“Dan.com stole my domain in under 24 hours.”
This inaccurate claim is part of a recent review of Dan.com, a platform designed for domain owners to sell their assets on. The reviewer asserts that Dan.com is part of a group of “cybersquatters” that steal domain names – a completely false claim.
Note: Dan is a premium sponsor of DomainGang; this is an honest, independent analysis without their involvement.
Domain investors with even the basic knowledge of how the domain deletion cycle works already know: platforms such as Dan.com require proof of ownership to list domains for sale. In this case, the review of Dan.com was left by someone who did not renew their domain, failing to do so during the course of more than 30 days.
Losing one’s domain overnight due to expiration is not possible, as the Registrar submits multiple renewal notices. Ignore these notices and you lose the domain, just as not paying your mortgage will send the house to foreclosure.
Without knowing the exact domain name in question we can’t assess how it was captured past its expiration and deletion. It could have been via a drop-catching service, such as DropCatch. Once there, bidders openly place their best bid to acquire an asset that was not renewed and dropped; in the same manner, a house past its foreclosure cycle is auctioned off by the holding bank.
In the case of the complaining former registrant, whoever acquired the domain property listed it for sale on Dan.com. It’s quite possible that the former registrant bid on the auction post-deletion without winning; we understand the desperation witnessing their Wix-enabled platform that “did not have hundreds of viewers” getting sold to someone else. Perhaps they should have been more diligent with their domain name.
Users of Dan.com have in their possession a number of great tools to present domain names for sale, setting a particular price and even offering a domain payment plan. In this case, the domain’s former registrant appears to be shocked by the $3,000 price tag and he points the finger at Dan.com.
The truth is, Dan.com has no control over the domain’s registration or the seller’s asking price.
The lesson here is that domain owners and business operators should always ensure that their domain names are renewed well in advance. They should monitor them daily, just like any other asset. Blaming a domain sales platform such as Dan.com for their own ineptitude does not convey the facts about how the Dan.com platform operates.
