At some point I plan on developing a nice little widget for musicians that allows you to post and advertise your gigs via a widget that can be posted on blogs and web pages. A couple years ago I acquired the names GigWidget.net and GigWidget.org. When I did, I received a couple e-mails regarding GigWidget.com... organizations asking if I want to purchase the domain, since I had the .net and .org versions. They were asking for more money than I wanted to pay, so I declined.Recently I started getting e-mails again, telling me GigWidget.com had recently become available and asking me if I wanted to purchase it through their company. The first e-mail (from domains@dcinchq.com ) said I could buy GigWidget.com for $99.95. The second e-mail (from sales@zipacquisitions.com at "Zip Domains") said I could obtain it for $49. I then got another e-mail from the same address and "company" stating the same price. Then came two more e-mails from domains@dcinchq.com showing a price of $99.97 and giving these links:
http://www.dcinchq.com/
http://www.dcinchq.com/faq.
Then I got an e-mail stating:
Our company specializes in acquiring expired domain names to help individuals and businesses protect their brand online.
The domain name GIGWIDGET.COM expired recently and we were able to secure it.
We noticed that you own GIGWIDGET.NET and felt that you may be interested in acquiring the .COM version of your existing domain name.
It is now available for a one-time fee of only $30.00 USD.
To purchase or learn more, please visit http://zipdomains.com/checkout.php?domain=gigwidget. com
Thirty bucks. Not bad for a domain that I actually did want, but I wanted to check out the legitimacy of Zip Domains first. The very first Google search popped up somebody saying that they had had a similar experience, but that the domain was just freely available. So I went to my registrar, typed in the name GigWidget.com, and sure enough, it was available to the world. So I purchased it for my regular price, and now I own the domain without having gone through the channels of Zip Domains, which I consider a scam company at this point.
They were suggesting that they had exclusive rights to the domain, and that I could obtain it only through them, which is false. The domain was freely available, and at a MUCH lower price than any of the prices they offered.
Just wanted to let people know that if you get an offer from Zip Domains, just go to your registrar and buy the domain on your own. Zip Domains is just trying to scam you for extra cash.
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3 comments:
Thank you for this post. I was in the exact same situation, and lo and behold, the name I wanted was free. All I had to do was register it. You saved me $20.
Cheers!
Same here so thanks for the scam warning you guys!
Ditto with me as well. I ended up purchasing 2 domains, namely BookMyMedia.in and BookMyMedia.net from GoDaddy at standard rates, rather than buying at $49.95 from Zip Domains.
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