Earlier this week, I received an email from GoDaddy reminding me one of my domain names would expire on June 29th. The domain name caught my attention because I thought I had sold it, and receiving a renewal email for a domain name I sold would have been peculiar.
It turns out I had not sold the domain name. Instead, it was a domain name that was bought on a 12 month LTO in May of 2025, paid for 5 months, and later returned to me when the buyer canceled the deal. When Afternic returned the domain name to my account, the company did not re-enable auto renew for this domain name.
This is not the first time this happened to one of my domain names. In April, I mentioned this issue on X. I don’t think it’s the first time I reported it, but I can’t quickly find the prior time(s):
For some reason, when a domain name is returned after an @afternic LTO deal is cancelled, auto-renew is off.
I noticed it when it happened before, and it just happened again at GoDaddy.
Not sure why it is turned off, but it’s something to keep an eye on if it happens to you.
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) April 22, 2026
I have auto renew enabled for all of the domain names I intend to keep and even for some of the domain names I will likely let expire. I try to make a decision on renewals a few months out, but some borderline names will take me to the final weeks or days to decide to turn off auto-renew. As a practice, I have auto-renew enabled for just about all of my domain names, unless I am certain about letting a domain name expire. This means when I receive those ‘your domain name will expire’ emails, it’s generally names I’ve made an affirmative decision to let expire, so I don’t usually have to take any action.
I can not think of a reason why Afternic would return a domain name to a seller with auto renew turned off. At the very least, Afternic should return the domain names with auto-renew in the same state that it was when the domain name sold via LTO. I would imagine most investors would opt to keep a domain name that was sold via LTO, but I can’t speak for anyone else.
Hopefully this additional exposure will elevate this issue because it could easily cause someone to accidentally let a valuable domain name expire.
