A colleague of mine Paul Cherry from Boomerang.com.au gave me a heads up on some sneaky activity that Network Solutions have started do. It’s called Registrar Domain “Tasting” which is the practice of a registrar holding a domain when someone does an availability search. So if you search for a domain at Network Solutions, they will register it before you’ve even purchased it yourself and if you try and register it elsewhere it will be unavailable. You can then only register it from Network Solutions who then put the price up when you return to buy it off them the next day until they release it on day 5.
Try it yourself, goto Network Solutions and search for a domain - try something with 3 or 4 different words in it just so you can test it. Then do a availability search at Melbourne IT and do a search on the same domain name…
Basically there is a five day “Grace” period at the start of any domain registration which allows the registrar to refund a domain and return it back to the available domain pool. During this period you can check traffic stats, previous referrals and in this particular case, hold it ransom to get customers to buy only off them if they search for it.
Check out Domain Name News for more information about registrar domain “tasting”.