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).
amazed not shocked says
probably has set to autorenew for years.
Interesting.
This article as a follow-up probably could stand on its own solely on how many fortune 100 renew domain annually vs years in advance.
Fun research
Jesse says
Even then card numbers may change and they expire. Its best just to buy 10 years if it is a domain you never plan on ridding yourself of.
DR.DOMAIN says
What would be more fascinating is mass firings at a F500 IP department for being “asleep at the switch”…should any of the key domains expire.
Andrew Allemann says
I assume/hope that this is a mistake companies make only once in their lifetime. But at most once every 10 years.
At least Regions took responsibility, unlike backup service CrashPlan:
https://domainnamewire.com/2009/10/20/domain-registrars-often-blamed-for-customers-mistakes/
Ms Domainer says
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Large companies need to start hiring domain name specialists whose job is to keep corporate domain names up-to-date, to register and acquire new product domains, to monitor TM squatters, and to file UDRP where appropriate and NOT file when it’s not warranted.
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Andrew Allemann says
@ Ms Domainer – they usually outsource this to specialists such as MarkMonitor and CSC.
Adam says
CSC (or possibly their client) has been asleep behind the wheel previously.
http://www.domainnamenews.com/legal-issues/pfizer-drops-domains-wins-udrp/5261
Ted says
@ Adam: Isn’t CSC a domain name renewal provider? How could they let these domain names expire? I’d be p*****d!
great article!
Zoot says
How can these massive companies with teams of lawyers “looking out for them” and IT teams supporting them be so irresponsible with such important properties?
NovyTimm says
I’ve sat on the boards for two companies that let valuable domains lapse, and in both cases I warned the board about it. It didn’t make me feel better that I could say “I told you so.” OK, maybe a little better.
In both cases this happened when the “tech guy” in charge of their domains leaves the company, and so the domain expiration notices are emailed to an invalid address. Also in both cases, the company didn’t setup a “catchall” email address, so the notices were never seen by anyone in the company. And finally in both cases, because the domains weren’t trademarked (and the companies weren’t super rich) they did not bother to get the domains back.
I would’ve tried to catch them on the drop if I would’ve known the companies would mess this up. But then I would’ve likely been responsible to return the domain to the company instead of selling them for a nice profit.
Zoot says
There is so much disconnect in large corps + Execs tend to be clueless as to the impotance of domains. Also … I think what you mentioned about dead or filtered emails is a key factor.
Andy says
@Ms Domainer I disagree with you, it should come as a first come first served, just because you have TM or an R to a name should not entitle you to have every domain name or get first choice. Example I would be upset if AFN 4×4 would to register all of the afn domain names, that means none of the websites would exists, like afn.me (All Free Now, my website) afn.org (Alachua Freenet, hosts other people’s website), afn.ca (Assembly of First Nations), ect
(AFN 4×4’s website is afn.pt)
Andy says
@NovyTimm Before a domain name expires and is put back in to the pool for anyone to register, there are a few things that happen so if these companies do not take any steps to renew their domain name and I register it, than sorry but oh well because they had plenty opportunities to keep the domain name before the expiration date. Also some of these companies have their contact information hidden, and I am not going to look though archives to find out if it’s possible to tell them you want your domain name because they failed to renew it again.
When a domain name expires, I believe they send you e-mails, send you a letter though mail, if the name still have not been renewed they put a error message that displays telling the site owner needs to renew it, , if no action is still taken than the domain name disable and the domain name links to a parked page, by then they should have been on top to renew their domain name, possibly paying a renewal fee after it is past it’s renewal date, all before it is put back into the pool for anyone to register again. I maybe wrong but they have plenty of opportunities to renew a domain name for anyone else can register it again.
Andrew Allemann says
American Express took the advice: it just renewed for 10 years. Coke also renewed for 10 years.