One of the domains I plan to buy for my host co's name has expired as of two days ago, evidently the owner didn't renew. Corenic.net shows it as expired as well as netsol.

Should I give it a couple of days to see if it becomes available or should I go ahead and back-order it? Can you back-order through anyone other than netsol?

I can register the name with another variation but I would like to own it also. Mainly so this guy won't come around later and say I'm cyber-squating. It is not in use and has never been from what I can tell.


John

Is the domain actually registered with NetSol, or a different registrar?

If it is with NetSol, you may find that even though the domain expired a few days ago, it may be weeks/months/years before the domain is dropped and is avaliable for renewal.

There are a number of services who will attempt to 'grab' the domain for you if/when it does become avaliable.

Agree with Wolfy there.

You might be better off thinking of a new domain name, or a variation of the original plan.


Lats...

I'm in a similar situation. My biz name was already registered so I went with .net instead of .com. The people who have the .com have never used it and it expires in a few weeks. It is with NetworkSolutions. I phoned them to ask how soon they'd release it after it expires and they told me the have a two month grace period for payment then it's released. Time will tell if that's accurate. I've tried to contact the owner twice and offered to buy it since they weren't using it but they never responded.

Sheila in Seattle

The two month grace period that NetSol offers is so that the original owner of the domain may renew the registration.

They will not necessarily drop the domain after 60 days though.

They are domain-hoarding big time. Many hundreds of thousands of expired domain names, some going back to 1998 are expired at NetSol and have not yet dropped.

No one knows the secret to getting one released - though it does happen regularly to many domains as well.

The only way to guarantee you can get the domain is to contact the original owner, have them renew, and then transfer to you. Pay them something for their trouble. Of course, they may want more than you are willing to pay as well.

The dropped name services will work - but only if the name drops. You may end up paying for a dropped name service for a year only to have the domain not drop within that year.

There are no rules when it comes to domain drops...

Good luck,

-t