Stalking a dot com name

It will expire in less than a month

[weeks]

This is one area of the web (among others) I do not work with often.

My client is hot for this dot-com name that is about to expire. It's owned, I believe, by a kid on the other side of the planet who lost interest in this little website about a month after he started it. (All of his bio info is there for the world to see in WhoIs.) The name is suited for another field entirely.

So, what happens? It expires and it goes into "suspended" mode? What have we got to do get a "suspended" dot com? Or, is that not right? (I am also stalking a dot-com name that is labeled "suspended" right now. Just for grins, however, in this case.)

How would you recommend I proceed? (My client, without me knowing, contacted the owner and asked to buy it. They put a reasonable price on it, but then I think the kid thought my client was a scam.)

Thanks.

[bwnbwn]

weeks several things here it could be set up for auto renewal and will renew when it comes due. If not get it backordered and be in the bidding. I have a feeling it will get renewed since the owner was contacted and he/she sees intrest in the domnain. This is one reason I really don't like contacting the owner.
There is a 45 day grace period from suspended to release so get both of them backordered to get into the auction.

[terrellm]

It depends on the registrar (who the domain is registered with eg. Godaddy, Network Solutions, etc). Some registrars have special relationships with the auction houses where they send the expired domain names to auction ~35 days after expiration. All names are eventually deleted ~78 days after expiration (assuming they were not purchased in the earlier auction).

[weeks]

Thank you.

There is a 45-day grace period from suspended to release so get both of them backordered to get into the auction.

How do you recommend that I "backorder" the domain?

In this case, the registar is some lame firm that google says has lot and lots of unhappy customers.

Some registrars have special relationships with the auction houses where they send the expired domain names to auction ~35 days after expiration.

Really? Registars are auctioning the names with no owner?

[terrellm]

Really? Registars are auctioning the names with no owner?

When a name expires, the registrar gives the owner several weeks to renew. If it's not renewed, it will probably go to a partner auction assuming the registrar has a partnership with an auction house. Otherwise, the name will be deleted as normal.

Several examples include Network Solutions names going to NameJet, Register.com names going to SnapNames, and Godaddy names going to its own auction.

[weeks]

Just to make this a more useful thread, I've confirmed terrellm's info. It's still the wild west out there. Sometimes domain names expire, sometimes domain names are auctioned as he described.

On the face of it, this seems somewhat unfair. But, as I think about it, it's about as reasonable a way to handle it that you could configure with the current setup. I've learned that if you are Widget, Inc., you are likely to be able to get widget.com without having to pay ransom. But, otherwise, it's a what-is-it-worth-to-you deal.

thanks