Hurrah... more than two years after losing the domain name magle.com it is now back under my control!
Originally I bought magle.com about six years ago through a danish registrar. Every year the Danish company would bill me, until the early summer 2002 when the bill didn't arrive on time... The Danish company had gone bankrupt and didn't send out any more bills, but I wasn't notified, and - to be honest - I didn't think about the missing bill as I had my mind on many other work-related things.
So what happened was that without me getting any kind of notification ("bulkregistration" would send the reminders to the now defunct Danish company) the domain went publically available again as "recently owned" in august 2002. There are people and companys who specialises in buying up formerly owned domaines as soon as they get available. It happens more often than one should think and for many reasons, some times just sloppiness. If you want to get your domain back then you will have to pay the company who bought it and they will often charge a hefty price.
This is what happened to me, within days (or hours) after my (or rather the Danish companys) ownership of the domain expired it was bought by a small american company.
It took another few weeks before I discovered what was wrong, but then it was of course too late. I was offered to buy back the domain name for 1000$ (US) which I refused as I simply couldn't afford spending that kind of money. My main domain magle.dk was of course still functioning, it was the magle.com that I had lost - a secondary domain but still important.
I talked to my lawyer in Denmark but since the price was "only" 1000$ he adviced me to simply pay or let it go. It would cost me too much money and time to sue, and the case would not be a clear winner
I knew I couldn't afford to pay their asking price, so I decided to negotiate. They then lowered their price to 700$ but it was still too much, so I just decided to let it go. In the meantime a friend of mine had bought the domain frederikmagle.com for me, so I did have a .com domain as well. But it was of course not the domain name magle.com...
Two years later: It seems time was on my side.
A month ago I decided that the time had come to try to regain the domain one last time before someone else did. So after a round of negotiation I got the price down to 350$. This is just a week ago and after transfering the domain - using an escrow service - it is now back under my control, and I won't lose it again!!!
Originally I bought magle.com about six years ago through a danish registrar. Every year the Danish company would bill me, until the early summer 2002 when the bill didn't arrive on time... The Danish company had gone bankrupt and didn't send out any more bills, but I wasn't notified, and - to be honest - I didn't think about the missing bill as I had my mind on many other work-related things.
So what happened was that without me getting any kind of notification ("bulkregistration" would send the reminders to the now defunct Danish company) the domain went publically available again as "recently owned" in august 2002. There are people and companys who specialises in buying up formerly owned domaines as soon as they get available. It happens more often than one should think and for many reasons, some times just sloppiness. If you want to get your domain back then you will have to pay the company who bought it and they will often charge a hefty price.
This is what happened to me, within days (or hours) after my (or rather the Danish companys) ownership of the domain expired it was bought by a small american company.
It took another few weeks before I discovered what was wrong, but then it was of course too late. I was offered to buy back the domain name for 1000$ (US) which I refused as I simply couldn't afford spending that kind of money. My main domain magle.dk was of course still functioning, it was the magle.com that I had lost - a secondary domain but still important.
I talked to my lawyer in Denmark but since the price was "only" 1000$ he adviced me to simply pay or let it go. It would cost me too much money and time to sue, and the case would not be a clear winner
I knew I couldn't afford to pay their asking price, so I decided to negotiate. They then lowered their price to 700$ but it was still too much, so I just decided to let it go. In the meantime a friend of mine had bought the domain frederikmagle.com for me, so I did have a .com domain as well. But it was of course not the domain name magle.com...
Two years later: It seems time was on my side.
A month ago I decided that the time had come to try to regain the domain one last time before someone else did. So after a round of negotiation I got the price down to 350$. This is just a week ago and after transfering the domain - using an escrow service - it is now back under my control, and I won't lose it again!!!