A month ago, I wrote about an issue sellers need to be aware of when using the Lease to Own (LTO) option on Afternic. If a LTO deal is canceled, the domain name is returned to the seller’s GoDaddy account with auto-renew disabled, regardless of that status prior to the sale.
This morning, one of my lease to own deals was canceled and the domain name was returned to my GoDaddy account. Despite having auto-renew enabled before the LTO started, the domain name had auto-renew disabled after it was returned to my account.
In the cancelation email, Afternic added a new paragraph warning customers about this possibility:
“Now that ownership of this domain is being returned to you, it’s a great time to log in to your registrar account and take a moment to review your domain renewal settings. Since some settings can occasionally change during a transfer process, we just want to make sure everything is in order so your domain stays safe and secure. If you have any questions or need help navigating your renewal settings, your registrar’s support team will be happy to assist.”
It’s good that this reminder was added to the cancelation email, but I still think they should go a step further and return a domain name to the account with auto-renew set the same as it was before the sale. I can’t imagine it would be too difficult for Afternic/GoDaddy to record the status prior to removing the domain name from a seller’s GoDaddy account, and the domain name should be returned with the same settings as before.
In the meantime, this is a step in the right direction but it still leaves some room for error.
