I guess this is a cautionary tale.

I was recently having issues with my Gmail account that’s tied to my Epik ( a domain registrar ) account, so when I was supposed to renew my domain, I didn’t receive any e-mails about it. When I decided to randomly check on my website, it seemed to be down. So I checked Epik and a domain that usually cost £15 a year to renew now cost £400 to renew as it was expired.

As a teenager who does not have £400 to spend on a domain, I decided to just wait until the domain fully expired and buy it for a cheaper price.

After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal

  • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Sorry, but chalk this up to lesson learned. It’s almost always been this way. Domain squatters will do this all the time. In fact, some domain registrars will use you searching their site for an ‘available’ domain, and if you don’t buy it up right away – will buy it and hike the price and sit on it for years in order to lock it down, knowing you wanted it.

    btw, Namecheap says Sunglocto dot com is like $10 - so just register a .com. Not through that Epik piece of shit that you used before. Legit, use Namecheap; they’ve never done me wrong and have been my registrar for more than a decade now.

        • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          I mean, I use namecheap. I’m thinking about throwing one of my domains onto cloudfare just in case.

          If you don’t like namecheap, some people have been suggesting porkbun or something.

        • jqubed@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I had this happen with NameCheap. I’m not sure if they bought it or someone else, but it stayed registered with them. Whoever bought it has held it for a couple years, put up a fake website to look like they were using it, but took it down after a year when I didn’t bite on buying it. Current status shows it’s pending deletion finally for abuse or non-payment. I keep checking to see when I can nab it again.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            It happens with anyone. Bots track expirations and snatch them so that they can ransom them back to you for thousands - exactly as in OPs example.

            AUTO RENEW. Auto-renew. Auto-renew is the way. The solution to this problem is Auto-renew.

            • jqubed@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Yes, I just didn’t realize that auto-renew doesn’t work with PayPal on NameCheap and had lazily set it up with PayPal when I got it because I didn’t want to go get my wallet. Lesson learned!

            • Septimaeus
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              4 months ago

              I think you can also register 10 years in advance, or maybe more depending on the registrar, which would cover all other potential snafus like expired card info.

        • something_random_tho@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Then they make you use them for DNS. May or may not be a big deal, but the reason it’s at cost is to act as a loss leader to get you exposed to and buying their other products.

          • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Their free services are extremely useful and you can’t find that anywhere else. I’ve used them for years with hundreds of domains and never paid them a single dime.

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Absolutely. But I think it might be more advanced than that. They might have some sort of analytics that measures how long people stay on the page, etc to inform their purchasing decisions.

        • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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          4 months ago

          Ah, so search a couple of domains and sit on their page for a while making random mouse movements and scrolls then? Got it.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      4 months ago

      Namecheap has extra rules if you want to use an API (minimum money spent with them, minimum of domains managed with them etc.) — GoDaddy style.

      Keep that in mind, if you need an API (for DDNS or for obtaining wildcard TLS certificates) you’ll have to use a separate service for DNS.

      • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net
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        4 months ago

        You really should have separate services for registration, DNS and hosting. That way you’re not held hostage by a single provider.

        • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          Why should I post someone else for DNS records if namecheap is handling it just fine for my use case?

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        DDNS with Namecheap is as simple as hitting a URL with a /GET request from the IP you want it to point to. No limitations. No special requirements.

      • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I have a script running that uses the Namecheap API to automatically get wildcard certs from Let’s Encrypt. I didn’t pay a dime for this. Did something change?

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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          4 months ago

          Maybe you meet the conditions for it? It hasn’t been possible to access their API without meeting the conditions for at least a year now.

          You don’t pay directly for the API, the latest conditions AFAIR are 20+ domains and $50+ on account balance and $50+ spent in the last 2 years.

          They also want you to whitelist the IPs that access the DNS which makes it unusable for DynDNS, but at least they have a separate URL for that.

  • Joël de Bruijn@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Got a work related variant, a 3 letter domain we really liked was registered by a person asking a couple of hundred bucks or so. Which really was a good deal and we were more then happy to pay.

    Our IT department advised guiding the transfer themselves. Instead our marketing department went ahead anyway and just agreed to “you end your subscription and after that we register it” … instead of using transfer codes.

    In the minutes between, a bulk claimer snatched it away.

      • seang96@spgrn.com
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        4 months ago

        Honestly I believe it. I had a VP of sales / marketing overriding requirements making them more difficult from the CEO after getting screamed at by the CEO who wanted the product (bono project) to be quick and easy for initial release.

        He also ordered IT garbage for a site once (consumer PCs running Windows not server edition)

        And to top it all off went behind supervisors backs in engineering departments asking for daily spreadsheets trackong their time because "if you can go to the bathroom you have time for this.

        All leadership was toxic though like the CEO screaming at him lol.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    4 months ago

    After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal

    GoDaddy is known to do that.

    Technically, they’re not hiking the price. GoDaddy bought scalped it after it expired and then is re-selling it at an astronomically higher price. It’s one of the many, many reasons people hate them.

    I’m ashamed to say I still have a couple of domains with GD that I haven’t migrated yet. This post might just light a fire under me to get that done.

  • starshipwinepineapple@programming.dev
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    4 months ago

    tldr - lesson learned. buy a new domain and move over to it.

    but for those who want to learn something new - you are only renting your domains. If you fail to pay by the registration date then you generally get a grace period to pay more money to renew it. If you fail to pay before that period expires then the domain will be released. Some companies like godaddy will automatically buy the domain for another year (or more). But even if Godaddy doesn’t then it still goes up on a list of expiring domains and there are backorder services that will try to buy the domain or auction them off.

    So in the end it doesn’t really matter what registrar you use. If you do not pay, it goes back to a list where people can see it is expiring and then you’ll get some people who either want to legitimately use that domain or more likely they are wanting to try to sell it to you or someone else for more than they buy it for.

    And I saw someone mention file a complaint. I’m sorry to say that if you did not have money to renew the domain then you aren’t going to be able to do that either. This is called Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the fee is between $1500-4000 for 1 to 5 domains.. Additionally, just because you file a complaint does not mean the issue will be resolved favorably or timely. These complaints can last years, and there is no guarantee you will get the domain back.

    This is why you should always pay your domain rental fee. And if you don’t, then you need to either be willing to pay a ton of money to get it back or you will need to move on. Sorry its a tough lesson to learn but if you’re just a student then you probably weren’t using this to run a business or anything so in the end you are quite fortunate.

  • TedZanzibar@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    Make an offer of $0.01. Assuming the responses aren’t automated, every time they reject it, raise the offer by 1c. Keep doing it till you hit the $15 mark and then just stop. It could waste literal years of their time.

    • hactar42@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Reminds me of a guy I knew who kept getting letters for a $10 parking fine he got while at university. He waited until they spent more in postage than the fine before paying it.

      • deltapi@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        My last year of uni I was broke. The previous year the parking passes had red letters, that year purple. That was the only difference. The colour. I traced over all the letters of my previous parking pass with a blue sharpie and parked for free all year.

  • lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
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    4 months ago

    I have my dream domain. It was being squatted for a similar amount. I offered £100 and it was declined, I offered £250 and they replied to tell me the domain is easily worth the £2K, well sort after etc. I told them that this is my surname, and I’m not a corporation with unlimited funds and they can take the offer or leave it. 15 minutes later the offer was accepted. I was so happy. Still am chuffed about it.

  • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
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    4 months ago

    Aaahh capitalism. This is what business school graduates call “innovation” and “smart”.

    But seriously, I’m sorry that happened to you. It’s predatory, abusive, and wrong.

  • fellowmortal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    Don’t pay this! You just reinforce their predatory practices. How renewals at much higher prices are allowed - no clue!

    Something similar happened to a company I know - it expired and was immediately bought by domain squatters, when they found them they were told that it couldn’t be sold back because the squatter had paid $XXXX for and had big plans (I assume it was BS, just a premise to get paid - no site was ever put on the domain)

    Solution: they bought the .org version and bought the .com back a year later.

    edit:grammar

  • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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    4 months ago

    I simply don’t get why domain squatting is legal. On my ccTLD it is absolutely illegal meaning you have to forfeit the domain if you don’t use it anymore.

    • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Just because you don’t have a website up at [XYZ].com doesn’t mean you’re not using it. You could have a domain controller on the back end doing file services, or you could be using it for network auth, etc. Not all .coms exist for the purpose of putting up a website.

      • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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        4 months ago

        Neither do .dk domains, but in order to determine use the courts will have to be involved. I haven’t heard about a lot of those cases, but I’d guess you can prove use against the person who wants to take the domain. If I have a domain called firstnamelastname.dk it’d be pretty easy to show that I got a mail address at contact@firstnamelastname.dk that’s in use.

        • towerful@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          Other services will be reflected by active DNS records.

          If the only DNS record points to a “Buy this domain” webpage, I think it’s fair to argue that is misuse.
          Doubley so if it turns out many unrelated domains are owned by and point to the same webpage, and it’s just doing a js hostname thing to make it seem relevant to the current address

    • TCB13@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I believe most regulated ccTLDs (not the ones sold to the higher bigger) actually do that.

    • pop@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      I’ve been wanting a ccTLD domain that’s unused for a few years. The registrar suspended the domain (required contacts not updated) and put up a standard suspended notice, but doesn’t release the domain.

      I guess the owner is a domain squatter and keeps paying the bill, so the registrar keeps getting paid. Easy money

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      network solutions does this too, search a domain on their site, comeback a month and now they own it and will sell it to you of course. not sure if they still do,but I know for fact they did years back.

  • gencha@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    Buy a different domain. Let them pay for this one until the end of time.

  • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    This happened to me years ago (the .com of my full name). I kept checking in at expiry date for 3 years and they eventually let it expire, so I bought it back for normal price.

    • BinaryUnit@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      This ☝️it happened to me and to a close friend, if you are reselient and can wait it is possible to but it back at regular price

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Hopefully it’s not a common last name + a first name that suddenly became popular, could imagine it getting scooped by someone else.

      • lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
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        I tried to get a squatted .UK domain through this process. Nominet are the authority for these domains. After acknowledging the request to both parties, I am then asked to pay £100 to assign a mediator. I guess this puts off frivolous requests, but it put me off going further.

  • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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    Lesson learned, they regularly do this if you have a website that one of their crawlers hit as active. If you really care about it check in about a year later, chances are if you havent inquired within a year they’ll release the domain and you can pay normal sale price for it