Like many of you out there I have a few domains in my back pocket that I have thought of over the years and registered for one reason or another. Also like most of you I did not have the foresight (or the cash as a college student) to invest in high dollar short TLDs (Top Level Domains). I did however manage to grab my last name.net (cartee.net) thanks to an elderly couple in Florida who started selling Herbalife and registered the domain and then let it slip.
Over time I have let some of these "clunker" domains slip as it became obvious that I wasn't going to do anything with them. Today however I found reason to want to re-register one of those domains that I let slip. Thankfully it had only slipped about a month so it was still within my grasp within the grace period and no one else had grabbed it. Unfortunately I originally registered this domain on #GoDaddy. Now, thanks to encouragement from the #TWIT network and my own frustration with the continual up-sell on GoDaddy I have been moving my domains over to #Hover.com and I am much happier. I was doing this before GoDaddy showed support for SOPA and that swept away any doubts that may have been lingering in the recesses of my mind.
Imagine my disgust today when I realized that GoDaddy would let me recover the domain that I let lapse for an additional $80 charge. I almost typed surprise but this does not surprise me unfortunately. $80! Can you believe it? It's as if my domain had been carefully stored in a warehouse once I let it lapse and it was going to cost them lots of overhead to look up my domain, find it in storage, and retrieve it with a costly forklift. It's a domain for crying out loud. I wanted it back so badly that I considered paying the $80. Thankfully I stepped back from the keyboard and called Hover to ask them if they thought I could transfer the domain to them and avoid the fee. They weren't sure. They were skeptical that GoDaddy would release the domain but they said I could try it.
To GoDaddy's credit I was able to transfer the domain just as if I had kept it current. It was a no hassle transaction. I renewed my domain and transfered it to Hover for $9 when it would have cost me almost $100 to recover and register it through GoDaddy. Just another example why they are NOT the registrar you want to use.