SUBMITTED: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
POSTED: Thursday, September 25, 2008
OK first...they didnt buy out the company you were with....The company you were with went out of business. And all their customers would have been left in the dark with no way to get to or renew their domains or hosting, but luckily DomainsPricedRight.com instead took over all those accounts so that would not happen. An email would have been sent to you informing you of this, if you didnt get it then you didnt check the right email.
Next in the "Domain Name Registration Agreement" that you had to agree to in order to buy your domain it states -
"If You fail to renew Your domain name, You agree that Domains Priced Right may, at its sole discretion, renew Your expired domain name on Your behalf. If Domains Priced Right decides to renew Your expired domain name on Your behalf, You will have a Renewal Grace Period during which You may reimburse Domains Priced Right for the renewal and keep Your domain name. The Renewal Grace Period is currently 12 days but subject to change under the terms of Section 2 of this Agreement. If You do not reimburse Domains Priced Right for the renewal during the Renewal Grace Period Your domain name will be placed on Hold and flagged for deletion after which You will have a 30 day redemption period during which You may pay Domains Priced Right a Redemption fee and redeem Your domain name. The Redemption fee is currently $80 USD and is subject to change under the terms of Section 2 of this agreement. If You do not redeem Your domain name prior to the end of the 30 day redemption period Domains Priced Right may, at its sole discretion, delete Your domain name or transfer it to another registrant on Your behalf.
If Your domain is deleted, the Registry also provides a 30 day Redemption Grace Period during which You may pay Domains Priced Right a redemption fee and redeem Your domain name. The redemption fee is currently $80 USD and is subject to change under the terms of Section 2 of this agreement. If You do not redeem Your domain name prior to the end of the Registry's Redemption Grace Period the Registry will release Your name and it will become available for registration on a first-come-first-served basis."
This is stated in the very first section of the agreement.
here is a link to their legal agreements.
https://www.securepaynet.net/gdshop/agreements.asp?prog_id=domainspricedright&ci=1911&isc=gppgrs01
Also the reason your redemption fee was more was because Im guessing and pretty sure you had privacy attached to your domain to block the whois information from showing your personal information. That is usually an extra $8 to $15 for that service.
And yes this is the same agreement that your other company used also....basically all these companies are resellers for a company called Wild West Domains.
www.wildwestdomains.com , that is why all of them have the same basic layout
and they all use the same agreements.
Also since your domain did expire, remember that they would have emailed you at least 6 notices letting you know it was up for renewal. These would have been sent to the email address you gave them when you signed up, if you didnt get them then you were checking the wrong email address.
They send notices at 3 months, 2 months, 1 month and then 3 weeks, 2 weeks and 1 week before the domain expires...you will also get a notice on the day it expires and if it was not renewed. So you would have had plenty of chances to keep the domain from expiring and going into redemption.