How is this a scam, exactly?

You/your client allowed the domain name to expire and be deleted even though
that process takes a minimum of two months after the expiry date.  For at
least one of those months the nameservers would have been removed for the
name, rendering it inactive.  It clearly therefore wasn't in regular use
if that went unnoticed for a whole month.

Another party then registered the name, as they are perfectly entitled to,
and after you approached them they offered to sell it back to you for $280?
 If this is a name of significant value to your client then I would suggest
$280 is a very small price to pay to get it back.  Certainly much less than
a UDRP complaint or trademark infringement action in the courts, assuming
your client has any IP rights in the name in the first place.

The practice of registering names as they are deleted for non-renewal may
seem like an unpleasant business practice to many people, and it certainly
does appear to attract porn webmasters and other experts in the field of
web traffic manipulation, however it is an unavoidable byproduct of having
an open market with limited domain licences.  It is also a process often
used by trademark holders to register domain names initially registered
by 3rd parties that they believe infringe their trademarks.

If your clients are too "clueless" as you say to manage to keep their domain
names renewed (I presume however that they manage it every year with their
household insurance and car registration) then perhaps you should offer
them an auto-renewal service?

jon






>-- Original Message --
>From: "Tony Owen" <tony&#167;seol.net.au>
>To: ".au DNS Discussion List" <dns&#167;dotau.org>
>Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 12:59:10 +0930
>Subject: Re: [DNS] Time for the
>	rulestochangeregardingtransferringdomainnamelicences
>Reply-To: ".au DNS Discussion List" <dns&#167;dotau.org>
>
>
>> To have someone register it and try to sell it back to the original owner
>> is a bit dodgy, but really... how much opportunity does the existing

>> client
>> need?  Two months not enough?
>
>Unfortunately a large percentage of domain owners are clueless, a fact
of
>
>life has created the opportunites for people like DNA.
>
>Personally, I think a transfer fee (picking a random number ... $50) would
>
>stop a whole heap of these scams, and the revenue could be used to reduce
>
>the cost of the base registration fee.
>
>Looking at the scam I mentioned in the previous post .. $280 = approx 56
>
>registrations, so these guys only need 1 in 56 people to buy back their

>domain names to break even. If a transfer fee of $50 was charged they would
>
>need 1 in 5.
>
>Providing the revenue of a fee was used to reduce the registration fees,
>
>eveyone is a winner, arent they?
>
>Cheers Tony 
>
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