The domain name industry is very much like the rest of our lives. Mainly full of more Questions then Answers!
Some things are very clear, many hold a lot of questions. The deeper you look into things the more questions arise with no easy or clear answers.
Most people that are involved in the domain industry as a hobby, part-time and or that do not blog may miss many of the little things that happen on a daily basis.
Some of this stuff bloggers and news writers pick up on and bring it to light so more people see it but many things simply go unnoticed or unannounced.
For some reason I like to dig deep or simply catch the little things other would not even think of looking at, but this often leads me to scratching my head. Not really overthinking, just scratching my head.
Example:
I saw the domain name FactorySupplies.com when it hit "expired status". Well, it didn’t really hit expired status, it hit Auto Renew status (which is not clearly stated in any whois record) it’s just something you have to catch. This allows Network Solutions or any domain name registrar to "play around" with the domain name for a little bit longer. They say it’s for the security of the owner….
Anyway.. the domain was listed in the pre-release section on NameJet.com for about 35 days to accept "bids". If only one bid is placed, that bidder gets the domain name for the bid price they put in. Not just $69 if they were the only bidder and bid $100. They get it at $100 due to NJ’s "little secret" bidding system (pre-bid bids are NOT proxy bids). That’s a whole different story. lol
Anyway, since nobody "bid" on the domain name during the pre-release, NameJet.com basically tells NSI that.. sorry no bidders, you can "drop this one".
The Auto Renew period expires and the domain name follows the drop process and goes to Pending Delete status (6 day status) over a period of time. The domain really expired April 27, 2009 btw.
Fast Forward to 7-12-2009 and FactorySupplies.com drops (available to register to the public).
The domain name doesn’t get "hand registered" but it get’s backordered with a drop catching service and grabbed? Hmmm
Here FactorySupplies.com could of been purchased some 2 months ago, plus held it’s orginal creation date of 1999. Since the domain name "dropped" it loses it orginal creation date. One thing I can not tell, is if there was an "auction" (more then one bidder/backorder) when the domain name was backordered with a service like SnapNames.com, Pool.com, NameJet.com etc. but this could also have been a "private registrar" and simply captured during the drop, since the registrar that captured it does not offer backordering services that I can see.
The way that I can tell the domain was backordered, is due to the domain name servers shortly after the whois updates after the drop happened.
InterimNameServer.com as the DNS tells me a registrar captured the domain name and is normally likely to have been a backorder. I use the registry whois (Verisign Whois) for .com/.net domain names which is Real Time and the most accurate.
So anyway… the questions start firing for me on little things like this! 
Was the domain simply missed when it was on NameJet?
If it was missed, why was it easier found in the PD drop list, then on NJ?
Was the domain simply grabbed by a private registrar at wholesale cost?
What made it easier to find the domain in the Pending Delete list other then when it was on NameJet?
The questions really could be endless!
The moral of the story. The domain name industry has a lot of "odd" things happening and is not perfect. Just like most of the world, some things that are done seem very weird, that likely will never produce a clear answer or provide us with an answer that will make us all happy.
I will be writing about some of these little things that I pick up on this week. Some will include things that services offer / how they work, that I do not agree on and I will explain why.
Happy Domaining!
I Trust No One
Here is one that raises a few questions.
LitigationAttorneys.com is currently being bid on at NameJet by “hiphop” who is “ns1.mostwanteddomains.com”. Yet “ns1.mostwanteddomains.com” owned LitigationAttorneys.com back on 2009-03-24, according to DomainTools. Then the name went under privacy protection. The auction was even promoted on TheDomains.com. Go figure.
Jamie Zoch
@I Trust No One,
The domain does appear to be a member listed domain but are you sure MWD is bidder “hiphop”? I really do not think MWD would bid on their own domain or even should be able to bid via NameJet if MWD does have the domain listed.
Alan
I believe INTERIMNAMESERVER.COM is SnapNames isn’t it? Did you place a bid on it there?
Skip
Jamie, correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t interimnameserver always a Snapnames catch? Granted, a day later the whois still shows signdomains as the contact so maybe that will turn over in another day or two. Dunno.
Btw my vote is that the domain just got overlooked in the prerelease, even with a 1999 create date. Seems a lot folks concentrate on the delete lists and miss some really nice prereleases that don’t get bids.
And that brings up the point of how people search the lists, are they downloading and simply querying by their favorite keywords or scanning “by feel” to pick out the interesting ones. Sometimes I think this stuff is more of an art than anything else.
Jamie Zoch
@Skip,
It’s a hard one to pick out. InterimNameServer.com shows Oversee.net DNS, but the domain is registered with eNom, with whois privacy???? Hard to tell. According to whois, SignDomains.com is India’s first domain registrar. Oversee is not located in India, but doesn’t mean it might not be a “partner”. I agree, it likely was overlooked or simply not seen by the buyer when it was a pre-release and noticed it during the drop.
Skip
Ok Jamie, I see what you’re getting at. Under the Oversee umbrella, Moniker.com is registered as expected, with Moniker. As are the DNS servers (domainservice.com). But snapnames.com is at register.com and Domainsponsor.com is at Nameking.com. Interimnameserver.com is at Enom with privacy protection. Either they use an external DNS provider who happened to register the name at Enom, or it actually is owned by them but registered at Enom. I’m sure there’s reasoning behind all that but it does seem odd.
All in all though, I’d say it’s a safe bet that Snapnames caught the drop.
Following the path for the factorysupplies domain, it was registered at a NJ partner. It made it to PD where someone bid on it (via SN). Viseshinfo.com (the registrar, and listed at internic.net) appears to own signdomains. The contact info for factorysupplies.com shows “MPS TECHNOSOFT D/B/A SIGNDOMAINS.COM”. So either MPS Technosoft is their privacy protection for a customer who won the drop, or Visesh/Signdomains/MPS grabbed it for themselves. Whew, if by chance I got all this correct is there a prize involved?