As it seems, “ideal.pk” was sold on Sedo for 98,999 USD and then expired sometime in 10 years of registration. Probably the owner forgot to renew it, and it went to the general public to grab. Whoever could do the fastest at first-come, first-serve basis, or probably whoever find out the first, and the domain sat there for long, and eventually some guy figures out the golden pocket or whatever the case might be. The domain got under someone else’s hand, and that guy is now the legible owner of it. That’s the bottom line. And you will have to settle with that.
However, the problem is that there’s no real way of checking a domain if it is approaching any expiry or will be released soon, except you manually going to the PKNIC and checking the domain by typing it that if the following domain is going to be up for resale by anyone. In other words, at least I’m not aware of any tool or registry openly giving you that information except by the bigger registrars who may have API access. Except, sometimes, and from time to time, PKNIC does hold some auctions, which are only available to those who already own at least a couple of domains under their PKNIC existing account. I’m not saying it will remain the same all the time, and things might be changing. But regardless of how much you may have paid for your domain for the aftermarket price, paying your annual dues is still very important. You can pay up to 10 years in advance. I believe you can keep going in a set of 10 years blocks as much as you can afford. I’ve seen at least one domain paid up to 2045. I will have to find it again one day.
If you have a critical domain, you’ll have to take extra care of it. Once the domain name is released from your account, you can not recover it as long as it hasn’t passed two months deadline after the expiration date. A few years ago, there was no notification from the registrars in Pakistan, but now you get reminders to renew your domain.
| ideal.pk | 98,999 USD | 2007-04-05 | Sedo |
Basically, it is only the domain owner’s fault. He should have paid his dues on time and do his own basic due diligence.
But some lucky guy is holding on to it now. I don’t know the real story, but that’s what it sounds like. So my advice to anyone having a .PK domain is to keep checking the validity of your domain from time to time. Don’t just pay the domain annual cost in advance and forget it. I’ve seen many domains go to the expirations or sometimes domain auctions due to this reason, including my own; some of the excellent ones. When the domain name is released, it no longer belongs to you. This is a global policy all across the world, not something new for Pakistan.
So please, pay up your dues and keep a watchful eye on your assets that will continue to grow over time.
