Retrieving expired .com domain - what to do?

I have clients who asked their previous designer to register three domains to them - example.co.uk, example.org.uk and example.com. Being entirely non-technically-minded, they assumed he’d done this, but he actually registered them in his own name. This only came to light earlier this year, when he moved away from the area and they asked me to take over the site. He’s not responded to any e-mails, either from them or from me, so we’ve had to start again with a new domain (theexample.org.uk).

The old site used the .com domain, and has recently expired. Am I correct in thinking that if nobody “back-orders” it in the next 60 days, it will become available to register again? It would be really useful to have it, either to redirect to the new domain, or to switch the site back to .com. I had a brief look at back-ordering it myself, but it’s something I’ve never been involved with, and it seems to be a very expensive way to go about getting the domain. The chances of anybody else wanting it are so remote as to be negligible (it’s for a small local charity) so I’m not worried about losing it, but the clients are on a very tight budget and can’t afford unnecessary expense.

Cannot say exactly what will happening with expiring domains. I saw several times before that eNom kept domains longer than 60 days. There are some other services which don’t do back-order, but they do register quickly. So, if you don’t want to back-order (I am not sure about the percentage of success either, cause I never do it before), make sure that you know the date/time that that domain will be deleted.

Also, don’t do whois checking frequently. Just do once and write down the date.

Thanks for your reply.

The whois doesn’t show when the “reactivation period” expires, only when the registration expired (15th May 2014), which I knew already. Namejet shows:

I don’t know if that really means anything or not.

the redemption rate at enom will be expensive.
try contact enom to check what they say.

Sorry - I don’t understand that. Contact them and see what they say about what? You’ve just said the redemption rate will be expensive. Surely if I contact them and let them know I want the domain, it will make them less likely to release it so I can get it at the standard rate?

Hard to know what will enom do. They can keep the domain and not release it. If you go with backorder service, there will be a backorder fee too…
since the domain is not popular, you can try to wait and hope that the domain can be releaqse back to the public market.

Is the domain still within ‘expired’ period (before it go to under redemption) ? ( etc just expired 1 week ago ?)

As I said above, it expired on 15th May and the whois shows it as in “reactivation period”.