All Forces

Last week I received a frantic call from a friend whose web address had expired six months ago. The domain was bought by someone in Cuba and turned into a porn ad web page. My friend’s company gave up on it and decided to get a new web address and a new stationary to go with it. But panic broke loose as they are about to close huge deal with a client (a city) and they mistakingly sent out a mass mailing with their old stationary. Needless to say, they got a call from a very ticked off client. This is where I came into the picture. To save the day by buying back the web address. But how do you buy a domain from shady people without getting burned?

How domains work
A web site address (a.k.a. domain or url) can be registered by individuals or corporations for a period of time in increments of years. During this time, the domain belongs to the administrator specified in the WHOIS database. He may choose to link it to a server for hosting a website, redirect it to another website or simply not do anything with it (park it). While it’s taken, the domain is not available for purchase but it can be transfered to a new owner if a deal is struck between a buyer and the owner.

Domain Disputes
Do you have legal ownership to a domain? According to ICANN you might have a basis to dispute a domain if:

1. your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
2. you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
3. your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

In my case, the company name was not trademarked or registered but I still could have pursued a dispute case because the name of the url is the same as the company name. But time was of the essence, submitting the case to a committee would have certainly taken more than a week I suspect. So I set out to purchase the domain.

Step 1: Contact the owner by all means available
Start by finding out who is it registered to. You can find this in the WHOIS Database at Network Solutions or almost any Domain Registrar. The WHOIS database will show you who the administrative, technical and billing contacts are for that domain as well as the date that it was registered and the expiration date. In my case, the domain was registered to a company in Cuba. Yes it does sound suspicious, and it was. It seemed to be a fake record because both phone and email were bogus. I ended up contacting the domain registrar that was used when the domain was purchased. They quickly sent me the correct email to contact the domain owner, which now made suspicious of the registrar.

Step 2: Agree to a price
People buy and sell domains in many levels and for many reasons. Some are greedy and hard to deal with but sometimes you just have no choice because you are the one that NEEDS the domain and they are the ones who have it. I need to show I was making a serious offer without making it seem like I was desperate even though I was. Since there was no starting price listed, I just sent the following email(from a new gmail address just in case it’s a spammer too) because I was in no position to bargain, counter offer or be discarded as not a serious buyer.

Hello,
I understand you registered the domain xxxxxx.com. I would like to purchase it.
What would the price be and how soon could we do it?

The owner of the domain responded with a $750 price tag that I quickly agreed to. That wasn’t so bad. Don’t get me wrong, $750 is a pretty penny considering they cost $8 normally, but the rule of supply on demand applies painfully here and I was glad the price was set quickly because time was of the essence.

Step 3: Transfer Safely
So how do you buy safely when you know you might be dealing with shady people? You use an escrow company to secure both parties during the transaction. The way an online escrow works is that everything is done through them. Escrow.com charges a percentage of the transaction. It cost $47 for a $750 domain transfer. The fees can be calculated here.

The escrow.com process

1. Trsancion Initiates
2. Both Both parties accept Terms
3. Buyers pays
4. Escrow confirms payment
5. Seller is prompted that payment was made
6. Sellers transfers domain
7. Buyer confirms transfer was made
8. Seller gets paid by Escrow.com

This is a great system because each step needs to be completed before jumping to the next one. Both parties are protected from fraud and there is a legal mediator between them. I was able to get the domain back in seven days, a process that could have taken less if both parties did their steps promptly. To transfer the domain, the seller updated the records with my info and let me gain access to the domain registrar to do any further changes like DNS servers etc. Overall, dealing with escrow.com was a pleasure and I was relieved knowing I would not get burned by doing this transaction. At least, not easily.