Cybersquatter makes me unhappy.

July 13, 2007 7:16 AM

Eep. Domain name expired (gmail flagged warning as spam!) and I've already got a squatter. :(

So it just expired literally 2 days ago. I'm looking at the notice now. I thought I had like 60 days or something? Help?

I've got lots of work into this domain (I've got backups, of course), but I've got a successful adwords campaign and everything...suggestions?

Domain was registered at namepcheap, if that matters.

posted by TomMelee to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Have you contacted namecheap about how to renew? What makes you think you have a squatter. If you're seeing a page of ads or something, perhaps that's what namecheap does with all expired domains before they're deleted. If it just expired 2 days ago, you should have no problem renewing it.
posted by winston at 7:20 AM on July 13, 2007

I agree with winston. I have no idea about namecheap but I had one 3 weeks expired and I just went to godaddy and renewed it. They'd put up a parked godaddy page there and it disappeared a few hours after I renewed.
posted by dobbs at 7:28 AM on July 13, 2007

Same here. After I got past the first grace period, a placehold page popped up. I still had plenty of time to contact netsol and renew with no issues (after we established I was really me)
posted by mikepop at 7:42 AM on July 13, 2007

When mine expired (due to out of date CC details on file) it went into withholding for a month and I was told by my registrar that I needed to pay a $50USD release fee. I passed on the offer though... wasn't worth that much to me.
posted by chrisbucks at 8:19 AM on July 13, 2007

If it really just expired two days ago you should be able to contact NameCheap and renew it for the regular fee. They are just monetizing your domain while it's expired. Nearly every registrar has started doing this.

There are some registrars that are putting domains into auction during the expiration period, but I doubt that NameCheap is doing this.
posted by FlamingBore at 8:21 AM on July 13, 2007

Yes, you don't have a squatter, you just have your registrar's placeholder page. (They make a few bucks off of ads that way.) You're still listed as the owner in whois. Just renew (with penalty, maybe?) and you'll be good to go.
posted by mendel at 8:59 AM on July 13, 2007

For GoDaddy, there's a penalty after the first... 30? days? But there's a 60 day grace period. The penalty is completely ridiculous: $80. You're almost better off purchasing a backorder on the name.

Either way, you're in the clear, even though you're not with GoDaddy, but if you're terrified, buy a backorder and make sure that no one grabs it when it comes out of grace period, in case there are any troubles.
posted by disillusioned at 11:54 AM on July 13, 2007

I use NameCheap extensively. Login to your NameCheap account. On your main Account Information page, next to Number of domains in your account, click View to view the list of all your domain names. On the left hand side is a link named Reactivate Domains. This is the "Reactivate Recently Expired Domains" section. Click and your domain should be listed there. You can then add it to your cart and reactivate it just like you were renewing it. Then add NameCheap emails to your Gmail white list so this doesn't happen again.
posted by drew3d at 2:35 PM on July 13, 2007

THanks all, I apologize for not getting back sooner, it was NUTS today at work, has been all week.

If I'd had the time to really research it I would have seen that it was namecheap's placeholder, it just really looked like any one of 10 zillion ad revenue pages.

It's weird the way they do it---you have to go to manage domains and then "reactivate", you can't do it from the mainpage or from the renew link when you find it.

Thanks folks. Appreciate it.
posted by TomMelee at 4:20 PM on July 13, 2007