Last night, I noticed I had a domain name on hold in my Afternic account, but the domain name did not appear in my GoDaddy account. I know that GoDaddy pulls domain names from accounts when they are pending sale, but the disconcerting thing was that I could not find a purchase receipt or any ownership record for this domain name.

I called the Premier Services team at GoDaddy, and I was able to put a few things together. The domain name that is pending sale was hand registered by me in January of 2025. Because I registered it in a bulk purchase, the domain name was not included in the purchase receipt I received. It was also renewed in bulk on the first anniversary, so I did not have a renewal email either. These are standard records I generally have quick access to in my email history. In addition, new registrations have Whois privacy at GoDaddy, so a Whois record didn’t confirm my ownership of the domain name.

If you use Afternic and its GoDaddy brokers to sell your domain names, your Lead Center is most likely filled with inquiries that have many “Email sent to buyer” notifications. Most of these outbound messages go unanswered. What are GoDaddy brokers saying in their emails? Most likely some sort of take on ‘are you still interested in the domain name?’

Adam Maysonet shared a screenshot of an email he received from GoDaddy following an inquiry he made to buy a domain name:

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):