Wordpress domain late renewal fee?

[magicws]

I'd forgotten to renew my domain name in time for my Wordpress blog. On trying to do just that today, they've added an $80.00 charge (a Domain Late Renewal Fee). The usual domain registration is $5.00 and domain mapping is $13.00, so this charge seems excessive.

If anybody could suggest a way around this I would be grateful.

[katese11]

Woh! That is crazy! Did they remind you to renew?

[Tee2072]

Who wants to charge you that? WP? Or your registrar?

[magicws]

Wordpress. Yes, they did remind me (no mention of an $80 charge, however), but I've been busy and have missed the deadline by a few days.

It seems like a ridiculous amount to charge. So for now I just have the wordpress address rather than a .com. I've tried to buy my domain elsewhere but it's not available, and wasn't likely to be I suppose.

I hope they divert traffic from my old domain to the wordpress one?

[zanuda]

I've tried to buy my domain elsewhere but it's not available, and wasn't likely to be I suppose.

It should be available after you "rights to buy it back" (not sure how it's called properly) expires. Unless it will go to auction and you will not be able to afford it. There are some on-line tools to estimate the price of domain name. Not sure how precise they are. It's better to ask on some webmaster/SEO forums. They might know this on uk business forum.


I hope they divert traffic from my old domain to the wordpress one?

Theoretically no. Don't know how it works with wordpress.com when you buy domain from them (I assumed it was the case).

By the way, you could buy domain name not from the company you host with and a lot of people recommend just that.

[microdictator]

$80 is large but it is the registrar that is charging it, not Wordpress. It's the domain registrar and it's the way all domain registrars work. I would pay it right now.

Now it is in redemption (which is post the 2 weeks grace period, so you're actually 2/3 weeks late) it means that ANYONE can bid for the domain name. If there is a company out there that wants your blog name, they can bid for it right now.

After redemption, then the domain is "released" into the pool of available names. Then anyone can buy it for the usual fee (about $20 a year ish).

If your blog had a fair amount of traffic (and links to it) then you will find that a company will buy it immediately it becomes "released". They have automated tools to pick up domain names that have a high Google score.

Then they will offer to sell it back to you for as much as they think they can get away with (depending on the traffic your site got). At that point it will be their property, not yours, so they can sell it for what they like. It's not cybersquatting either because they're not pretending to be you.

On the subject of redirection
Right now, you don't actually own the domain - the registrar does. So they are not going to redirect anything. Redirection is actually what owning the domain means.

On buying the domain from anyone
You can do that but you are up against the domain registrars here, not Wordpress. It's actually rather nice that Wordpress helps you with a grace period, you would not get that from a usual registrar. This would be the same if you hosted at Blogger (where I am) or any other blog site (Tumblr etc).

Who to complain to
If you feel you've been unfairly treated, the best you can do is complain to ICANN but I doubt you'll get much joy because they will say that this is how the internet has worked (since 1998).

Who the hell are you?
I'm Rob Lang, an IT professional, I also draw cartoons. ;)

[zanuda]

5 stars to microdictator

[fcknits]

Bit late now but I agree completely with microdictator. You were lucky to have the chance to renew your domain after it expired!!

Someone else has probably bought the domain, by now, and all your hard earned traffic is going to them instead of to you. Remember that for the future - if you ever get the chance to buy back your original domain or if you buy a new domain. x