Great ending!!
Some registrars take a very hands off approach in these situations.
Once domain names are stolen, they are arguably no longer subject to the registration agreements and limitation of liability provisions on which the registrars rely. The registrars owe a duty of care to their customers not to allow their valuable assets to be stolen. They cannot be willfully blind to a theft.
Go Daddy also has a policy that they will only investigate hijacking complaints received within 10 days of an alleged hijacking, but not after. If you have domains with Go Daddy, you need to monitor them regularly. You really need to monitor your domains no matter where they are hosted.
I have a client in the unfortunate situation of having only discovered the theft of a six figure domain fifty five days after it was stolen. The hijacker left the DNS alone, so the client continued to receive PPC revenue. By the time he found out about the theft, it was past the 10-day window, although the domain was still in the hijacker's alias. Still hoping for a happy ending.
UPDATE:
Go Daddy restored the domain name. Many thanks to Go Daddy for doing the right thing.
