Buying back my domain at NameJet

March 10, 2013 10:21 AM

The domain name for my music project expired recently, as the person it was registered to died. I'm trying to buy it back now at NameJet, but I'm a bit anxious to the outcome. I have very limited funds, and I don't think I'd win a bidding war.

For some reason, there's one other bidder, but he bid the same amount as me. I'm afraid that dude is going to snipe my domain just before closing (which is in a few hours).

I've given away free music for years, and all the mp3 files have the album tag (mydomain).com. I've invested a lot in this.

Any tips and tricks on how to deal with this?

posted by svenni to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

You'll want to snipe it yourself. IIRC the ideal time is 6 minutes before closing as it's near the end but not so soon it extends the timer. I'd check to be sure that's current information. Whatever time you decide to snipe should be set on multiple alarms, timers, etc. It would have been better not to bid so the other party might have thought no others were interested, increasing the chance of their forgetting to counter-snipe, but that's obviously just a tip for others reading at this point. Also, you might be able to get it through another registrar/auction, so I suggest placing bids at several places.
posted by michaelh at 10:30 AM on March 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I've dealt with these guys. A friend I trusted to keep my domain registered let it lapse. When I went to try and buy it back from NameJet it took several e-mails for them to name a price: at first the salesman wanted me to make an offer... I did, $50.00 at which point I was ignored for about a week until I pestered them for a response. The salesman finally got back to me with a minimum price of $5000.00. I was told my domain was "valuable" which - yeah, no, it never did much traffic and had a name very specific to my project (no general interest at all). NameJet are domain squatters... they exist to rip people like you and me off. If you don't have much money I wouldn't hold out much hope that these people will give you a reasonable price. Sorry if this is a downer, YMMV but this was my experience.
posted by signsofrain at 10:30 AM on March 10, 2013

svenni, were you successful?
posted by michaelh at 12:31 AM on March 18, 2013