If You Renew an Expired Domain Name, Check the Name Servers

A friend of mine reached out this afternoon to ask if I know who is managing the portfolio of Mrs Jello, the domain investment company founded by the late Igal Lichtman. I gave him the name of someone I thought might be helpful and asked what’s up. He mentioned that Mica.com expired and Mrs Jello should renew the domain name before it is auctioned or deleted.

I took a look at the Whois record, and I noticed the domain name is registered at Uniregistry, and it has an expiration date of March 2021. The domain name was not in expired status because if the registrar had renewed it for a year in preparation for an auction, the domain name would have already run through its full expiration cycle by now. What my friend noticed and I confirmed is the name servers are set to Uniregistry’s default name servers (NS1.EXPIRED.UNIREGISTRY-DNS.COM NS2.EXPIRED.UNIREGISTRY-DNS.COM), and as a result, the landing page indicates the domain name is in expired status:

After seeing this, I recalled a tweet thread from Tasha Kidd that reported this issue. Tasha stated that domain names that were in expired status at Uniregistry did not have the name servers changed back to their original name servers once the registrant renewed the domain name(s):

I am pretty certain most domain registrars revert a customer’s name servers back to the original ones upon renewal. I don’t usually let my domain names expire before renewing, but I am nearly certain that is the case. For whatever reason, this does not appear to be happening at Uniregistry right now.

I do not know if this is an unfixed bug, a bug that was fixed but not applied to previously expired domain names, or if it’s a feature. Whatever the reason is, people who have domain names in expired status at Uniregistry need to make sure they check their name servers upon renewal to ensure the domain name resolves where they intend it to resolve.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

8 COMMENTS

  1. Wow, I never checked to make sure the nameservers reverted back to what they were after renewal but they don’t! Seems like it should be an easy fix..get on it godaddy!

  2. Why should they put a fix?
    This is one of the many dirty tricks/tactics for them to steal our premium domains.
    They want you to forget or die.. esp forget to pay bill on time because they can rake up the late fees.

    Regards,
    BullS
    MBA,PhD
    Magna cum laude
    Graduate of DKAcademy.com
    Domain King Academy

    MBA-My Big Ass(all of you have one)
    PHD-people having dickheads

  3. If your names are private on uni, where do you think people are going to call to get a price on your domain when they look up the whois. With any registrar, just remember they own the data and can do with what they please. Investors lose so much $$ because of this. This is why they want everything private!

  4. Add namebright.com to that list.Also you dont get email when your domain expires at Namebright.com so be warned to check before your name gets auctioned.

    • I use namebright for a few domains. but, I do not trust them. However, if you spot something and create a ticket, they are very quick to fix it. and, naturally, they apologize.

  5. A registrar is supposed to change the nameservers at expiry (although the need to redirect people to a “renew your name” page is optional which I’m not sure I agree with)

    However they are _supposed_ to put the domain back to it’s original state on renewal – so leaving their own nameservers is either a bug (which they should fix) or theft (of traffic which they should be reported for)

    Pretty sure it’d get reclassified as a bug after a few complaints 🙂

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