Ticketed TN Man buys Local PD Domain

They don’t mess around with domains lightly in Bluff City, Tennessee. Brian McCrary of Tennessee got a $90 ticket for speeding and when he went to the police website and saw the pending renewal notice, he floored his credit card and nabbed the domain when it dropped. The new site, online now at BluffCitypd.com, details speed trap camera information in that locale.

Talk about a speed trap on the information superhighway! McCrary got the perfect revenge. Suspecting he had been the victim of a speed trap, he initially approached the police website to complain. McCrary works for an ISP and ramped to Godaddy for a $80 pickup of the renewal status drop.

The story is attracting both domainer amusement and cynicism from Bluff City residents. Word is that until reporters started asking questions the police department didn’t even know their domain had expired. The uniques McCrary is now pulling in may top 90K. Police allege the site is merely revenge for the ticket and that aggressive ticketing has cut down on motor vehicle accidents.

Evidently the Godaddy domain expiration notification emails went to the account that had been allegedly hacked and closed or shut off. This story is a lesson to all sloppy webmasters who ignore their domaining responsibilities. In the year 2010, with the internet part of the everyday life of citizens worldwide, having a tech guy “out sick” is no excuse.

To register domains with NetworkSolutions just a waste of money?

I really don’t like NetworkSolutions mainly because of their expensive renewal prices. But unfortunately, I ended up having a few domains there because I won them at Namejet. They are charging around $34 per year for renewal and it is over 4 times that of Moniker or even Godaddy. It is just radiculous and outrageous pricing in this era. At Moniker, renewal fees is only around $8 per year and with Godaddy, it is even less then $8 per year if bulk pricing.

I have talked to the NetworkSolutions’ customer department but they said they charge more than others because their domain management is more secure. I don’t agree with that. With godaddy, you could arrange “extra security” feature “Free” by arranging with “account executive” and I bought MaxLock for domains at Moniker to be more secure. I am moving all the domains from NetworkSolutions either to Moniker or Godaddy and unless they (NetworkSolutions) change their pricing, they would lose more and more business in the long run to other big domain registeration companies.