The tale of a failed purchase attempt from GE for the domain name SBSE.com, which is a Quad Premium, 4 letter domain name that has been continuously registered since 1993! The domain name sold today on NameJet.com for $1,600 USD.  

I use to work for one of the largest and most profitable companies, Procter & Gamble, which has so many top brands it’s crazy! Like Tide, Bounty, Charmin, Dawn, Folgers, Crest and so on.

When I worked for P&G and being a stock holder, it always upset me that they wouldn’t just buy things from a normal store. It always HAD to be purchased from a "vendor". So if I needed a bolt, and we didn’t have it already, I had to order it from a vendor at a cost of $5, but at Home Depot, that same bolt was $0.25. Just doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s the way these big companies do things….

I am getting to the Domain part of all of this soon….. lol


Now, I just used P&G as an example of a big company since I have worked for them, but recently I was dealing with GE (General Electric) and their Fanuc Intelligent Paltforms divison about purchasing the domain name SBSE.com .

Now I had known from the start, that this would be a tall order, but I figured, what the heck, it’s worth a shot and I’m sure I will learn somethings.

Boy oh boy did I learn somethings. I was able to contact somebody that could help me (Debbie) and the replies were going pretty well. The domain name was expiring and that’s what brought it to my attention.

In my first reply to my email, the reply back was: "We are letting this domain go- we no longer needed it. It has expired, so you should be able to go and pick it up."  Well it was expired, but they still had it in their account, which was what I explained in the follow up reply. With her reply of "I should be able to just pick it up" was referring to go and hand register the domain. So big clue to me, of them not knowing the value of the domain name. I also presented an offer to purchase the domain name in this follow up reply.

In the following replies, I tried to explain the process and how the domain transfer took place etc. With each reply Debbie hinted that there was really nothing she could do. So at this point, I went on a direction that put more value on the domain name "Just to see what would happen". I figured with showing Value, that might move them into the direction of doing some work on their end and maybe I would get the domain, but at a higher cost then I first wanted.

The final email was pretty shocking to me. Now remember I let them know this domain name had value. The basic’s were, they had to run the sale of the domain name threw "Legal Counsel" and that was not likely going to happen, she told me. With the final line of the email stating, "Regretfully, there is really nothing that I can do."

Now this is a Multi-Billion dollar company…. and They have no clue what the domains worth… Now that’s good for me, but also pretty Crazy! I mean really, they do not have some "tech guys" saying, maybe we could or should sell this? But no, it was the reply  " we are Letting it expire, because they didn’t need it any more"! The domain has been registered since 1993, so they have invested money into it! It is scary that these companies have no clue, what assets they really hold and it is even more scary that people invest Big Money into these companies!

They would rather get Nothing, then something! That’s the simple way of putting it! Now if you are a stock holder in a company and hear a little bit of how this company is handeling it’s assts, wouldn’t you be upset to know they are turning down money for an asset which they could profit on and would rather get nothing? I know I would be! Now I know this would not of been a huge sale or sum of money, but these little sales add up. Keep in mind, many of these big companies own thousands of domain names……

Way to go GE, I can’t wait until you don’t need the domain GE.com any more, as I will be first in line to get it!