Former owner

[actnow]

We receive a couple emails a week from people who say they were the former owner. And, "are you interested in selling the domain back to me"?

It looks like 70% of the time they were the former owner. But, what is interesting is that some were not. And, they want us to sell the domain to them at a small profit.

For the ones that are not the former owner. I can't tell if they are competitors of the former owner. Or, someone who just wants the name and figure we can not determine the former ownership.

Yes. Many of the times we do want to sell the domain. But, why try to "con" us? For a better price? I would say that most of the people requesting the return of a domain are outside of the U.S.

Does anyone else have any experience with this scam?

 

[INFORG]

I find that most are legitimately the previous owners, but I have had a few who seemed to be lying. With the new redemption period and all the chances people have to renew or re-activate, I have very little sympathy any more for previous owners.

I am finding most of the inquiries I get now from old owners are where they forgot to renew in time and didn't want to pay the $120-$150 reactivation fee - so they figured "I'll show them, I'll just wait until it gets deleted and register the name again" -Clueless to the fact that 1000's are scouring the lists for names and snapping them the second they drop. Then they email me wanting to graciously give me my reg fee back if I give them the name. Like I reg them for fun or as an altruistic venture.

I used to give a break to these people and sell marginal names for 2-5 times the reg fee if they had a good story. Now my minimum is $150 even for the crappiest names and full retail for the better ones or if they even mention the words stolen, hijacked, cybersquatter, thief, lawyer, UDRP, ICANN, trademark, illegal, etc. etc.

 

[URLtrader]

Originally posted by 2gajgops
I used to give a break to these people and sell marginal names for 2-5 times the reg fee if they had a good story. Now my minimum is $150 even for the crappiest names and full retail for the better ones or if they even mention the words stolen, hijacked, cybersquatter, thief, lawyer, UDRP, ICANN, trademark, illegal, etc. etc.

Agree with you 100%. That is the way to deal with such persons.

 

[whitelion]

YEah i agree. but cut them a little slack, put yourselves in the honest peoples shoes

 

[Togoodhlth]

Sometimes it's tough to tell who is being honest. I had a call today for hammocksusa.com. The caller new what was previously being sold at the site however his name was different than the previous registrants name. Since the site gets a fair amount of unique visitors per day and I have a site which sells hammocks I don't really want to part with it for the minimal offer made.
Of course if this is truly the previous registrant I will take substantially less than my asking price.

We'll see how it pans out.

 

[BobBob is verified member.]

Originally posted by 2gajgops
I used to give a break to these people and sell marginal names for 2-5 times the reg fee if they had a good story. Now my minimum is $150 even for the crappiest names and full retail for the better ones or if they even mention the words stolen, hijacked, cybersquatter, thief, lawyer, UDRP, ICANN, trademark, illegal, etc. etc.

Heh heh.. Been there done that. Except if they use these words, I usually start at $1000.

I usually have no sympathy for people who let their name expire.

-bob

 

[stuff]

Originally posted by 2gajgops

I used to give a break to these people and sell marginal names for 2-5 times the reg fee if they had a good story. Now my minimum is $150 even for the crappiest names and full retail for the better ones or if they even mention the words stolen, hijacked, cybersquatter, thief, lawyer, UDRP, ICANN, trademark, illegal, etc. etc.

My minimum starts at $250,