Advice to Boston Globe Regarding Boston.com Domain Registration

I sent an email to several officials with the Boston Globe today, as I am considering the sale of a number of Massachusetts city .com domain names. One of the contacts I emailed is a Vice President at the company, and his email address is listed as the Whois contact. For some reason, this particular email address bounced, and the email was returned to me as undeliverable.

At the moment, Boston.com isn’t set to expire until June of 2012. I would imagine they have the name set to auto-renew with a credit card on file, but that isn’t always failproof. One problem they may have as the date gets closer is that as of 2004, the domain name was still to expire in 2012, meaning that they haven’t had to renew Boston.com for several years.

When June of 2012 comes around, the domain registrar will likely automatically email the Whois contact reminder notices to renew the domain name, and those could possibly bounce. In addition, if the credit card on file has since expired, they may not have a payment method on file to pay for the domain name – and they possibly wouldn’t even receive a notice until it’s too late.

Now, it’s unlikely this will happen, but it’s something the management at the Boston Globe (and maybe its New York Times parent company) should look into before it’s too late.

Oh… and if anyone from the Boston Globe happens to read this, I would consider selling Hingham.com, Harwich.com, Abington.com, Norwell.com, Mashpee.com, WestNewbury.com, and Topsfield.com.   I’d also love to chat about doing something with Lowell.com and Newburyport.com.