A local Landscaping company let their domain name expire and recently hired me to build their new website. It turns out that one of their competitors saw their name was available and quickly registered it. The Landscape company had no idea that the web address on their flyers, business cards, and other material has been sending people to a competitors website for the last year.
I should also note - that when I go to this competitors website and try to call them - the number rings directly to a so-called "marketing company" - the person on the other end is always at a grocery store or you hear screaming children in the background.
So we have an unscrupulous marketing company and an equally dishonest landscape company. I have called and emailed, and have not yet heard back from the owner of the company - although the "marketing" person (who will not tell me the name of her company) claims she will talk to the owner and see if they will let me client have his name back.
They claim they thought my client was out of business - but if they would have bothered to make a phone call they would have seen that it was not the case.
We will see if the owner of the company does the right thing and transfers the name back to my client. If not - it won't be the end of the world - I have already registered the .net version of his name, and I will still get my client to the top of the search engines - the right way! The competitor put very little effort into their own site - and it's nothing more than poor design and a bunch of keywords on every page - which makes it highly irrelevant anyway - so it will just fade away.
The wonderful thing about the internet - it is a self cleaning oven - and sooner or later it will get rid of the garbage and reward the good websites.
As for losing domain names - this happened to another local company a couple years ago. They let their domain name expire and a company from China quickly registered it and told them they could have it back for $5,000.00.
If you use GoDaddy - they are very good about letting you know well in advance you have a domain coming up for renewal.
Unless you have a registered name, or can afford to pay a lawyer big bucks - there is not much you can do if someone takes your name. If you think there is even a chance you are going to use a certain name in the future - go ahead and register it. Also - make sure you get the .net and .org versions.
And one last thing - when hiring a wed designer, marketing person, or anyone - get references and ask to see their work - that will give you a good idea who you are dealing with!
