Yesterday morning, shortly after waking up I hit the computer as usual. The coffee was brewing and I had not had a cup yet.

Perhaps it would be best from now on if I would get a cup of coffee or two in me before I look at my emails.

One of the emails was to inquire if a domain I owned was for sale. I don’t like making something up that is not consistent with the list price I have it listed for. The domain is listed on Sedo for $2,000.00.

I thought about the domain for a few seconds and remained steadfast at $2,000. The domain is a good strong Italian generic word.

I responded to the email with the price, thanked the person for the contact, hit send and – WHOA! tried to stop it from going. Instead of $2000 I mistakenly entered $200.

It was a bonehead and honest mistake. I immediately sent a second email apologizing for the error and gave the correct price of $2000.

Within a few minutes I got a response back from the interested party that stated;

Thank you for the quick response.

That’s okay on the correction because I couldn’t figure out how you could justify asking $200 to start with.

I should have felt bad for screwing up the first email but I didn’t after I got this response.

I am thinking to myself, Why would I have to justify this name? Obviously they know what it means or else they would not be interested.

I looked at the original and follow up email I received and did not see anything odd. There was something at the very bottom of the email about the company information, etc.

Then I noticed it.

It is the company’s name.

The company’s name was the same name of the sunject domain name with the word solutions added.

I am beginning to think that this has got to be a joke.

The domain name is one I purchased as expired close to 3 years ago and I believe it was about 3 years old at the time.  So we are looking at a domain that is somewhere between 5-7 years old and is a generic Italian word.

The company is based in England and its core business is exactly what the Italian word refers to. Their business is named (LLLLLLL)Solutions.

Why on earth would I have to justify asking $200.00 let alone $2,000.00? Or, another issue, is I can be expecting a WIPO or UDRP. The shame of it is that is a real possibility. It does not matter if this word is an Italian word or a generic word at all. What matters is  I have it and someone else wants it.

It is not bad faith involved. I speak some Italian, lived in Italy for 2.5 years when I was in the US Air Force, and my wife and I spent nearly three weeks in Italy celebrating our 20th Anniversary. When I saw the word available or would be available, I knew what it meant and I wanted it. The domain is currently parked and has never had anything to do with their company in terms of viewing their products or relating to their products. I have it parked with all Italian terms on it and it looks pretty good. And all the links showing are Italian.

It gets so-so traffic and a few clicks here and there.

The issue with Italian generics is the same thing that is happening to many European languages in dot com…they are losing in popularity to their cc counterparts. Look at what is going on with .de, .es, and how much the .nl or .at market is heating up.

The point is this is an Italian word and the Italians are going more and more for the .it extension. I just happened to have gotten a good Italian word which does not have a big demand for it from the Italians.

I take comfort in not having to justify anything especially when he felt like the $200 was too much.

Somehow I wonder if somewhere down the road this person will mention to someone higher up in the company that he had a change to buy (LLLLLLL).com for $2K but laughed it off.

I like the vision I have of a very busy office suddenly coming to a screeching halt, every one frozen in position, all heads turned around staring at this guy with mouths open, and he says, “What’s everyone looking at?”