Last week, I was searching for available blog names (and its corresponding domain names). I consider myself a “late bloomer” as I caught up with blogging a bit late. So what’s my point? My point is most of the cool blog names are already taken. Then, I thought of “blogmachina.com”. Alas, it was available!

I like the way GoDaddy gives you alternative names (this is useful when your desired name is already taken and you might want to pick a name that closely resembles it) when searching/checking for domain names so I tried GoDaddy’s search tool. Good Lord, it’s available. For reasons I don’t need to divulge here, I also checked the availability of “blogmachina” in Network Solutions. Predictably, it also was available.

I went to Host Monster to sign up for a shared hosting account but I didn’t have the sufficient balance on my credit card. That same day, I paid my bill to increase my balance but sadly my payment was reflected only after 24 hours. The next day, I signed up again. Can you guess what happened? “blogmachina.com” wasn’t available. I couldn’t believe it so I tried checking the name again in Network Solutions. It is available. What’s going on here?

It seems that Network Solutions bought the name and is reselling it. The problem is, when you search for the name, it tells you that it costs only $9 per year.  But when you proceed with the checkout (without signing up for hosting), it suddenly becomes $34.99 per year!

What’s goin’ on here???