“No good deed goes unpunished!” This is a famous phrase that expresses how an attempted good deed can sometimes backfire on the person who had good intentions. I’ve thought of this idiom numerous times when trying to help an organization secure a domain name I think they should own.
There have been countless times I’ve noticed an expiry auction or deleted domain name that matches a non-profit organization or someone else I wanted to help. After seeing the domain name, I figured it would be easy enough to let them know about the auction or available domain name. Because of the number of times this has caused confusion and/or consternation in the past, I’ve only done this a handful of times more recently.
Sometimes, the organization or person previously owned the domain name, and losing it was caused by internal issues. Perhaps a former employee or associate registered the domain name and the renewal emails were unseen or went to an unmonitored email. I think this is probably the number one cause, and it often involves a domain name that was owned defensively or only used for forwarding, so nobody even noticed it expired. On occasion, an unrelated third party let it expire, so it was a good chance for that entity to secure a domain name.
When reaching out to these people who think they already own the domain name, confusion can occur. They may not understand the domain name expired and be confused about what I am talking about. They may think I am trying to sell them something they don’t need or generally don’t understand why I am contacting them out of the blue.
When I’ve tried to help people and organizations in the past, I’ve tried to be very clear that I am not selling them anything nor do I have any vested interest in the outcome. I am coming at it as someone who thinks they should have the domain name and I share what they can do to secure it by either renewing the domain name if possible, bidding on the auction if renewal time passed, or registering the domain name. I let them know I have no vested interest in the outcome and am unrelated to the auction service or registrar. I try to be as clear as possible while giving them details about how to secure the domain name.
One thing I have found helpful is providing my phone number. Oftentimes, a direct conversation has helped allay confusion. In addition, since I sometimes have noticed the domain name with a limited amount of time remaining, a phone conversation can be the fastest way to answer questions.
The last time I remember doing this is when I saw an expired domain name that was owned by a local hospital. I had a contact there, and he put me in touch with someone who put me in touch with the right person, and it was renewed in time. I am pretty sure that domain name had been registered to an IT person who no longer worked there. It’s always easier to do this when you already know someone who can help direct you to the right person.
Letting people know there’s a domain name they would want to own seems like it should be an easy thing to do. Like the famous saying implies, sometimes it can backfire and turn into a time suck or confusing situation.
“They may think I am trying to sell them something they don’t need or generally don’t understand why I am contacting them out of the blue.”
Unfortunately, no matter what you do, you end up sounding like someone who is trying to make sure they claim their share of a Nigerian prince’s fortune. For many years, I’ve contacted people to let them know their domain name has come up on the pending UDRP list, because a lot of UDRP notices go to spam or are believed to be some kind of scam. I genuinely don’t care if I get hired or not, and a lot of people have defended their own cases or engaged other counsel to deal with UDRP’s that might otherwise have resulted in default decisions and, often, bad precedents in them. One totally nutso thing that GoDaddy does is that their compliance department believes they are not supposed to tell their customers if they have a UDRP. That is because there is a rule that they are not supposed to tell the customer until the domain name is locked. But of course they can tell their customer after that. Several registrars do. In any event, having seen a case where the domain name was clearly defensible, I sent a note that they have a UDRP filed against their domain name and they should keep an eye out for any unusual or spam email messages. They wrote back to me to say that they checked with GoDaddy and GoDaddy told them there was no problem with the domain name. I tried to explain it to them again, and they accused me of trying to scam them in some unspecified way, and they were going to complain to law enforcement if I contacted them again. The utter pointlessness of trying to simply gratuitously alert people to a problem hit me like a ton of bricks. A lot of people are like dogs at the vet – they’ll bite if you try to help them. In the middle of writing back to them, I thought “WTF am I doing this for?” and hit delete.