DomainVP asked a question and started a thread that I found interesting.
We all know the rules for expiring domains at GoDaddy auctions when they are registered at GoDaddy. Sometimes when it’s the expiry stream from another registrar you can still get the registrant renewed. You don’t get the name and get a refund.
But DomainVP was talking about names at GoDaddy. Apparently he received an email:
Let me be specific: I purchased a closeout domain hosted with GoDaddy, and I received a “Thank You For your Purchase” receipt. The domain then appears in my “Won” tab within the auctions panel, and has an arrival date etc..
But then got a note that,“someone else bought it first”?
I thought that odd and asked Joe Styler in the thread for an answer and Joe gave the following reply:
Yes there are cases when that happens. They are rare but happen more often now that the demand for closeouts is extremely high. We have a system in place where if a closeout is added to the cart it adds a hold on the domain for you to be able to complete the checkout process. The issue is that in these cases where someone buys it before you, you and that other party are adding the domain to the cart within fractions of a second of each other, too quickly for our system to catch that and place a hold for any other parties.
I would wager that the original poster here is scripting the site or using an API and that it is being added at the more or less the same exact time as someone else doing the same thing. There is a great amount of demand on the closeouts now as I have stated. And even so the hold system catches this most of the time but there are domains that this is happening to and in that case it is going to the fastest person even if they are beating you by milliseconds.
So demand is up for closeouts and you could get this message, it’s not something nefarious, GoDaddy is apparently seeing more competition for closeouts.