I am glad to have found this forum, thank you for making this available. It has been a revelation and now a valuable resource for me and a community of about 200 people stranded due to corporate greed and struggling to make a new start.
A few of us are working on a media story on this, a perfect and classic case of sleazy corporate dealings that are normally intended for speculative investment holding ( domain names that may have future value ) and if it works out, make a killing on the sale. Nothing wrong with that, we do that with antique goods, stock markets, you name it.
But this robotic process has left the life of a poor sick man and his wife in shambles and quite a few of us are struggling to help him out, since he's in the hospital.
Let me back up, so I can lay out the story, leaving out personally identifiable information as much as possible.
This is about a domain name owner, in the U.S. of A., who was once a top-notch software consultant, until he became disabled with mild autism and chronic fatigue syndrome. He lost most of his savings paying hospital, doctor and medication bills, because he no longer had health insurance. When he got a little better, he started a .org site to help people with autism and related illnesses to have a community. People with mild autism tend to be brilliant, this guy was no exception, so he dug deep and created a site that the community loved; his writing + his knowledge made for a valuable resource. He had lost a lot of his technical skills, certain areas of the brain/memory get seriously damaged.
Ok, now to the business side of it. His webhost registered his .org domain with 1and1.com ; he was busy with maintaining the site and all went well for 3 years, until he got very sick again. He got some email problems, and didn't get domain expiry notifications, and the way he found out he lost his domain was when a parked page appeared on his domain name, with the sign " Buy this domain ", with a link to Sedo.com . He was shell-shocked, he made some income from the site, mainly through donations from people. He decided to try and bring his site back up with a different domain name, just for the community and himself, even though many other sites had links to the domain name he lost. Starting over.
Upon research, we found out that:
(a) 1and1.com doesn't offer the 30-day grace period after domain name expiration, unlike most well-known registrars.
(b) The domain name was bought within hours of expiration, by a company called Domcollect. We checked Domcollect's website, it's one of the dubiest sites I've ever seen. Bare minimum and vague text, nothing about the company, just a contact form, no email. So Domcollect bought the domain name and put it up for sale at Sedo. Fine so far.
(c) A bid placed on sedo.com was countered with an offer in the $xx,xxx range. There's just no way anyone who visits that site can afford 5% of that.
(d) So we look up some more, and turns out 1and1.com and Sedo and Domcollect are all under one umbrella organization?
So we tried to talk nice to whatever customer service emails and phone numbers we could find, and to their credit, the employees who we spoke to were really professional over the phone, just following the corporate policy as they knew it, for their specific job.
A few of us contacted an attorney to see if we could try and get it back through the UDRP process, but the attorney said it may work out cheaper just buying it back. The attorney was willing to take the case on pro-bono, because it was community service site, but the ex-owner is dead-set against paying a penny to get the domain back - he says it's like giving in to terrorists. Without his signature, we cannot even pay from our pockets to try this.
The ex-owner is still trying to get his new website up and running, but is now facing with his wife's illness, in addition to his own. He has lost his income, so now it's charity health care for them. We are sending in whatever money we can for their expenses.
He did write up a long note to Domcollect, but never got to send it, he's still in a state of shock.
We are hoping we could buy his domain name back and run it ourselves, while he recovers. He is not going to be happy that we gave in to the greedy, sleazy business 1und1.de / Schlund Partners is in, but we're trying to be practical. It's business, it's money, doesn't matter if it's stolen from a hat passed around by a blind man.
We have one final recourse. There are two national news anchors who are dedicated to the cause of autism and related illnesses. I can't think of a juicier story for them.
Wish us luck. There just may be some justice and values left in the world of cruel capitalism.
Thank you.
A few of us are working on a media story on this, a perfect and classic case of sleazy corporate dealings that are normally intended for speculative investment holding ( domain names that may have future value ) and if it works out, make a killing on the sale. Nothing wrong with that, we do that with antique goods, stock markets, you name it.
But this robotic process has left the life of a poor sick man and his wife in shambles and quite a few of us are struggling to help him out, since he's in the hospital.
Let me back up, so I can lay out the story, leaving out personally identifiable information as much as possible.
This is about a domain name owner, in the U.S. of A., who was once a top-notch software consultant, until he became disabled with mild autism and chronic fatigue syndrome. He lost most of his savings paying hospital, doctor and medication bills, because he no longer had health insurance. When he got a little better, he started a .org site to help people with autism and related illnesses to have a community. People with mild autism tend to be brilliant, this guy was no exception, so he dug deep and created a site that the community loved; his writing + his knowledge made for a valuable resource. He had lost a lot of his technical skills, certain areas of the brain/memory get seriously damaged.
Ok, now to the business side of it. His webhost registered his .org domain with 1and1.com ; he was busy with maintaining the site and all went well for 3 years, until he got very sick again. He got some email problems, and didn't get domain expiry notifications, and the way he found out he lost his domain was when a parked page appeared on his domain name, with the sign " Buy this domain ", with a link to Sedo.com . He was shell-shocked, he made some income from the site, mainly through donations from people. He decided to try and bring his site back up with a different domain name, just for the community and himself, even though many other sites had links to the domain name he lost. Starting over.
Upon research, we found out that:
(a) 1and1.com doesn't offer the 30-day grace period after domain name expiration, unlike most well-known registrars.
(b) The domain name was bought within hours of expiration, by a company called Domcollect. We checked Domcollect's website, it's one of the dubiest sites I've ever seen. Bare minimum and vague text, nothing about the company, just a contact form, no email. So Domcollect bought the domain name and put it up for sale at Sedo. Fine so far.
(c) A bid placed on sedo.com was countered with an offer in the $xx,xxx range. There's just no way anyone who visits that site can afford 5% of that.
(d) So we look up some more, and turns out 1and1.com and Sedo and Domcollect are all under one umbrella organization?
So we tried to talk nice to whatever customer service emails and phone numbers we could find, and to their credit, the employees who we spoke to were really professional over the phone, just following the corporate policy as they knew it, for their specific job.
A few of us contacted an attorney to see if we could try and get it back through the UDRP process, but the attorney said it may work out cheaper just buying it back. The attorney was willing to take the case on pro-bono, because it was community service site, but the ex-owner is dead-set against paying a penny to get the domain back - he says it's like giving in to terrorists. Without his signature, we cannot even pay from our pockets to try this.
The ex-owner is still trying to get his new website up and running, but is now facing with his wife's illness, in addition to his own. He has lost his income, so now it's charity health care for them. We are sending in whatever money we can for their expenses.
He did write up a long note to Domcollect, but never got to send it, he's still in a state of shock.
We are hoping we could buy his domain name back and run it ourselves, while he recovers. He is not going to be happy that we gave in to the greedy, sleazy business 1und1.de / Schlund Partners is in, but we're trying to be practical. It's business, it's money, doesn't matter if it's stolen from a hat passed around by a blind man.
We have one final recourse. There are two national news anchors who are dedicated to the cause of autism and related illnesses. I can't think of a juicier story for them.
Wish us luck. There just may be some justice and values left in the world of cruel capitalism.
Thank you.
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