I got a call from a client the other day, the leader of a band which has been pretty successful here on LI for the last couple of years. They finally hooked up with an agency that is going to put them on a national theater/casino/corporate circuit, with one caveat - their name includes the word ‘Billboard,’ and the agent said once they got out into the corporate world they’d invariably get hit with a cease & desist from Billboard magazine.

So they decided to change the name to the ‘Rock and Roll Road Show,’ and they tasked me with trying to land the domain name for their planned new site. I did a WHOIS search in order to contact the domain name owner. The contact pointed to a GoDaddy page with a button that said ‘Buy This Domain!’ - with a price tag of $70! I talked to the client and told him that 70 bucks was way steep for a domain name these days. I had already acquired a .net domain for the site (for 12 bucks), but was told that the band was insistent on getting the .com (the girfriend of the lead singer does web sites ‘on the side,’ and she got in their ears telling them that a .net was no good, they simply had to get the .com).

Fair enough. Went back to GoDaddy and plonked down the 70 bucks to buy the domain name. Done, right?

Nope.

I got a followup email from GoDaddy, welcoming me to their ‘Domain Buy’ program. Turns out I didn’t buy the domain name with the 70 bucks, I bought the right to enter into negotiations with the domain name owner to buy the domain. This gives me the rights to enter a bid between $250 and $2500 to buy the domain name from the owner.

Back on the phone with the client, to emphasize yet again that having a .com is pretty much a non-factor nowadays, and while I thought paying $70 for a domain name was crazy, paying up to $2500 was just stupid.

I won the argument and they said to just go with the .net. I called GoDaddy, and judging by the speed with which they refunded the $70 I’d say they probably get a fair amount of complaints about their ‘Domain Buy’ program.