Our IT department advised guiding the transfer themselves. Instead our marketing department went ahead anyway and just agreed to “you end your subscription and after that we register it” … instead of using transfer codes.
In the minutes between, a bulk claimer snatched it away.
LMAO they really are inept 🤦♂️
OMG. I can’t believe the marketing department was that inept. Tragic
Can’t tell if /s
Honestly I believe it. I had a VP of sales / marketing overriding requirements making them more difficult from the CEO after getting screamed at by the CEO who wanted the product (bono project) to be quick and easy for initial release.
He also ordered IT garbage for a site once (consumer PCs running Windows not server edition)
And to top it all off went behind supervisors backs in engineering departments asking for daily spreadsheets trackong their time because "if you can go to the bathroom you have time for this.
All leadership was toxic though like the CEO screaming at him lol.
Damn you reminded me to check my gmail and there was a domain renewal reminder, thanks!
Hahaha. I purposely got a jibberish .xyz domain. If they ever ask for more than the $9.99 a year they can pound sand.
They don’t really care. They’re fishing for “whales”. Those who forgot to renew their domain or something but desperately need it back. Businesses, likely.
Or people who use it for email and basically have their online identity tied to them.
If you don’t mind using a gibberish .xyz domain, why not an 1.111B class? ([6-9 digits].xyz for $0.99/year)
I’ve lost my domain too. It took me two years to get it back. Hopefully it won’t be squatted for long
This happened to me years ago (the .com of my full name). I kept checking in at expiry date for 3 years and they eventually let it expire, so I bought it back for normal price.
This ☝️it happened to me and to a close friend, if you are reselient and can wait it is possible to but it back at regular price
Hopefully it’s not a common last name + a first name that suddenly became popular, could imagine it getting scooped by someone else.
This was the plot to an episode of iCarly
if only we listened to spencer’s advice. always listen to spencer’s advice.
I am sorry that happened to you
Thanks for sharing your story, though. I have a few domains, two of them being very important for me (one I use for all my emails, and the other one for all my self hosted stuff). So I’ll be paying close attention to their renewal
I hope you can find another domain that you like and that you can transfer your stuff to it.
