Maybe someone can shed some light on what happened here and let me know if I have any reason to be concerned about holding on to this domain:

I recently discovered that a domain that I would like to own was listed as being in the "deletion period" at GoDaddy. Gave them a quick call and was told that the domain was expiring, had recently passed the auction period, and that it would be a certain number of days now before the domain was released. They told me that I could backorder it if I liked. I asked them whether I'd have a better chance at obtaining it with a GoDaddy backorder since they were the current registrar and I was told that I might. So I backorder it with them. (Is it true about having a better chance - I read somewhere on here recently that there should be a much greater chance in this case?)

So anyway, I wait the quoted ammount of time, checking frequently for updates, until one day I get an e-mail saying that the backorder failed and someone else obtained the domain. Checking the whois revealed that someone new did indeed own the domain and with a new registrar as well. A call to GoDaddy to ask what happened resulted in me being told that somone else's system must have grabbed it faster but that I could keep the same domain under backorder if I wished. So I did. About a week later I get an email saying that the domain was successfully captured. Is this odd? Any idead how or why this happened?

Should I be concerned about how any of this happened or just be happy that I got the domain? I'm also a little concerned due to how uncertain the support people seemed with my questions. At one point when I called to ask how someone else got the backorder when no one wanted it when it went up for auction, the guy said he'd have to look into it and see what happened. After waiting a while, he finally came back and said that he wasn't sure - that he couldn't tell why it happened. I was under the impression that since it was a GoDaddy domain, a GoDaddy backorder would pick it up first.

I just want to make sure that I legitimately own this domain now. Thanks in advance for any insight you can offer.

If you bid on the domain name after market (a service of theirs) 30 days after the domain expires, they simply keep the domain name in their systems and place it in your account up to 14 days after you win the action.

If it has passed the auction period and nobody bid, then it goes in for standard deletion and which ever registrar grabs it first gets it for their customers.

I always use Snap Names (http://www.snapnames.com) as they seem to be good at picking up dropped domains.

Your domain was probably "tasted", which is normal and happens up to 5 days and then the domain is released again. Registrars will do this from time to time to see what sort of traffic will go through the domain and see if they want to keep it themselves for various reasons, such as advertisement parking or "premium domain listings."

Yep. This is typical. GoDaddy are good at capturing dropped domains which are picked up by tasters, who subsequently let them drop. If GD told you they captured the domain, it's yours. The only strange thing is why they didn't capture the domain initially when it dropped. You'd have thought their system would be so arranged that they would get first bite of the cherry.