For those of you who aren't aware, ALL expiring and dropping domains come from Registrars, so whether they use pool, or snap, or godaddy or clubdrop, all of it originates from the registrar who gets a piece of the action.
It is in the registrars BEST INTEREST FOR PROFIT MARGIN to get that domain to drop, and I know that some registrars (i won't name them here, i need to keep my consulting jobs LOL) will actually have people MANUALLY review the domains in your expiration log, and pull those domains out to the ERGP position of the "save it by paying $160" way before any other domains that are of lesser value and that are expiring as much as 10 days prior to the ERGP status. In other words, registrars are actively pursuing YOUR domains if you let them slip past their expiration date while trying to decide to renew them or not. They are looking actively for domains that they think they can resell in auction to gain a significant profit from your loss. Their second "profit margin" if you decide to renew, is the $160 ERGP payment, even though the domain hasn't gone more than 32 days.
I had the unfortunate experience while producing the Domain Roundtable Conference of having about 10 valuable domains expire, and my experience with my registrar was that they usually gave me about 5 to 6 weeks to renew... so all I did was follow the last domain in the expiration list by date to make sure I knew which domains I had reviewed and was "thinking" about. Unknown to me, the registrar had pulled the premium domains immediately at the 28 day mark and ran them into ERGP, which put all the domains at the bottom of the list if the list was ordered alphabetically. Since I figured I had already reviewed the domains BEFORE they went into RGP, i never looked at them again because I saw domains with expiration dates a week prior to those domains still available for $7.
Then one day, I tried to renew a domain that had expired, with at least 15 other domains that had expired a week earlier but still were available for $7, but this domain somehow got pushed to the $160 pricing. How could that be? After some back and forth communication with the registrar, they admitted they pulled certain domains after 28 days and left other domains to sit at $7 for six weeks -- and the premium domains were pulled after only four weeks, and priced at $160.
It's all about profits, people. I don't trust any registrar, although I'd like to get to know more about Rebel.com, which professes not to have any interest in you other than you registering your domains.
All the other major registrars are making huge profits from you forgetting to renew, or somehow letting domains slip through, and then sending them off to their own auction houses or contracted auction houses such as Snap or Pool. There's nothing illegal or immoral or unethical about this system. It's just the law of the Domain Industry Wild West land rush. This may change in the future, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for your premium domains, set them to autorenew if you have the time to search them out.
Domain management is a serious job for domainers who own more than 2000 domains. heck, its serious for anyone with over 100 domains. For those of you who aren't aware, ALL expiring and dropping domains come from Registrars, so whether they use pool, or snap, or godaddy or clubdrop, all of it originates from the registrar who gets a piece of the action.
