The unimaginable happened to me and I had the worst day of my life as a blogger last Wednesday. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it’s true. A skeeze company out and bought my .com domain from underneath me and now they’re holding it ransom. I wish I was kidding. Here’s what happened.
I purchased a .com domain through wordpress (who contracts with GoDaddy) last summer. Right before the year .com domain term was up I decided to go self-hosted and I contracted BlueHost for the job. I was referred to BlueHost by several well established bloggers that I trust. I liked that BlueHost offered one year free domain service for new customers. I assumed they would take over my .com domain registration for the next year.
BlueHost’s customer service line is located in the United States and corresponding with someone who seems to know what they’re talking about was refreshing. I talked to BlueHost customer services representatives several times via live chat and over the phone as they assisted me in transferring my domain from wordpress to their servers.
Or so I thought.
Apparently, I did not successfully transfer over my .com domain to BlueHost. I did point the DNS over to BlueHost but I did not complete the transfer with the EPP Authorization code from GoDaddy. I talked to BlueHost techs throughout the whole process and not once did anyone ever mention that I needed an EPP Authorization code. I somewhat blame BlueHost for the ambiguation. It is my opinion that they should have a step by step guide of transferring instructions. The average joe should be able to do this kind of stuff without having to pay out the nose for “tech” people.
Last Wednesday morning I logged onto my .com site to post my weekly wordless Wednesday only to find that my site redirected to a GoDaddy home page. I contacted BlueHost and after several thousand hours of emails, live chats, phone calls all between BlueHost, GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and LeaseDomains and myself I learned that indeed my .com domain had been purchased by someone else.
I learned that (without warning btw) my .com domain did not transfer to BlueHost and that it expired. After 45 days the domain went into an open auction. My .com was purchased by Wild West Domains who then sold it to LeaseDomains. LeaseDomains is a fake site with fake phone numbers. I called every number listed on their site and found that most of them were personal cell phone numbers that no one answered. I got a hold of one person and he quickly told me the best way to contact them was via email. LeaseDomains business is buying expired domains and holding them ransom. After several trillion email and phone call attempts to contact them I finally received this email:
Which is gross and made me feel ill. So I responded with my highest offer and then after no response I emailed them again:
Then I received this last and latest correspondence with them:
Which literally made me sick to my stomach. Ransom. For a personal website of MY NAME. No one else is going to purchase this domain. How many Desiree Eaglin’s do you know? Like, really?
I responded:
And that is that.
I asked around on facebook and I started receiving tons of horror stories from peers this has also happened to. One person was held ransom for their domain in the amount of $18,000 and another for $32,000. Insane. INSANE.
During my last conversation with BlueHost, I asked why they didn’t assist more or make me aware of the fact that my domain did not sucessfully transfer. They said that they are able to host a domain without owning the domain and that’s what must have happened. Sounds like bullshit right? I thought so too. If I expressively asked for help to transfer my domain and I spent hours of my time talking to customer service and tech representatives why wouldn’t I want my domain transferred?
I am not the type of person to blame other people and I almost always take on the responsibility, even if it wasn’t my fault. However, in this case I blame everyone else. I blame BlueHost for not helping more, I blame GoDaddy for not notifying me before the .com domain expired and I certainly blame LeaseDomains for being so skeezy. I don’t blame myself at all since I thought I was doing everything correctly.
As the gravity of the .com domain situation settled in I was more and more devestated. Of course I can rebuild but what a pain in the ass. I have to go back to all of my old posts and fix the photographs, I have to go back to all of the sites I’ve contributed to and ask for my link to be updated. However, I will not let the ransom skeezes get me down. I’ll bounce back.
Here’s my advice to you, fellow blogger. When you’re attempting to transfer your domain to another server make sure you expressively tell them you want your old domain transferred. Then tell them again. Then again, then tell them my story. Then tell them again. Then make sure you point the DNS and get the EPP Authorization code. Then call the new server again and get a confirmation that your domain transferred. Then tell them again.
That is a terrible thing to do! I knew that “companies” do that but just like you said who else would buy that domain?? When I went to get my domain .com was taken and not being used. I knew they would want to sell it to me so I just choose the .net I’m sorry you had to go through all that, I still can’t believe “companies” or people would do such a thing.
It’s a horrible way to make a living.
So sorry this happened to you! Sucks! Make sure you do not send them any more traffic. Something like this happened to me with brigitta.net. I owned it since the early 90’s and let it lapse by accident a few years ago, because I thought it was on auto-renew with Enom and I forgot that Discover card changed my card # and even though they said they would notify all the vendors I had auto-pay with, I guess they forgot Enom. So some sleazy company owns brigitta.net. If it makes you feel better, I feel your pain!
They now have that .com domain redirected to a dumb site. It’s gross out there with what people will do. This site will benefit from my residual hits and that makes me sick to my stomach.
I’m glad we have each other. xo
So sorry you’ve had to experience all this stress & frustration ! It’s amazing what the “skeez” will do these days to rip off the “little people”….it’s sad to think that there are some who WILL pay the ransom ! Can you turn them over to Better Business Bureau ?
Someone else suggested checking copyright too. I should get my name copyrighted!
what a nightmare! My blog hardly makes any money either, but its still something I created, and slowly built a reputation. I just received a e-mail recently reminding me to renew my domain. Now I’m frantically searching for that e-mail. Sorry again to hear your story!
Buy the .com, .org and .net versions too. Better safe than sorry.
I am so sorry that this happened to you. I can’t believe that they would not give you back your domain, but more importantly – what are their plans for using it?? It’s not like they can clone you.
As of right now that .com domain is being redirected to another site. So that site is benefiting from that traffic. Gross.
And that is why I pay a techy person through the nose and out the ass for this stuff, because half of what you just said is jibberish to me.
I will follow you to any domain you go.
I was pretty impressed that I was able to do this on my own. When I thought I had done it that is. Ugh. xo
THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME TOO ON SATURDAY. Mine is being held for $1,000. After I emailed the guy back asking for a copy of the receipt for my lawyer and I, I never heard from him again.
IT WAS GO DADDY TOO!!! I had NO idea it was going to auction or even that auctions happened.
Here is my story http://little-yayas.com/2012/08/bad-lesson-learned-dont-lose-your-domain-get-extorted.html
ERRRR this is horrible. I can’t believe it is happening to so many people.
Great post. We did have similar situations. So sickening!
So sorry, Desiree. What a nightmare! But kudos for you for pulling yourself together and moving forward. Hugs!
I cannot believe this happened! I’m having mini panic attacks since I moved to a self-hosted blog about 10 months ago. Uggg. Sorry about everything. Hang in there!
This makes me sick to my stomach. How can people be so horrible? So if I do buy a domain, who should I purchase it from? Obviously Go Daddy can’t be trusted. I am totally freaked out right now.
I think GoDaddy would still be an ok server to use to purchase domains. As long as you sign up for auto-renewal and you keep in your records when your contract is up. You just can’t trust them to remind you, that’s for sure.
This also makes me sick to my stomach. I’m so so sorry…I wish BlueHost/GoDaddy had done more for you…I’m about to make sure I have my ducks in a row
Yes, sign up for auto renewals and make sure you buy all the domains you can. The .com, .org. .net and whatever else!
Does GoDaddy not send you an email saying that your domain’s about to expire? I was thinking of switching to them, but it could be a problem if I didn’t receive reminder emails.
I did receive one or two renewal emails from godaddy before I contracted BlueHost. I received none after I thought I transferred to Bluehost. To be quite honest, the tech representative at GoDaddy was the most helpful to me that day. He suggested I purchase this DesireeEaglin.net domain and transfer my blog onto it. Before he told me that, I didn’t even know that was possible and I thought all was lost.
Oh. My. GOD!!! What a nightmare!!! I am so sorry Desiree! Some people are seriously sick and have way too much time on their hands. I really do wish there was something there was something I could do to help. xo
Thank you Kimberly for saying that, truly.
I’m so sorry this happened to you, but I have nothing but golden experiences with Bluehost. My husband literally deleted my entire blog one day – GONE! He called Bluehost and they had it back up in less than an hour. Honestly, I would never switch from them because they have treated us so well. But I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience.
BlueHost did put my blog onto the new .net domain for me. They are very helpful on the phone and seem to know what they are talking about. But I do feel they should have done a better job while helping me transfer my .com domain. Will I leave? I’m not sure, we’ll have to wait and see.
Dear heavens. What a JERK!! I mean really. How many ‘Desiree Eaglins’ are there in the world that would even want your domain? Bad bad on their part.
I know! But you know what I’ve come to realize is that they’ve now contracted it with other skeezy sites that are benefiting from my traffic.
Ugh, that sucks. And it happens all the time.
These “domainers”, as they call themselves, often prey on people’s ignorance. It’s BIG business and some of them make quite a bit of money doing what they do. They can take a loss on a lot of domains because eventually they will hit big and score a domain that gets a lot of traffic (= ad revenue) or that someone will pay out-the-nose to get back. If no one buys the domain from them and they don’t make money off the residual traffic the domain gets they will sometimes drop it in a year or 2. Worth keeping on eye on. Oh and if something is trademarked you can usually compel them to give it back to you for nearly free.
My suggestion when talking to hosts and what not is to use the terminology “transfer my domain registration”. Registration being the keyword. Transfer my site usually refers to hosting, transfer my domain can be ambiguous, though a good customer service should ask you to clarify.
And then double check everything!!
That’s very good advice Nichole, thank you.
I’m so shocked reading this !