I’ve been waiting to get either gailandjohn.com or johnandgail.com for my travels and John’s.  Since gailandjohn.com was expiring a lot sooner, I decided to wait for it to expire and register it myself.  I didn’t realize how long it takes for a domain to be available after expiration.  Gailandjohn.com expired on October 31, 2007 and I only got to register it yesterday after some ups and downs.

Before I tell you my story, let me tell you what I learned about what expired domains go through:

1. GRACE PERIOD
   A grace period of approximately 30 days takes place when a domain expires.  The domain is not active, but the registrar can still renew it with standard renewal fees.
2. REDEMPTION PERIOD
   If the registrar didn’t renew the domain within the Grace Period, the domain goes into Redemption Period of approximately 30 days.  Yup, that’s another 30 days.  The previous registrar can still renew the domain, but he/she has to request it for an additional fee of about $100-$150.  It will then be manually renewed which takes several days.  These several days is called the Pending Restore period.
3. PENDING DELETE
   If the registrar didn’t renew the domain within the Redemption Period, the domain will go to Pending Delete status which takes 5 days.  Then it will be available for anyone to take.

So I waited 65 days after the expiration of gailandjohn.com, but when I checked on January 6, it still wasn’t available.  There are services available where you can backorder a domain.  But of course it’s not free.  And how do you know that you’re the only one waiting to register the domain?  You don’t.  There are companies out there that do this - snatch domains and sell them to the highest bidder.  Since I’m being cheap nowadays, I didn’t bother to backorder.  I checked again two days after and it was still not available.  I performed a Whois query on the domain and it was showing that it was registered that day, January 8!

The registrar didn’t look like an individual, but some sort of domain company.  I was thinking that it was one of those companies I mentioned earlier.  I was so upset.  I read somewhere online that sometimes these companies let go of the domain if there’s no traffic.  I made sure that I didn’t visit the site.  Yesterday, I decided to check and guess what.  It’s available!  I’m now the owner of gailandjohn.com.

(image from www.literate.co.uk)