Pool sold Shoppers.com for over $166,000 this week, but the name should have been exclusive to NameJet.
[Updated 10:24 CST] Pool.com landed a whale this week, catching
Shoppers.com and selling it for $166,000 through its auction. Although
the value of the domain is debatable,
the bigger question is how Pool landed the domain since it was
registered at Network Solutions, which has an exclusive relationship
with NameJet for expired domains.One rumor was that the domain was deleted due to invalid whois
information. That isn’t true. The domain had a private registration at
Network Solutions until late last year, when its email changed to
novaildemail@verisign.com [sic, notice the wrong spelling of
valid.] This suggests that the domain had incorrect whois information.
However, the domain had an expiration date of October 28, 2007, so the
domain did expire.
Source: Domain Name Wire
I looked into this pretty deeply. I was the one who reported that it must of dropped due to invalid whois, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. I watched the whois, the day it dropped and the expire date showed 2008 just like all NetSol domains do when they expire etc.
With the exclusive agreement with NetSol/NameJet there was no reason for this domain to go to Pending Delete, so I disagree that it “just expired”.