Friday, February 26, 2010

The Crooks that run www.acquirethisname.com

So my email address has changed since I originally purchased the "MyndFood" url.  And thus, when the domain name registration came up for renewal, I didn't know, and eventually, GoDaddy.com canceled my domain. 

So I called them, explained to them what happened, and they offered to help me buy the domain back out of this virtual limbo (where nobody really owns it).  So I said, "Sure".  And they proceeded to go through the list of fees I'd have to pay to get the domain back during this "limbo" (basically, they were going to charge me about $150 to get the domain that I'd paid $9 for originally back). 

Frankly, that's just crooked.  I've thought a lot about this, and they've built a significant stream of income on taking advantage of people in distress. 

Scumbags.

So I told them no.  I figured that domain name limbo only lasts three months; I'll just wait until limbo is over, then hop back on and buy the domain again for the $9.99 price.

Wrong.

Turns out that there are crooked scavengers out there who are even more scumbag-ish than GoDaddy!  Apparently there are these people out there who don't have a creative idea of their own, so they wait for folks to forget to renew their domain, they buy it out from under them, then they try to resell it!

Yep; some other jerk decided to buy MyndFood.com!  He's at www.acquirethisname.com, by the way.  I would STRONGLY urge you to NEVER go to acquirethisname.com to acquire a name because they will, without question, rape you. 

The site asks me how much I'm willing to pay to get my url back; so I put in $35 (a fair premium, I think).  They email me back telling me that they'll sell it to me for $3,000!

Insane!  $3,000 for a url that, in its heyday, got like 60 hits per day?  So I sent him a very kindly worded email, informing him (Blake, his name is) that he's nuts, and that, since I made up the word "MyndFood" in the first place, it'd be WAY cheaper for me to put on my creative cap again, and make up a different word than it would be to give him three grand for his crummy url.

So, my friends (if you can read this), MyndFood is dead.  Which is OK. 

Just wanted to vent a little!

1 comment:

Expes Puella said...

I was wondering what happened. I've had two friends who recently dealt with the same thing, godaddy.com dropped the domain and they were looking at some decent cash to pick it back up. Too bad. :/