grabbing incredible domain by chance

domain .us best

[Clickstream]

Very strange experience tonight. I found a domain on Verio that they said was available. It's a .US

I would say that this would be in the top 30 domains for any site.

It's similar to "music.us"

But all the other registrars say it's taken.

Could I just be very lucky, or can they really mis-inform and bill my card and then say wooooops.

Thanks for your imput

[Webwork]

Sometimes there's a delay in updating the central registry for the TLD and you'll see this. When you go to register it the registration will fail. Once or twice I've been billed when there's been a "race to register" (the domain WAS available, but only for a few seconds as the buzzards were circling). In such cases your credit card it refunded.

[maximillianos]

I've had the same thing happen. Out of curiosity I stumbled across a domain that appeared to be available but no way it should be available. I registered for it, and the registration went through but I never got the domain nor was I charged. Just a bug in the system or a timing issue with the records database I guess.

[Jon_King]

>>I've had the same thing happen.
Ditto. I've actually bought an existing domain from Network Solutions. Of course I couldn't access it and the rigamarole to get a refund was more time consuming than it was worth. They are still sending notices for me to renew, go figure.

[nativenewyorker]

Clickstream,

If in doubt, you can check the Neustar Whois for .us domains [whois.us]. Neustar operates the registries for both .us and .biz TLDs. Their Whois database is updated in real time, unlike the .com and .net Whois databases run by Verisign, which is updated daily at roughly 11:30am GMT.

[Clickstream]

nativenewyorker,

yep, you had the simplest answer-- it was really wishful thinking. Don't register with them! that's stupid that they're doing things to people. Now either they credit me or i do a charge back with visa.

Of course whois is a "definative" source. I was praying that all the other registars had it wrong.

oh and the name of the domain.................
travel.us
how many thousands USD would that be worth? over 30k i think (-:

[gpmgroup]

Good names sometimes do become available. For instance just before christmas a whole group of states.us and cities.us were released en masse. Most of these were picked up within 30 minutes by two private individuals for the reg fee.

This was because the names had not be previously released. Names that have been registered are listed and well sorted by the professional drop catchers, so the chances of a manual personal registration are very very slim.

[MediaHound]

one of those was america.us