Domain Acquisition:
Getting Hi-Jacked on the "High Seas of the Internet"
by Amber Antozak

Great! Just received notification that one of my backorder domains is available.

Excited as I am, I click on the link in my email to go visit the site. But in place of the standard acquisition fee ($60) or auction listing (if more than one interested buyer), there’s ONLY a "Buy Now" price? And the price tag? It’s $4,300.00 USD. When writing, I try to keep it down on exclamation points because I go crazy with them, but this deserves a trillion. This is ridiculous!!!

So. You have a killer domain name. You go to godaddy or wherever to register it, type it in the search field, then find out... it's NOT available? You look to see who owns it and when it's due to expire so you can be the first to re-register it.

You want to be the first to gobble it up, but it's simply not reasonable to think that you, a human, over an automated engine would be able to 1) sit and watch the domain night and day 2) be able to snatch it up the moment it hits the market again.

This is why we use "backorder" domain acquisition services. They do both 1 & 2 and succeed almost every time.

Now, I have used Snapnames.com domain backorder acquisition service, for over 5 years and have been relatively happy. They are a “watching program” that buys up domains that you tell them to automatically when it hits the market again.

The going price?

a) $60 flat fee or

b) if there is more than one interested "buyer", it goes straight to auction.

The auction is okay for the most part. It becomes a little shady when the auction never ends – there’s a tentative end time but the auction itself could last on forever as long as it continues to get bids every 15 mins. or so. It got me up to $2,200 on a domain before – of course I got it, but give me a break. That’s okay, we all certainly understand this is a business.

Where does the price of $4,300.00 USD come from?

Let me be very clear. This is as murky as it gets. I do not even see other interested buyers. I should have paid $60 and called it complete. They took my dream domain and literally hi-jacked it. This is where the world of internet becomes dangerous and I am livid! How in the world does this happen? People are greedy and this has become a big-bad-teethy-shark business.

Snapnames.com merged or was acquired by Moniker/oversee.net as of late. Even though their email notice of this was written in garble-de-gook, I’m keen enough to pick up on profound changes relatively quickly. There was no mention of this anywhere. I mean, how would they say…"If we see that your domain is valuable and you are the only one who wants it, we will resell it to you at what we think the going market price is.” That’s not business anymore folks, that’s cyber-squatting.

While we look for a new acquisition service, don't fret. We'll find one that will be even better than Snapnames.com!

Indezyn is here to help customers "navigate" the treacherous, sometimes downright dangerous, backwaters of the internet. After all, we never know what "lurks beneath" the seemingly calm water that we "surf" every day.