As a note? The .tv domain is unregistered. Still not sure what the user's angle was.

Assuming s/he was lying about them having been dropped (what time does that GMT translate to?),

Not so much lying, as fudging heartily -- they did drop, and spamboy snapped 'em up. Unless I'm miscalculating, 22:00 GMT translates to 2 pm board time.

and my registrar is operating from outdated records, since it's letting me register the domain name (it does tell me that the .com is unavailable, though).

Dunno about the records. I did the whois lookup through my hosting service's site (http://www.westhost.com, ftr), which is scary fast about the updates -- enough so that if I change DNS info, I hit refresh in another window, and it's there, without waiting an hour or a day or whenever for the next update.

I do know that if you try to register something that someone else has snapped up, you get a "we're sorry, but someone else registered that name before you did" message instead of being allowed to register it.

What happens now, and how does that user get my money?

Pure speculation? They're counting on someone who doesn't know the registration process very well, and assumes that the domain name in the username is the place to go register it. I'm also guessing that they sent that message to every Buffy site to be found on Google, so even if we know the score, someone else doesn't.

As a note? The .tv domain is unregistered. Still not sure what the user's angle was.

My registrar doesn't list .tv, so I wasn't able to look that one up. My assumption was that it'd be the same story as the .us.

Amych, I realised I'd been working the .tv while you were working the .us.

As of all my posts, .tv was unregistered.

It's possible I'm too techie to be a good target, but the idea of buying a domain from someone who hasn't said they're for sale didn't occur to me. I didn't even read the username until later.

It's possible I'm too techie to be a good target

Yeah, know that feeling. The idea of buying a domain from anyone random doesn't generally occur to me, and I'm not sure it would have if someone didn't say "hey, isn't that spam?".

But do you think a non-techie would assume that the username was the place to go register?

It's perfectly possible that that's precisely what the poster wanted. It isn't however, what the poster said. So I think the reaction somewhat unwarranted.

I'm amazed that anyone would get a mortgage from a company that can't spell "mortgage".

It isn't however, what the poster said. So I think the reaction somewhat unwarranted.

But -- at least with the .us one -- it's apparent that the poster was "fudging heartily" (love that phrase).

The two domains were .us and a .biz.

.tv didn't enter into it.

Sorry. .biz is available.

it's apparent that the poster was "fudging heartily" (love that phrase).

Sure. Or they were doing a mass notification and hadn't checked to see if the domain had been registered in the meanwhile.

I know we don't have to be all about reasonable doubt, or anything, but I still think if it's a spam, it's the world's lamest.

if it's a spam, it's the world's lamest.

No quarrel there. Just pretty sure it is one, over here.

Or they were doing a mass notification and hadn't checked to see if the domain had been registered in the meanwhile.

Huh? In amych's post above, the registrant's email is listed as admin@<the-user-id-of-the-spammer>. Where's the doubt?