[...] is my construction company site. I want to move it here, but your system says I have to pay the other guy beforehand. The whole point is to put everything in one place. Can I move my domain here and have you host my other site without having to pay both you and the other guy?
Hi Apple!
For your privacy, I removed your domain from your post after I looked it up with the publicly available 'whois' tool.
It looks like your domain registration expired in late May. Because of this, the domain is not freely available for us to register. It is technically owned/registered by the agency (or, registrar) that you used to register it previously. It's likely in some sort of expiration grace period.
What normally happens in this case is the registrar holds the domain for a given period of time, allowing you to re-register it if you pay the equivalent of a late fee.
In this case, we cannot have you transfer the registration to us (since you don't appear to have a valid, unexpired registration), and we cannot register the domain for you (because it is not freely available to register).
Your choices are to pay your domain registrar to re-acquire the domain, or wait for their hold on the domain to expire and then attempt to register it when it is free. I say 'attempt,' because once it is free, anyone will be able to register the domain, not just you.
On top of that, there are entire businesses that do nothing but register recently released domains the second they become free using automated systems, then sell it back to interested parties like yourself at a much higher rate. It's not what you would call domain hijacking, since everything about that process is legal, but it is a source of frustration for many business owners. This does not always happen, but I see it enough that I think you should be aware of the risk.
I cannot advise you what the risk of that happening is, so the 'best' way to move forward will be up to you and the specifics of your business. I hope that explains why we cannot register/transfer the domain yet, though.
Hi Apple!
For your privacy, I removed your domain from your post after I looked it up with the publicly available 'whois' tool.
It looks like your domain registration expired in late May. Because of this, the domain is not freely available for us to register. It is technically owned/registered by the agency (or, registrar) that you used to register it previously. It's likely in some sort of expiration grace period.
What normally happens in this case is the registrar holds the domain for a given period of time, allowing you to re-register it if you pay the equivalent of a late fee.
In this case, we cannot have you transfer the registration to us (since you don't appear to have a valid, unexpired registration), and we cannot register the domain for you (because it is not freely available to register).
Your choices are to pay your domain registrar to re-acquire the domain, or wait for their hold on the domain to expire and then attempt to register it when it is free. I say 'attempt,' because once it is free, anyone will be able to register the domain, not just you.
On top of that, there are entire businesses that do nothing but register recently released domains the second they become free using automated systems, then sell it back to interested parties like yourself at a much higher rate. It's not what you would call domain hijacking, since everything about that process is legal, but it is a source of frustration for many business owners. This does not always happen, but I see it enough that I think you should be aware of the risk.
I cannot advise you what the risk of that happening is, so the 'best' way to move forward will be up to you and the specifics of your business. I hope that explains why we cannot register/transfer the domain yet, though.