Recently my client forgot to renew its company domain name, and was oblivious to it until one of his customers called to say that the company's website no longer features its products, but appears as a page with links to other sites.

My client called me for advice. Immediately I did a search with WhoIs.com and found that it was acquired by a company in the Caribbean (or so it claimed). Since the Domain Name has already been printed on letterheads, brochures and namecards, under the instruction of my client, I tried to contact the holder of the domain name for its release (knowing there will be a fee involved), or I could get a Domain Brokerage like sedo.com to negotiate for me at fee.

I got an email reply from Carribean Online International.com, which claims on its website: "Your reliable provider for hosting websites in the caribbean" that the "domain shall be returned previous payment of $850 to cover transfer and administrative fees" on July 25, 2007.

On Aug 4, I received another email from them asking for $750. To register a new URL, it simply costs USD$8.95 from overseas sources, or SGD$28 from a local firm. This is a case of cybersquatting.

Definition of Cybersquatting in the Wikipedia: "According to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price:

Source: Wikipedia

Based on this encounter, I would like to share the following.

For business, register your URL for at least 5 years, and remember to renew it, or even purchase it for eternity if permissible. Some providers do allow you to do automatic renewal. The loss in not being able to recover your domain name is not just about having to re-print your name-cards, brochures and letterheads, more seriously, you lose credibility with your clients which cannot be quantified.

For .sg domain, there is the Singapore Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy in the event that you have issues with Singapore registered Domain Name disputes and more information on its services can be found here.

However, when it comes to .com domain names, it gets tricky as it involves trans-border legal entities, and its cost will be astronomical. In the end, I advised my client to switch to having a ".com.sg" registered domain name, and print stickers to cover over its existing printed brochures.

In a nutshell, the price of forgetting to renew a domain name can be expensive. Act now before it is too late.

About the Writer:
The writer runs an online business portal for SMS services, and is also an online application developer in the area of business and educational portal. He provides training consultancy for Education, particularly in the area of Games for Education and Information Technology.