registering same domain name at same time

PTL

Hi,
I tried to register a .com site last weekend ... i put in my application on friday the 24th feb ... and it was available and free and said it was sucessful ... Then i get an email on monday the 27th from the irish hosting company which i wont name saying that someone has registered the domain before me. I checked who it was and they registered it on the 24th feb and are from USA ... and now is just used as a portal you know one of those directory sites even tho the domain name has to do with pets haha.

Now the domain isnt very common name its quiet unique and 13 letters long and to my knowledge has never been registered before so has been available since the internet began, so what is the odds of this happening on the same day. to me this sounds like the hosting company has has its security breached and that the people who registered it knew someone wanted it and then will try sell it for 5,000 back to me.

The hosting companys first email back said its very rare but does happen (never happened to them before i think) and gave me a coupon to use on another domain, then i asked them about security and they are checking into it but i doubt they will find anything ... I also done a full scan for any viruses or malware or spyware on my computers and found absolutly nothing.

Has this ever happened to anyone before or even has anyone ever even heard of it happening before?

CuLT

Man, that is weird. Sounds like there's treachery afoot somewhere along the route.

misterq

where did you check availability of the domain name? On their site only or somewhere else first?

PTL

I checked it on the hosting companys site, like there's 2-3 main irish hosting companys that we all know and its one of them ... But want to hear the wierd thing

When i got the first reply i even done a whois on it and it was the american company that now had it registered and all the others like .co.uk and .net etc were still all available except the .com which i went for ... but after posting this i desided to use the coupon that the hosting company refunded me and went to check out the alternatives .... AND ITS AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!!!

Im not joking with you'se here , this is really sus! I thought the minimum you could register was for 1year ... and its less then a week old and its available again ... i registered it like i did before and got the same emails saying that its gone through sucessfully but that means **** all now cause they done that last time so ill keep you'se updated on this wierd one!

elivsvonchiaing

This sounds like their query software screwed up. Imagine it checks several databases when you confirm and one of them had an unhandled error - they have serious egg on their face - can't guess who they are though

misterq

elvis has a good idea there. Domains don't just unregister over night. Working in the domain reg business myself I can tell you that there is very little chance of someone snapping up a domain just because you checked availability (on the site of a reputable co).

It was most likely a software foul up somewhere.

jmcc

PTL wrote:

I tried to register a .com site last weekend ... i put in my application on friday the 24th feb ... and it was available and free and said it was sucessful ...

The WHOIS can be up to 24 hours out of date so relying on it might be risky. The domain therefore might appear to be available while in reality it is already registered. That fact can becomes apparent when the hoster submits the registration to the registrar it is using.

Now the domain isnt very common name its quiet unique and 13 letters long and to my knowledge has never been registered before so has been available since the internet began

It is funny to see all these people who think that they know the history of domains. If you need to check the history, pm me for a link that will be useful.

so what is the odds of this happening on the same day.

It is actually quite common. I've seen domains that I was after get snapped up by these bottom feeders and then released after the five days. Actually a few of the domains were good ones.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

PTL wrote:

but after posting this i desided to use the coupon that the hosting company refunded me and went to check out the alternatives .... AND ITS AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!!!

{edit}Just reading back and see that you've registered it. It probably will go through ok this time. You might want to check the WHOIS to see if it is regged.{/edit}

Im not joking with you'se here , this is really sus!

No. What you've run across are the bottom feeders in the domain name game. They do this all the time with domains in com/net/org/biz/info.

I thought the minimum you could register was for 1year

Technically yes. But there is a nasty little provision that a domain registration can be cancelled within 5 days. So what these bottom feeders do is to register a domain and point it to a web page with Pay Per Click advertising on it. If the domain gets any hits and makes money, (enough to cover the $7 or so they paid for the domain) then they keep it. Otherwise they cancel the registration. The domain appears as available roughly 6 days after it was registered. There are operations like this that have become registrars purely to abuse the system and the scum in ICANN don't do a damned thing about it.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

elivsvonchiaing wrote:

This sounds like their query software screwed up.

I think that their software may have worked properly. For effective checking the software should also query the main nameservers to see if the domain is active in the zonefile. This can be a far more effective method of checking the existence or availability of a domain given that the WHOIS can be up to 24 hours out of synch.

Regards...jmcc