Is this genuine luck ?

[oneill33]

Hello,
I have more domains with GoDaddy, none of them used, and one of which is made of two words with a dash ("-") between them.
Yes, its a good name.

This domain expired 4 days ago, and said to my self I dont need it so I'll let it go, but today I received an email from a German email address, calling me by name and saying they've noticed it on WHOIS. Didnt they notice also the domanin expired ?

I'm just wondering if this is genuine offer or some third party is persuading me to renew this domain ?!

What do you think and whats your experience with this ?

thanks!

[janharders]

did you search for parts of the email to see wether anybody else received similar emails and blogged about it?

Generally: even if they noticed it might expire, maybe they just want to make sure to get it and not be beaten by some domain sniper. is it a german freemail-adress? while that wouldn't say it's a scam of some sort (I know one guy who does serious business and still uses a freemail), it's an alarm sign. That aside, germans are known to do weird things, trust me, I'd know.

[oneill33]

thanks for suggestion!

to make it public the email was received from the website example.com, only that the email comes from @example.at The .at domain forwards to same .com domain.

[edited by: buckworks at 3:02 am (utc) on May 1, 2009]
[edit reason] Removed specifics [/edit]

[janharders]

while .at is austria (and they really care not to be called germans, while germans would politely ask for whatever language those people speak not to be called german), it looks legit at first look. Did they offer an unreasonable high price or was it just the time of their inquiry that sounded the alarm?
I seriously doubt that godaddy (who else would profit from a renewal?) would employ a small austrian company to fake interest in domains.
In any answer, make sure to state their academic / job title if they have (and mentioned) any ... they _really_ care for that stuff.

[oneill33]

that was cute, my friend! You see, we are alike investigators here, cause in the first email, the person sais shes German, while you reveal the .at is Austria.
Then to make it more suspicious, the second email after my response comes from an English man who pretends his wife is same nationality as I am. (nationality related with the domain keyword).

I giggled a lot with this situation!

Anyway, this one domain is part of a suite of domanis (the others with no dash) which was my plan to start a pan European venture business, including an incorporated business name. I can propose to sell the whole business if they want, cause obviously they thought about the same thing.