Not in my experience. Earlier this year, well in advance of a domain expiring, I knew it would be coming up for renewal and felt in all likelihood the registered owners would be dropping it. I went directly to their registrar - which also happened to be GoDaddy - and checked to see if it was available for backordering.
Sure enough it was. And 'assuming' that since the domain was registered with them, GoDaddy would be the first shot to grab it. I paid 18 bucks for the backorder and monitoring and waited. A few months later the domain expired as expected, then I started getting the 'domain monitoring' emails from GoDaddy.
I received notice of the 'Redemption Period' for the first 30 days, then pending, then pending delete, for another (almost) 3 months. Then 'poof' - it was grabbed by another company best known for their worthless link pages.
There may be some people who have actually gotten a backordered domain, but I'm not wasting another nickel on them. The only reason I was interested in this particular domain is (several years ago) they had an audience that closely matched one of my sites.
Since the control of a domain (when they want to make it available to the public) is with the specific registrar, it seems unethical (at the very least) to be selling multiple backorders on the same domain.
Zipper, hopefully others here can provide more hopeful input, but my experience is if you go through the regular backorder channels, it is a waste of time.
Steve
I guess that's why most preffer auctions rather than an anonymous backdoor stealth process. I don't like the idea of backordering either, specially not the way it's currently executed. If I could get to know status changes of a domain, I could do pretty much same thing these services do.
GoDaddy offers a domain alert service for 1.95 bucks. Is this useful or is there any other efficient way to monitor changes. Also, does every domain stay in pending delete status for 3 months?
As I recall, they sent out a standard email stating 'No Change' every Sunday night (for several months), and then if there is an interim status change anytime throughout each week, they send an email confirming this change (expired, redemption period, pending delete, etc), and a link to get into the detailed progress of the change. The problem is there is no indication anywhere in the process who is 'in the front of the line' to get the domain until the very end when the transfer is finished to the new registrant.
After the initial expiration, out of curiousity, I went to a few other registrars to see if the same domain could be backordered. They all said the same domain was available for backorder. Since I had an early backorder with the registrar holding the domain, I still felt comfortable.
GoDaddy included a 'guarantee' that if you don't get the expired domain, you can then go after another one without paying any more fees. Since I won't have enough lifetimes to ever expect to grab one of their expired domains, it's worth the 18 bucks to learn what all these guys are doing.
This was a domain that first registered in 1996. I would guess that after many people realized it had initially expired, a handfull of registrars 'sold' the same domain 100 times.
Not a bad business. ;)
Steve
oh, it's the domain alert service (monitoring) that cost 1.95. the 18 is for the entire backordering (transfer & monitoring as u said).
P.S: are you sure "pending delete" lasted for 3 months? As far as I can remember it only lasts for a week or so. I seem to have lost the link I got it from.
No, there were more than just 'pending delete,' I have to go back to my email archives on another machine to see what all the particular nuances were. There were probably a half-dozen specific changes between the initial 'expired' to 'transfered.' At the time I backordered it, I recall learning that the length of time varied considerably between different registrars.
Of course, in the end, none of the interim changes matters. If different registrars are still allowed to sell a backorder on the same domain, then whoever has the inside track is going to be the winner.
Zipper, hopefully the process has improved. Let us know in 3 months how it went.
Good luck!
Steve
