Well it took me a while, longer than it should have, but I’ve finally got back in my possession my Extreme Maps domain name (extrememaps.net) after Michael Walmsley from Leigh of Lancashire in England who started up a web hosting company called webmanage and then oversubscribed his reseller account to too many people causing him to be shut down by his reseller company thus making me and many others out of pocket as we had no hosting or domains because it was all under his name!

He was contacted many times by many people but every time they asked Michael Walmsley about their hosting and why it was down he said I don’t know what your on about I never started up any hosting company called webmanage and then blocked them on msn!

Before the hosting got shut down we did find out that he’s only 15 though he didn’t really want to admit it as he knew people would be cross that a 15 year old was running their websites, I only decided to stay though because it wasn’t expensive, but look where it got me more than half a year without my precious domain name.

I still have Michael Walmsley’s phone number and address somewhere I do believe maybe I should contact his parents and tell them, though I have much to believe that they won’t care!

Anyway as I knew the domain name was to expire on the 11th March 2006 I set up a domain backorder for it in the hope of getting it back, the 11th of march came and I was hoping to get it but to by surprise it seemed that I could not get it because apparently the domain name has to be put on hold for more than a month or so just in case the domain name is re-registered by the existing owner!

So I started my wait again that is until I noticed some changes in the domain register information on whois, I check it out and it was now saying that the static host owned it, I remember this company I thought, it’s the company Michael used for his hosting/domain names before he went down.

So I rapidly emailed them the following:

Dear Sir/Madam,
 
A year ago I brought the domain name extrememaps.net from Michael Walmsley of webmanage, and all was going fine until about half way through the year when the “kid”, a lot of people didn’t know he was a kid at the time, took all his hosting plans offline along with our domains.
 
So I’ve been without my domain name extrememaps.net for a more than half a year now, now before the domain was about to expire I tried to contact Michael Walmsley and failed because unfortunately he says that he never started a hosting company, a lie of course!
 
So I thought my best bet would be to set up a backorder for it in the hope of getting back, I also contacted yourselves via your msn messenger support system to talk about him, but you said it wasn’t your problem but knew what troubles he had caused by over subscribing the amount of disk space/bandwidth he gave out!
 
Anyway the domain name was suppose to expire on the 11-Mar-2006 but you normal have to wait around 75 days before you can re-register it with a backorder so I would end up getting the domain name back in April of this year, but today I received a godaddy email telling me that the domain name had been re-registered! *shocked*
 
So I went to check out the whois to find out who had re-registered my domain name and have come to find out that your company has re-registered the domain name extrememaps.net,
 
http://whois.sc/extrememaps.net
 
Now I would like to ask you if I can have my domain name transferred back to me as clearly it was bought by me even though mike registered it!
 
I am willing to pay to have it transferred but that is about it because I don’t want to sound bad but as I see it the domain name is mine and I can prove it with Search Engine Cache!
 
Please contact me as soon as possible.
 
Any information you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
 
Best regards,
Darren Straight

I got back the following reply:

Hello Darren,

The domain extrememaps.net is registered through us, and is set to expire on March 11, 2006. It has not been renewed.

You can either renew it through us for £5 or transfer it elsewhere. What would you like to do?
Best Regards,

Steve McManus
*StaticHost Sales Department*
http://www.statichost.co.uk/

So I emailed him back:

Thanks for the quick reply, please could I transfer.

Best Regards,
Darren Straight

And then I got another reply:

Hi Darren,

I’ve just noticed that since it has past March 11, 2006, it is no longer available to be transferred as it has been deactivated. We will be able to renew it for £5 which will reactivate it and add a year to it’s registration. You will then be free to transfer it out to another company.

Please let me know what you would like to do.
Best Regards,

Steve McManus
StaticHost Sales Department
http://www.statichost.co.uk/

So I emailed him back once again with the following:

Hi Steve,
 
Yeah I thought it was a bit odd when you said “is set to expire on March 11, 2006” as it’s already passed that date, anyway yes the £5 renewal is fine, how would you like me to register and how would you like me to pay.
 
Best Regards,
Darren Straight

And after that it was just a case of paying him and then wating for it to be renewed so I could transfer it to my current domain company.

the overal process took a week but I’m a very happy bunny right now so I would like to give a big Thanks to Steve McManus at the StaticHost Sales Department for getting my domain back! 😀

So what happens now?

Well I could start up my Half-Life 2 Map Community Website once again but I thought of a better idea, why not let my brother have it and do something with it as he’s always wanted to start up a proper website community and well as he’s doing a Half-Life Map based on Metal Gear at the moment he’s in a great position to do something, I also heard that my friend Henrik is getting back into mapping for Half-Life 2 now so if my brother does do this website he will already have a place waiting for him!

Anyway what ever happens I’m just glad that I’ve got my domain name Extrememaps.net back!]