I guess this is a cautionary tale.

I was recently having issues with my Gmail account that’s tied to my Epik ( a domain registrar ) account, so when I was supposed to renew my domain, I didn’t receive any e-mails about it. When I decided to randomly check on my website, it seemed to be down. So I checked Epik and a domain that usually cost £15 a year to renew now cost £400 to renew as it was expired.

As a teenager who does not have £400 to spend on a domain, I decided to just wait until the domain fully expired and buy it for a cheaper price.

After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal

  • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    4 months ago

    It happens with anyone. Bots track expirations and snatch them so that they can ransom them back to you for thousands - exactly as in OPs example.

    AUTO RENEW. Auto-renew. Auto-renew is the way. The solution to this problem is Auto-renew.

    • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      Yes, I just didn’t realize that auto-renew doesn’t work with PayPal on NameCheap and had lazily set it up with PayPal when I got it because I didn’t want to go get my wallet. Lesson learned!

    • Septimaeus@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      I think you can also register 10 years in advance, or maybe more depending on the registrar, which would cover all other potential snafus like expired card info.