SofasDirect final hour renewal.

Creature · Oct 6, 2006

Sofas Direct had been 'suspended'. Back in January the owners started a transfer which was never completed. Nominet then put a 'Do Not Cancel' notice on the domain.

A few weeks ago I called Nominet to ask if they would release the name. Nominet tried everything to contact the owners who are listed as a dissolved company.

Last Wednesday my contact in Nominet agreed to lift the 'Do Not Cancel' notice at 4pm. Therefore the name would drop on Thursday. At this point I booked one of the forum members (a dropcatcher expert) here to concentrate on catching the name for Thursday.

On Friday morning Nominet called to say that 'for some reason' the 'Do Not Cancel' notice didn't remove on Wednesday afternoon and they must have 'pushed the wrong button'. Therefore the name would definately drop on Friday instead.

Friday afternoon my dropcatcher emailed to say someone had renewed the domain. I called Nominet who said the ISP lds.co.uk had renewed the domain and Nominet gave me a phone number for them.

I called the ISP who are putting the domain on their auction site with a starting price of 10,000 GBP.

rob · Oct 6, 2006

LDS will have some fun selling the name that they do not own

grantw · Oct 6, 2006

Indeed, I had my eye on this too. They cannot auction/sell the domain because they don't own it, unless they have done a deal with the previous owner and are transferring it over???

Grant

Creature · Oct 6, 2006

Owners

Seems they can do what they want as it was registered in 1997 as an individual. I don't know for sure though. The whois address is for the ISP but the Registrant is a disolved company.

tifosi · Oct 6, 2006

This is pretty concerning. If lds - as the tag holder (irrespective of ISP or not) is not the registrant of the domain i.e not Classic Choice Furnishings
then they should not be allowed to transfer the registration.

They can't do it through the automaton, and so it can only be done through Nominets paperwork.

If Classic Choice Furnishings is a liquidated company then LDS have, as I understand it, an obligation to tell Nominet to activate the domain as detagged/suspended.

Any attempt to transfer the domain would afaik be fraudulent.... especially if they are attemptning to make a reseller fee out of it.

Nominet lurk... if not always post, but maybe Jay could comment on this.

Seems they can do what they want as it was registered in 1997 as an individual. I don't know for sure though.

Post 1996 they are obligated to Nominets terms and policies.

rob · Oct 6, 2006

Creature said:
Seems they can do what they want as it was registered in 1997 as an individual. I don't know for sure though.

The owners can auction it off however the ISP cannot.

The owner could prove long term use and do a registration correction to change the registrant from classic furnishings to bob jones etc.

Creature · Oct 6, 2006

Owners

The listed owners at Nominet are:

MAGENKO LIMITED
Company No. 02785983

This is a disolved company. The company changed names at companies house to

CLASSIC CHOICE FURNISHINGS LIMITED
Company No. 05037371

Classic Choice Furnishings are a 'dormant' company.

rob · Oct 6, 2006

The other side of the coin is if you ran that company and had always used that domain (I have not researched this so not a clue if this is the case) and due to a paperwork cock up the name was not transferred ages ago.

The above scenario is when the registration correction occurs, however I am not sure if Nominet go through with it if they only concern is to renew to sell on, rather than for real use by the correcting company.

Creature · Oct 6, 2006

Company

Classic Choice Furnishings were disolved by the directors in January this year and the managers of that company bought sofachoice.co.uk. A Nominet transfer did start but it was never completed.

Creature · Oct 6, 2006

update

So lds will never sell this name because I have contacted the rightful owners who knew nothing about an auction.

How shite are Nominet? A bit of digging around and I find the owners.

rob · Oct 6, 2006

Creature said:
So lds will never sell this name because I have contacted the rightful owners who knew nothing about an auction.

How shite are Nominet? A bit of digging around and I find the owners.

Shame you couldnt buy the name for £10k from LDS and watch them squirm / carry out a dodgy transfer

Creature · Oct 6, 2006

sofas

^ If I had any brains then I would have contacted the rightful owners and asked if they would like me to arange for them to own the name for 1k. Since they sell sofas they probably would have gone for that! If only I had a higher IQ !

retired_member12 · Oct 6, 2006

Whereas the other web address listed on the sofasdirect.co.uk website for 1999 (classicchoice.co.uk) has now been re-directed to sofachoice.co.uk

Classicchoice.co.uk has a different registrant to sofasdirect.co.uk

At the end of the day, sofasdirect.co.uk is still registered to the original registrant, or rather it has not been transferred to the ISP/TAG Holder. Also, the registrant can appoint anyone they wish to act as an agency seller, especially if they want to keep a distance from any interested party. What i can see is that Nominet's WHOIS still shows the same registrant. Doing their job, i'd say!