Fiscal.com appeared to be destined for an expiry auction at GoDaddy earlier this week. The domain name auction was due to conclude on Monday afternoon, and bidding had surpassed the $30,000 mark. I was a participant in the auction (bidding over $30,000), and I was prepared to spend considerably more than the high bid. In fact, I had offered more for the domain name earlier this year.

The Fiscal.com auction disappeared from GoDaddy Auctions at some point between Sunday night and Monday. This was surprising because the domain name was registered at GoDaddy and there was less than 24 hours remaining in the auction. As far as I know, a 2017 change in how the expiry process works was supposed to ensure that GoDaddy-registered domain names that make it to 3 days or fewer in an auction with bids can no longer be renewed by the registrant since the redemption period had passed.

From my own recollection, this doesn’t seem to happen very often. I wrote about one instance where this happened earlier this year involving the ChicagoPizza.com domain name. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall a high value domain name that was registered at GoDaddy that was pulled from auction with less than a few days remaining. Of course, a registrant should be able to renew a domain name for as long as the registrar allows.

Vito noticed that Fiscal.com had been removed from auction, and he tweeted to ask what happened:

What happened to one of the best 1-word domain names we’ve seen on auction in months?https://t.co/0bElRx6tQm was ending tomorrow @godaddyauctions and was at about 35k just coupla hrs ago.

Gone Now. pic.twitter.com/EKyyRBj1J7

— Vito (@VitoDotTV) August 17, 2021

I had also emailed GoDaddy representatives to find out what occurred since I had been monitoring the auction and was a bidder.

Last night, Paul Nicks, GM & VP of theAftermarket at GoDaddy, responded to Vito’s tweet to share what he learned about this auction:

Hey Vito, the domain was redeemed to the original registrant beyond when it would typically be able. There was a server issue that didn’t allow the day 30 post expriation process to run normally, so the option to redeem remained alive beyond day 30.

— Paul Nicks (@PaulENicks) August 18, 2021

It’s disappointing to lose out on the opportunity to bid on an exceptional domain name like this. I presume GoDaddy would also rather have the auction revenue than the renewal revenue.