An excited domain name customer contacted me the other day. His .BIZ domain had expired and he’d just spent nearly $200 restoring it.

The next day he looked up the WHOIS database for his domain and broke into a cold sweat. Nothing had changed – his domain still showed it had expired back in October! And his domain was not in his account.

So where had all his money gone? Was this another domain name scam?

Happily no.

Our registrar partners got back to me reporting that for some reason the .BIZ registry takes around 24 hours to actually restore an expired domain.

Then after that, they ‘hold’ the domain (even for renewals) for 5 more days.

Why? Nobody seems to know.

I looked up the .BIZ registry web site at http://www.Neulevel.biz. It appears to be totally silent on the subject of expired domains.

Wake up Neulevel, update quicker please and keep us better informed!