Having been really sceptical of domain auction houses as yet another online scam I wanted to share my recent experience and endorse services from those players like Snapnames.com which offer some valuable help to recover or get hold of valued domains…
The background: My company’s .com domain was taken when we started our tech PR company in 2002 which was a frustrating but normal consequence of missing the domain gold rush all those years ago. We registered the .co.uk equivalent but wanted the .com which was registered by a cyber squatter who did nothing with it. Adding to the annoyance.
I then received a random email out of the blue from a Arthur Simmons telling me that this .com domain was about to come up for auction. Having put this down to spam and ignoring the links in the email, I soon after started to get similar emails from other service providers and began to look into it. I then did a search and found this blog recounting a similar experience – this proved useful to me so may be of use to you.
http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/c_catching-domains.html
I then registered with Snapnames and entered my bid for the .com domain which has a closing date of some days later. In a familiar way to eBay you can see the other bidders and put a maximum bid. Still being sceptical, I wasn’t sure what would happen. As it turned out, I then received an email from Snapnames telling me that it has secured mediasafari.com – I then received a further email from answerable.com where I could go in and manage my new domain. All this cost me $63.
So if you’re looking to recover a domain or get hold of a valued domain make sure you check out Snapnames.com – if you rely on domain registration sites, your preferred domain may never appear as available as it exchanges hands from registrant to registrant in the background.
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