So I received a exciting email from GoDaddy this weekend stating I could “Get www.Julian.com for 25% off” and I was shocked. Not only is it a common name and most likely in high demand, but it was on sale? But of course there is fine print when you see the “**” so what did that say?
Ok, so I think at this point they put this because they send out enough emails to people with the name Julian that it is “first come first serve” and I may be late to the game.
So I rush over the GoDaddy and make it through their advertisements and finally get to the Domain Search. The results of the search were as expected:
Someone beat me to this great deal, my hopes were not shot because they were not really high to begin with, but then I saw something that made me a little sick. (Whois record from GoDaddy)
Not only did someone beat me to it, but they beat me by NEARLY 14 YEARS!!! This domain was never available, nor have the owners even come close to their expiration date (5 months is a long time).
Moral of the story is that even though the economy is in the toilet right now, this does not mean companies should move to blatant lies to sell product or retrieve advertising impressions. Their hopes were that I would go to the site and see it was taken and go “Gosh, I guess I will buy one of these like domains,” when the real fact is that this domain was never for sale.