I had been using the Whois Monitor tool at DomainTools to monitor the status of two similar domain names owned by the same company. The names were geographic Hotel.com and Hotels.com domain names. During the past couple of years, the status on both changed twice, and I received an update each time.
On May 20th, I received an email from DomainTools informing me that the domain names were both in pending delete status. I immediately went to NameJet and backordered both of them. The next day, I received an email from NameJet informing me that I had won the Hotel.com name for $59. I really wanted the pair, and if I had to choose Hotel.com or Hotels.com, I would have chosen the later.
I did a quick Whois search and saw that the Hotels.com name had been caught by another registrar but hadn’t been updated with a registrant yet. I went over to Snapnames and saw that it was available to bid on for $19, and the auction would end in just under two days. While I generally wait for the last minute to bid, I didn’t want to forget, so I placed my backorder.
A day and a half later, I received a confirmation from SnapNames informing me that I won the auction for $19.00.
I was willing to pay more for the names, but in the end, I am pretty happy SnapNames was able to catch this drop for me, saving $40. Now I just have to wait for the 60 day registration period on these pending delete purchases to find a buyer.
WOAH! I just had to re-read this Elliot!
I thought you said you won the domain name Hotel.com for $59. I was like WTF?!
Hi Elliot
I don’t use Snapnames too often, but can you give us the path to get to the droplists?
The site interface seems to have change since the last time I visited snapnames and I can’t find anything anymore
Thanks
Nice grabs by the way…without knowing the city, if you’re going after them I’m sure they’re good
@ AB
These weren’t droplist finds… these were names I was tracking from prior to expiration.
i’m in a similar situation. i’m waiting on a restaurants.com to drop. i went with snapnames…let’s see how it goes.
@Adi – why not place a backorder with the three major drop catchers – SnapNames, Namejet and Pool.
Doesn’t take much extra time & any one of those services is almost guaranteed to pick up the name.
What are the domains you picked up, Elliot?
@James – You are right, I’m gong to do it now. I guess I was just a bit lazy 🙂