I host a domain for a friend at work, trusoldiers.net. I think I’ve been hosting it for nearly 3 years now. I recently got an interesting email regarding trusoldiers.com, so asked him about it…
He’d said that he used to own it 5 years ago, but the person that hosted it forgot to register it again, and lost control… This lead to him buying the .net version. Then comes the new email…
The email was rather suspicious to me… below is the content, no names changed to protect the innocent, because in this case, I don’t believe they deserve it, after all… well, it’ll become clear..
Subject: Do you want trusoldiers.com? From: [email protected] Date: Sun, July 20, 2008 17:07 To: [email protected] Priority: Normal Mailer: php
We purchase expired domains in bulk and recently acquired one that I think you might be interested in. The domain is trusoldiers.com and since you own trusoldiers.net we thought you might also want the more popular .COM version.
All of our domains are priced at a one time fee of $49.95. This includes full transfer of ownership to you and the first year of registration. After the first year is up you can renew for about $10 annually or move it to the registrar of your choice.
If you are interested go to:
http://www.dcinchq.com/index.php?domain=trusoldiers.com
If not, just hit delete. This is a one time note for the owner of trusoldiers.net.
All the best,
Warren Davis Digital Caucus, Inc.
Now, the message clearly says “we purchase expired domain names in bulk”… That’d imply that it is expired, they purchased it, so it is no longer expired… right? Wrong… A simple test at internic.net will tell you the truth. At the time, it reported it was unregistered. That means I can use the registrar of my choice to register… This means that I don’t have to pay the extortionate $50 they were asking for… Why? Because even some of the largest registrars are only charging $10-30 a year…. Mine, eNom, only charges $9.95 a year.
The fun thing is the small print on the bottom of their website…
All domains are registered through Moniker. They can be transferred to another registrar after 60 days. Moniker charges $10.49 per year for a .COM registration. Your first year is included in the $49.95 purchase price. We will point your domain to the website of your choice at no cost or you can manage the domain yourself. We are a registered and accredited PayPal Business account holder.
They clearly say that the domain registration only costs $10.49 for a year, and can be transferred after (which will cost more)… So that leaves a tasty $39.50 profit… Not a bad little deal.