Last week an auction started for the domain name Glue.com.
The domain name that was in Pending Delete Status since January went into auction on Monday of last week, February 4th and immediately had a high bid of $5,265
Through MostWantedDomains.com, I placed what was then a high bid of $20,000 which was quickly exceed.
The last bid I saw on this domain was $22,000 and the auction was scheduled to end on February 7th at 3:15
Sometime between the 6th and 7th the domain name disappeared from the bidding screen.
I reached out to SnapNames.com to see what happened to the domain auction, knowing that they were at Webfest I didn’t expect any answer until today but also didn’t expect the answer I got.
“”Dear Snapnames Customer,
Thank you for your interest in glue.com.
We are sorry, but glue.com is no longer available.
The domain name is registered with MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, INC., which is one of Snapnames Priority Partners.
This name entered our auction system by mistake, and we have had to cancel the auction because of this.
We understand that cancelling the auction at the last minute is very disappointing and we apologize for the inconvenience. We very much appreciate your business.
Best Regards,
Snapnames Support””
Well as we all know Moniker.com is not just another SnapNames.com partner but is owned by the same parent company.
Looking at DomainTools.com I see that the domain name status went into Pending Delete on January 12th 2013:
“”
| Domain: | glue.com – Whois History |
| Cache Date: | 2013-01-12 |
| Registrar: | MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, INC. |
| Server: | whois.moniker.com |
| Created: | 1995-11-25 |
| Updated: | 2013-01-11 |
| Expires: | 2013-12-31 |
| Reverse Whois: | Click on an email address we found in this whois record to see which other domains the registrant is associated with: support@moniker.com |
Domain Name: GLUE.COM
Status: EXPIRED - PENDING DELETE
Contact: support@moniker.com
<a href="http://www.moniker.com/renew-expired-domains.jsp?domain=GLUE.COM" target="pending_delete">Renew Now</a>
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Today the domain name has the same whois history as it had prior to going into pending delete.
As we know once a domain name goes into pending delete the domain holder is not able without a court order to renew or otherwise stop the domain name from dropping.
Considering this is an unusually high valued domain to simply drop, and the domain name was with the largest registrar partner of SnapNames.com and owned by the same parent company, if there was a mistake made by the registrar it should have been caught much earlier in the process and certainly before bidding was well underway.
It appears somehow Moniker made a mistake placing the domain into pending delete.
Of course notice about the cancellation of the auction should have went out the same day the auction was cancelled, not days later and after the inquiry of TheDomains.com
no. the domains was on renew grace period. moniker erroneously marks their expired domains as pending delete. the domain belonged/belongs to a domainer that I guess had something bad happened to him since he is letting to drop his portfolio of several thousands of domains.
what probably happened is that Moniker snatched the domain. it is good that you noticed that MHB since as one of the big domainers you could try to push some action into this unfair domain highjacks made by the registrars. they have almost 0 (zero) risk and unlimited profit potential.
the controlling domain “amosely.com” is in redemption period.
In the case of Glue.com, simply stated the registrant made a mistake that caused this domain to go to auction. The domain is now back in the original registrant’s account. All bidders have been notified as of today. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
Michele Van Tilborg
Moniker & SnapNames
Any domain that is in your “pending deactivation” in your moniker acct will show “pending delete” in the whois. However this pendingDelete isn’t from the registry, it is put directly in the whois record from Moniker. If you want the correct .com/.net status you should check whois with verisign directly, which will only give you status, the registrar to go to for the thin whois referral, and the nameservers.
Registrars are sorta supposed to just provide contact info in their part of the whois but they all offer all sorts of additional information that they can put in anything they choose as it would seem, including a status line with their own status code which could happen to be very confusing.
registrars are bound to show some mandatory information in their whois but often they do what they want because ICANN does a loose enforcement, as usual.
some of that information, like expiration dates, are known only by the registrar which can renew a domain to offer a renew grace period for owners and thus knows if a domain is truly expired or just in the renew grace period. at the end of that period they can let the domain enter in redemption period and ask the registry for their money back.
in the case of the domain status there is no rule to follow and registrars can do (again) what they want. moniker could show a more accurate status but why would they want to give some more insight to what is happening when they can do what they want and mislead… information = money.
we will monitor this case of glue.com to see how the story develops.
Michelle I don’t understand this part
“”In the case of Glue.com, simply stated the registrant made a mistake that caused this domain to go to auction. “”
You make it sound like the domain holder somehow accidently pushed the domain to an auction.
That might make sense but the domain was in pending delete status and the auction already well underway.
Doesn’t an owner have to acknowledge a request to send the domain to an auction?
It wasnt in real pending delete status. Just “moniker pending delete status”. It’s different.
After “moniker pending delete” has passed begins the “redemption period” then after that the real “pending delete”.
JP
even so is it fair for Snap to state:
“”the registrant made a mistake that caused this domain to go to auction”.
What would be not paying the renewal fees?
What if the auction concluded?
It would have been better if they just said “due to an error”. They really shouldn’t go pointing fingers or going all TMI.
I have often wondered about pre-release names won in Snap if they can be later recalled because they never even went through rgp. For example at NJ pre-release names get auction locked for 45 days just in case the original registrant calls it back.
I also recently started monitoring in snap the domains I let drop. As soon as they go to pending deactvation in my Moniker acct they show up in snap. Seems like they have to be expired about a week for this. Then they stay in pending deactivation in my acct until they finish not selling in Snap. I wonder if as soon as they get a bid in snap I can no longer “save” them in my moniker pending deactivation list? If that’s the case then anyone could easily cancel a snap auction by simply renewing the name from pending deactivation.
“In the case of Glue.com, simply stated the registrant made a mistake that caused this domain to go to auction” is obviously bogus. i get that exact line of reply from netsol and enom when they screw up things 🙂
the owner/registrant did not made any mistake. in fact, the domain expired and enter in the expired auction. if the owner made any mistake is making it in all his portfolio – several thousand domains.
i see a great story in the making 🙂
@ jp, same with all registrars except with the crazy godaddy. the domains are in renew grace period after which they go to auction if there are any backorders. at that time, the previous owner can recover the domain in very special cases and i rarely see that happen unless you are a big client. if no backorder is put on snapnames the domain enters redemption period.
all of this, off course, if the domain is not a premium one – like this one – in which case you see the registrars happily snagging it out of market and placing it with their warehouse’s branch and in the way showing the big finger to ICANN and their “extenuating circumstances”
They simply stole the name. Too much power in the hands of unethical, immoral thieves.
…. I should add that Michael is very composed and restrained about the incident. I can’t say that I would react in a similar fashion. I’d have to let the dogs out.
Please excuse the double post.
will be interesting to watch what they do about the domain amosely.com… since the admin for that whole portfolio is legal@amosely.com and amosely.com is in the same death spiral that glue.com was.
Had the actual Registrant been responsible for the 11th hour revival of glue.com, you’d think they would also protect the one domain that all the others are keyed to, right?
@cartoonz, the owner also has been letting expire several other domains so the idea that he has renewed the domain after the deadline “does not compute” 🙂
note that amosely.com entered the redemption period while glue.com did not (because of the backorders of us all, lol)