SNAFU Silences Flack’s Revenge for Two Weeks

I'm back, after a couple of anxious weeks in which I lost my domain, fought to get it back, briefly considered abandoning the whole thing, and then finally did get it back as evidenced by this post.

I won't bore you with too many of the details.  In brief, my Domain name registrar GoDaddy had some incorrect information in my profile (some but not all of which was my fault) resulting in the fact that I never got several email notifications that the registration for FlacksRevenge.com was expiring.

I called them in a panic when I realized that the site was down, thinking that there was some small glitch that could easily be corrected by providing updated credit card information.  No such luck, apparently the domain name was sold off and I no longer had any rights to it.

They claim they sent me numerous emails, which I suppose they might have although I did not get these.  You would think they would have some way to escalate and perhaps pick up the phone before pulling the rug out from under an obviously active site.   That is apparently not part of their procedures, which I learned by chatting with a very helpful person named Todd in the President's office of GoDaddy.   So it is a mystery to me why they collect phone numbers in their account profiles in the first place.

As the realization that I was royally hosed settled in, I went through the stages of grief that Kübler-Ross described (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), not unlike what one goes through when someone that is close dies.  OK, so it is not TechCrunch, but I have spent a lot of time and effort building this blog.

"It's all so fragile!" remarked Anne Giles Clelland, blogger at Handshake 2.0, when I told her about my situation.  Indeed it is.

Then, a Zen sense of detachment set in.  Certainly, I thought, there are many other blog concepts I could launch.  And: I will now have lots more free time!  But, no, I did not want to abandon ship, not on terms dictated by someone else.

After threatening GoDaddy with a lawsuit, which did not seem to make much of an impression, I took Todd up on his advice and emailed the new domain name owner. 

A number of contentious emails back and forth later, the new owner agreed to sell it back to me for a number that was much higher than he or I initially paid – in the hundreds of dollars – because he is "such a nice guy."

Over the course of my various conversations it became clear to me that the new owner  – someone in Israel – acquired the name in an auction after my rights to it expired.  He claims he had plans for the domain.  At the end of all this I still don't know whether there is some evil partnership between registrars like GoDaddy and people who hold accidentally expired domains for ransom – or if everyone was operating with the best of intentions.

After a Mexican standoff (I refused to just send funds via PayPal and take it on good faith that he would revert the site), we agreed to use Escrow.com, which has an option specifically for domain name transfers and worked very well for the purpose.

Anyway, I am back, sorry for the hiccup