Ask HN: What to do when arbitrarily losing a ccTLD domain?

[firekvz]

I owned a domain under a ccTLDs, the domain was in perfect condition, no where near to be expired, it was showing a white index (was not in use), it was a complety generic word (no copyright infringement), it was not an offensive domain, etc.. In other words the domain did not break any point in the TOS; it was just a complety regular domain.

Today, I was checking my domains panel and noticed the domain was gone, I inmediatly ran a whois on said domain and it is now owned by a goverment organization, I was never notificated or emailed about the situation. There was absolutely no reason for for it to be taken away from me. This was a clear arbitrary action.

So far I still have had no communication with the NIC that handles this ccTLDs, I am trying to get all the info I can about this before I do it, I've had problems with this NIC before and I want to be prepared, the flow of communication with them is really poor and I've seen them do really "unprofessional" processes/actions before and I am really worried here.

So, how should I appeal/complaint?, is this normal on other ccTLDs? is there a higher international instance that I can contact? Did any of you had a similar experience?

Thank you!

[petercooper]

I appreciate you might not want to share the domain name itself, but are you able to share which TLD it was? Someone had major problems with .cd the other day and it might be useful for dodgy TLDs to be avoided.

[firekvz → petercooper]

It's a south american country ccTLD, managed by the government.

[sjs382]

Contact your registrar, see what they can do. You might get a refund.

Bad publicity is likely your only recourse.

What's the ccTLD, and what other "unprofessional processes/actions" have you seen?

[firekvz → sjs382]

There is no registrar, the domains are directly registered at the NIC website.. And about bad publicity, I dont really want to go into that path just yet. I want to try to find a "legal" path

Well, their support is horrible, answering emails every other day, no phone support. Their system doesn't delete domains when they expire, there are people who still owns domains years after they are expired. They have a bunch of bugs on their webpanel, domains that can't be registered even when they are expired/free, Broken DNS, etc.