A few days ago, i checked registration on a domain i was going after - pollyanntrail.org . Out here in oakland county, this is a trail that covers multiple towns, and I've been a supporter of the trail for the past month. It was my plan to grab the domain since the official trail'internet manager is very busy, and doesn't have much experience with domains. Once i obtained ownership, i would just setup redirection for the actual website os the trail (pollyanntrailway.org).

Well, on the night before it was set to expire, i was running whois queries to check the status of the domain every hour. I was expecting it to drop some time between the hours of 12 midnight and 3am, because that's how the normal internic whois database works.

At 8:00am, it still hadn't expired, and i was feeling extremely tired, so i decided i would go to bed, and grab the domain whenever i woke up.

Well, at 4:00PM i woke up, did a whois query on the domain, and wouldn't ya know it - Somebody else had registered it. So, i sent the administrative contact (info@domaincar.com) an email asking how much it would cost to buy the domain from there.

Today, i woke up to see that i recieved an email back from domaincar, and i was shocked to see that their asking price is $900! How in the world can they ask for $900 for a domain with 0PR, and a title that is being used by a non-profit project?

Anyway, there's my experience with domaincar.com . Have any of you ever had an experience with these people? I know I've seen that portal page on at least 200 other random websites.

They register domains for traffic monetization. They have the "www" variant of a very busy domain of mine (to catch typos).

You have an interest in the domain name, if you buy it they make a whole lot of money, if you don't buy it then they loose $10.

They wany $900 for it because you want it ;)

BTW, ORG domains drop between 11am and 3pm so ub3r, you snooze - you lose.

Sorry to hear that, but you've made a few mistakes here:

1. I'm not sure *which* whois you are referring to, but PIR, the .org registry does update theirs near real-time. HOWEVER, it has nothing to do with when a deleted domain becomes available again.

2. You should NOT have contacted the new owner right away, unless it is something REALLY URGENT. By doing so, you are basically asking him to raise the price.

3. $900 is not particularly an unreasonable ASKING price. They expect you to make a counter offer, and eventually closing at around $300 - 500. If you are not able to afford a few hundred dollars, then you may want to forget about the whole thing. By the way, it doesn't matter whether YOU are buying on behalf of a non-profit organization or not, because THEY are running a for-profit operation.

4. Next time, try some of those backordering services. These days, you can't even register half decent expiring domains by hand.

I recently pointed out to this problem too in http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=444445 - we practically have no chances to register ANY drops anymore. ALL of them are being grabbed by companies like DomainCar even before there's humanly possible to hit 'submit' in a registration form...

Makes me really pi%^*%ed off.

Originally posted by RADiSTAR
They have the "www" variant of a very busy domain of mine (to catch typos).

What is a "www" variant?

Originally posted by sauer38h
What is a "www" variant?

wwwyahoo.com, for example. Note that there's no dot between www and yahoo.

Originally posted by ub3r
A few days ago, i checked registration on a domain i was going after - pollyanntrail.org . Out here in oakland county, this is a trail that covers multiple towns, and I've been a supporter of the trail for the past month. It was my plan to grab the domain since the official trail'internet manager is very busy, and doesn't have much experience with domains. Once i obtained ownership, i would just setup redirection for the actual website os the trail (pollyanntrailway.org).

Well, on the night before it was set to expire, i was running whois queries to check the status of the domain every hour. I was expecting it to drop some time between the hours of 12 midnight and 3am, because that's how the normal internic whois database works.

At 8:00am, it still hadn't expired, and i was feeling extremely tired, so i decided i would go to bed, and grab the domain whenever i woke up.

Well, at 4:00PM i woke up, did a whois query on the domain, and wouldn't ya know it - Somebody else had registered it. So, i sent the administrative contact (info@domaincar.com) an email asking how much it would cost to buy the domain from there.

Today, i woke up to see that i recieved an email back from domaincar, and i was shocked to see that their asking price is $900! How in the world can they ask for $900 for a domain with 0PR, and a title that is being used by a non-profit project?

Anyway, there's my experience with domaincar.com . Have any of you ever had an experience with these people? I know I've seen that portal page on at least 200 other random websites.

Did you end up buying it from domaincar?

I am up against the same thing.:rolleyes:

I didn't buy it. They were expecting too much.

Isn't the site up and running?

Some domain sellers may feel they are justified in setting an initial asking price of whatever they like, on the grounds that a buyer might be stupid enough to pay up without trying to negotiate a fair price.

However, what a seller cannot justify is declining an offer for a domain that is well above what he would pay himself for it.

He cannot justify declining an offer of $500 for a domain, if he knows that with that $500 he could easily buy another domain that is better than the one he is selling.

If domain prices rise in the future, as it probably suits him to think will happen, he would then be in an even better position.

It wouldn't surprise me if domaincar end up offering that domain to you for $100 or less. Or if nobody contacts them again they might let it expire next year.

I had a similar experience with domaincar. I had let one of my domains slip away accidently . In the process of trying to get it back, Domaincar slipped in and got it before I could get registered again. I contacted them about the possibility of purchase. Roughly a week later, they responded with an asking price of $1900! I scoffed it off and put the domain on backorder to get it back asap.

Get this - not a week after this, the domain freed up again! It seems they"won" the domain but never paid for it. Very quickly I placed my order and got the domain that had been offered at $1900 for less than $20!

This is the best part, though. Five days later, I got another email from Domaincar asking for a counter offer. I simply replied back that I wouldn't be making offers on a domain they no longer owned.

Scavengers...

Originally posted by Avg-Joe
I had a similar experience with domaincar. I had let one of my domains slip away accidently . In the process of trying to get it back, Domaincar slipped in and got it before I could get registered again. I contacted them about the possibility of purchase. Roughly a week later, they responded with an asking price of $1900! I scoffed it off and put the domain on backorder to get it back asap.

Get this - not a week after this, the domain freed up again! It seems they"won" the domain but never paid for it. Very quickly I placed my order and got the domain that had been offered at $1900 for less than $20!

This is the best part, though. Five days later, I got another email from Domaincar asking for a counter offer. I simply replied back that I wouldn't be making offers on a domain they no longer owned.

Scavengers...
I can't believe ICANN allows this type of thing to go on.

Hi Avg-Joe,

How to do the backorder?

Originally posted by Tomcatf14
Hi Avg-Joe,

How to do the backorder?

I'm not Avg-Joe, but can answer as well.

You might want to try special services like http://snapnames.com or backorder functions of some registrars like GoDaddy or RegisterFly. Please be aware that backordering is costly!

Originally posted by Avg-Joe
I had a similar experience with domaincar. I had let one of my domains slip away accidently . In the process of trying to get it back, Domaincar slipped in and got it before I could get registered again. I contacted them about the possibility of purchase. Roughly a week later, they responded with an asking price of $1900! I scoffed it off and put the domain on backorder to get it back asap.

Get this - not a week after this, the domain freed up again! It seems they"won" the domain but never paid for it. Very quickly I placed my order and got the domain that had been offered at $1900 for less than $20!

This is the best part, though. Five days later, I got another email from Domaincar asking for a counter offer. I simply replied back that I wouldn't be making offers on a domain they no longer owned.

Scavengers...

lol. that's damn cool. scavengers indeed.

We have used Pool.com in the pass and they are pretty good.

Are Pool.com and Registerfly 'partners' with any registrars?

Bidding goes nuts on snapnames!

ipal.com is presently: $4610.00 and it has two days left on the auction!

pool "owns" about 70-80 shell registrars .