Valid purpose for Nominet dispute?

S0litaire

Plxply wrote: »

That isn't supply and demand as the market buyers aren't willing to pay it hence why it hasn't been sold since 2006 which is when they aquired the domain (I think I'm the only one and it has been like that for years). However I will be willing to pay the £12 with GoDaddy to see if I can get the domain before they renew it

Try this GoDaddy service: Domain Alert

It will try and buy it as soon as it lapses, note it might turn into an auction if the people who already have it don't re-register it before it lapses.

irrelevant

On the other side of the coin, I had a .co.uk domain name that I got for free from "freenetname" around ten years ago, back in the days of dial-up (as long as you used them for your internet, they maintained it for you.) After they expired it, as previous owner I got it back from nominet and then kept it up, paying the nominal renewal fees each year, despite not using it for anything, simply because it was a nice two-word domain that could be a nice business opportunity at some point, and I did initially register it intending to make use of it.

Couple of years ago, out of the blue, I got an email from somebody wanting to buy it. Turned out they were from a major domain name dealer, and after a bit of bargaining, I sold it for over £4K ! It now belongs to a leading motoring magazine !

Plxply

irrelevant wrote: »

Couple of years ago, out of the blue, I got an email from somebody wanting to buy it. Turned out they were from a major domain name dealer, and after a bit of bargaining, I sold it for over £4K ! It now belongs to a leading motoring magazine !

Do you mind if I borrow £500 to get my own domain?

Mr_Oink

irrelevant wrote: »

Turned out they were from a major domain name dealer, and after a bit of bargaining, I sold it for over £4K ! It now belongs to a leading motoring magazine !

Nice one :-)

I remember Freenetname well. If you wanted to move the domain you got for free they used to charge something like £80 AFAIR.

Domain names are fair game and trading them is just part of the digital economy. It's perfectly legal to buy any name you can get your hands on and make a profit from it if you so wish. It can be an irritation, but for any professional business (as opposed to the wannabe bedroom hobby type sites) it's something that just happens. I seem to remember 'boots' struggled to get their .com/co.uk and BT Openreach is called Openreach because out of their choice of names, it was the best one with a spare domain name. I did laugh at Christmas when Halfords went down because they forgot to renew their domain name, but thankfully - due to the cooling off periods, it's nearly impossible to just guzump a UK domain name now {which is good news for genuine owners, not such good news for those trying to get the name out of the hands of cyber-squatters}

As a kind of side note I have observed *some* registration companies (and I won't name them) seem to have ties with cyber- squatters. I noted (and I'm sure others have seen the phenomena) that if you do an availability check with certain registration providers and don't buy the domain name, it randomly gets bought a few hours later by said cyber-squatters.

nzseries1

I bought quite a generic domain name in New Zealand back in 2005 or so. I checked out the rules regarding this sort of thing, and although these apply to New Zealand, I'm sure it's probably similar here too.

The rule was that with a generic domain name (which I'm almost certain <lastname>.co.uk would be), unless the domain was set up as a spoof of a genuine company trading under that name, then you don't have a case to bring it to the domain disputes tribunal.

I bought the domain in question (g2.co.nz) for $15 back in the day, and I've since had offers of circa $500 by a couple of companies, but I've decided to keep it.

One of those companies then went on to buy g2.net.nz, but must not have told their marketing department as I get lots of emails for them at my g2.co.nz email address! Yes, I did forward their emails to them for about a year or so, but after a while I just got sick of it as they obviously made no effort to correct the situation.

Plxply

nzseries1 wrote: »

One of those companies then went on to buy g2.net.nz, but must not have told their marketing department as I get lots of emails for them at my g2.co.nz email address! Yes, I did forward their emails to them for about a year or so, but after a while I just got sick of it as they obviously made no effort to correct the situation.

There's an easy solution to that, start charging per email forwarded. I'm sure they will quickly correct the mistake plus you could get a little bit of money

chunter

WhiteChristmas wrote: »

The problem is that domain names are, by their very nature, unique. That makes certain ones more valuable than others and some more desirable to certain individuals or companies than others.

It's like personalised number plates. Do you think the companies who deal in them are "squatting"?

Just think of a variation and use that. Even common names still have domains available if you're creative.

MrSmith.me.uk is available, for example.

ah. common sense strikes.

patman99

Reminds me of the lady who invested several thousand pounds registering all the villages with parish councils in a vain attempt to sell the site on to them at a nice profit. Unfortuanatley, when it came to my village, she duly registered 'www.copfordparishcouncil.co.uk' .net, .org, .org.uk etc., then did the same with the next-door village of Easthorpe. Now, being that both villages form one Parish Council, and our county council was offering free webhosting to Parish Councils, we did not take-up her offer. Funnily enough, neither did Gt Dunmow, Birch, Gt Bentley etc.

Anyway, back to the OP, why not append an initial to the name?. For example, smithj.co.uk or jsmith.co.uk?.

zee_2

Wake up ,buying and selling domains has been big business for many years ,I started in 2004 , you should learn facts before starting to squellike a naughty kid .
look up ...http://dnjournal.com/......
and...http://acorndomains.co.uk/

Plxply

zee wrote: »

Wake up ,buying and selling domains has been big business for many years ,I started in 2004 , you should learn facts before starting to squellike a naughty kid .
look up ...http://dnjournal.com/......
and...http://acorndomains.co.uk/

You need to learn how to spell correctly and punctuate within the rules of the English language before posting in an English speaking forum.

Anyway, back to the OP, why not append an initial to the name?. For example, smithj.co.uk or jsmith.co.uk?.

I think I shall wait to see if I'm able to get the domain before they renew, else I will most likely go with what you've suggested.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions everyone, apart from the one guy who is hopefully just having a bad day.