Grace period offers - to registrar or previous owner?

[tedster]

If a domain has expired and is in the grace period - and the registrar has a link to "make anonymous offer" - is that offer being made to the previous owner, or the registrar?

This is for register.com, and their WhoIs seems to give the same ouput whether a domain was just purchased or expired 45 days ago. I would hate to tip off the previous owner that they should renew!

[jomaxx]

No, you want a service like SnapNames or the version GoDaddy runs. I suspect "make an offer" will go to the current owner because AFAIK the registrar won't control the name after it expires anyway.

[tedster]

That was my initial thought - just use SnapNames and bear the tension of this grace period. Thing is that this owner turned down a very hearty offer from us 8 months ago. And now, shhhhhh, they've allowed it expire.

But I didn't want to ignore chance to grab it earlier, if possible.

[jomaxx]

I scooped up a domain I had my eye on recently, via GoDaddy. It was a pretty good catch, but just unobvious enough that there may have been nobody else watching it.

The waiting was excruciating. It took about 2 months after the domain initially expired.

[tedster]

On the phone Register told us 80 days (even though the info on their website says 30 days). Danged technology - can't even believe what your read these days!

[jomaxx]

If the email contact is correct then most likely they will renew it sooner or later. You get a lot of warnings before they release the domain.

From researching the company who owned the domain I picked up, it looked like the email address they had registered was no longer active. The notifications were probably all being blackholed, LOL. It's not like they were doing anything with the domain anyway.