American Express’ domain expires in about six weeks. Here are other companies that need to pay attention.

Regions Bank, part of a Fortune 500 company, let its domain name registration expire over the weekend. As a result, thousands of customers were unable to conduct online banking transactions.

Generally, when a domain expires and is taken offline, that also means emails to and from employees won’t be delivered as well.

In other words: letting your domain expire is a big screw up.

I just ran a check on the 2012 Fortune 100 list to see now many of them have their key domain name expiring in 2013. 156 companies have domains set to expire, and some as early as six weeks from now.

The good news is that almost all of these companies use a brand protection registrar such as CSC or MarkMonitor. Presumably, these registrars have safeguards in place to auto-renew key domains. I also doubt they take a domain offline the moment it expires. (New rules that go into effect August 31 will require registrars to cause a DNS interruption at some point in the expiration/deletion process.)

That said, if you’re American Express, why haven’t you already renewed your domain for another 10 years? Big brands should make sure they never have a key domain expiring within 12 months. That’s the kind of safeguard I’d add if I ran one of these companies.

Here’s the full list:

Company, Domain, Expiration

American Express americanexpress.com 6/3/2013
Ingram Micro ingrammicro.com 6/26/2013
Lowe’s lowes.com 6/28/2013
Coca-Cola coke.com 7/6/2013
New York Life Insurance newyorklife.com 7/10/2013
Goldman Sachs Group goldmansachs.com 7/25/2013
Berkshire Hathaway berkshirehathaway.com 9/5/2013
Lockheed Martin lockheedmartin.com 10/11/2013
Johnson & Johnson jnj.com 10/31/2013
MetLife metlife.com 11/13/2013
Delta Air Lines delta.com 11/22/2013
FedEx fedex.com 11/29/2013
United Continental Holdings United.com 12/16/2013
Liberty Mutual Insurance Group liberymutual.com 12/16/2013
Bank of America Corp. bankofamerica.com 12/27/2013

Update: I missed one. Cardinal Healthcare’s domain Cardinal.com expires in October.

For companies that have multiple sites but a key consumer facing one, I ran the check on their key consumer facing web site (e.g. coke.com for Coca-Cola).

Head of eBusiness for bank explains that company let domain expire and apologizes to customers.

Hopefully this video saves other companies from letting their domain names expire.

Over the weekend Regions Bank let its domain name expire, which took its entire web site offline. It quickly renewed the domain name, but any sort of downtime for a bank of this size (1,700 branches) is more than an “uh-oh”.

Can you imagine the questions you’d receive from the CEO if your business unit was responsible for renewing the domain name?

I’m sure it was painful for Chris Cox, head of eBusiness for Regions. Below is a video Regions posted in which Cox explains the mistake and apologizes to customers.

Perhaps something good will come of this. Perhaps some CEO will see this video and ask his CTO, CMO, and the rest of the c-suite if they have a redundant plan to make sure their domain name – one of their most important but inexpensive assets – doesn’t expire.

Domain expired in January and wasn’t renewed despite plenty of warning.

The official site for Medicaid, the U.S. health program for lower income families and individuals, is Medicaid.gov.

But you can bet many people looking for information about the program type in Medicaid.com instead of .gov. Up until January 29th, the U.S. government helpfully forwarded Medicaid.com to Medicaid.gov…

Then it let the domain expire.

Last month Tennessee company Medx Publishing Inc, which also owns the domain name Medicare.com, acquired the domain name.

Between January 29th and March 22, the approximate date when Medx became owner, the government had plenty of warning to renew the domain, thanks to domain investor Josh Pelissero.

Pelissero contacted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the entity that manages the programs a the federal level, and inquired if the domain was for sale since it hadn’t been renewed yet.

Sorry, he was told. The feds don’t sell domains.

Pelissero persisted, but was repeatedly told ‘no’.

“You realize,” he informed them, “that if you just let it expire then someone else will register the domain and you won’t get any money.”

Finally he got word that the domain would be renewed.

Except it never was.

On or shortly before March 22, the domain was transferred to Medx. The domain doesn’t appear to have been auctioned on NameJet.

Medx Publishing Inc. confirmed to Domain Name Wire that it had acquired the domain name and was in the process of figuring out its plans for the domain. The company’s Medicare.com domain has a lead gen form for health coverage, general Medicare information, and ads.

Pelissero has since heard from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that the renewal didn’t occur due to what was essentially a bureaucratic delay.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has not responded to an emailed request from Domain Name Wire.

Rules mandate practices to protect domain name registrants.

The new “Expired Registration Recovery Policy” (ERRP) goes into effect August 31.

This policy sets guidelines for how registrars treat expired domain names and how they must notify customers that their domains are expiring.

Most notably, the rules will require expiration notices be sent at particular intervals and mandate that DNS resolution be interrupted after expiration.

Domain registrars will be required to send an expiration notice about one month before expiration and another one a week before expiration. A notice is also generally required five days after expiration.

Registrars must also interrupt the DNS of an expired domain for a specific timeframe. This is common practice today — a registrar will change the nameservers to point to a parked page with a notice about how to renew the domain. This disruption quickly gets the attention of the registrant if they didn’t know their domain was expiring.

ERRP also requires a 30 day redemption grace period on non-sponsored gTLDs and requires registrars to publish pricing and information about recovering a domain during this period.

The new rules include some suggest best practices. One is that registrars keep a customer email address on file that is not connected to the registered URL so that email can still be received when the DNS is disrupted.

NameJet selected as best service for expired domain names.

When it comes to snagging expired domain names, NameJet gets top billing amongst domain investors.

33% of respondents in Domain Name Wire’s 8th annual survey said NameJet is the best expired domain service.

NameJet, a partnership between Demand Media and Web.com, has exclusive access to the expired domain stream from some of the older registrars including Web.com companies Network Solutions and Register.com. That means it often has exclusive auctions for some of the older and better domain names.

It was a toss up for second best, with Go Daddy barely edging out SnapNames.

1. NameJet 33%
2. Go Daddy 25%
3. SnapNames 23%
4. Pool 6%

13% voted for other drop catching services.