I’ll contact the owner on Monday to renew his domain.

The Registry (Verislime) auto-renews and the Registrar has 45 days to release the name back to the Registry (by the Delete command) and recover the registry costs for the name. If this happens, the name is put into Redemption for another 30 days (by the Registry, not the Registrar as some mistakenly suppose) but only if the Registrar actually deletes the name. Some Registrars (like GoDiddy) test the sales value of the name before the 45 day window has elapsed and, if it gets interest, actually sell the name to another party. Should a name not get interest, it is deleted back to the Registry, the Registrar recovers the Registry fees and the name continues on through the RGP death march until it is finally released back to the wild.

Basically, names “Auto Renew” at the Registry level and the Registry whois output will always reflect that, regardless of what the Registrar’s feed says. However, it is the Registrar’s data that is the one to watch on this one, it shows expired. The Registrar is actually trying to sell it, so they obviously have reason to believe it was not renewed by the Registrant.

Confusing the Registry Output with the Registrar output is a common mistake and that line in whatever whois source you quoted is only the Registry’s output. Basically meaningless in this situation.

The problem here is that the name was never de-activated, so the Registrant does not realize there is an issue. Emails get lost all the time. ISP’s sometimes lose stuff into ever changing spam filter algorithms too, so it is conceivable that the Registrant never saw that his CC was expired and the name did not actually renew as planned.

But the de-activation of the domain is crucial, IMO, to ensure the Registrant truly receives notice that his name needs attention – I’d say having your website/domain not resolve for 30 days would be considered constructive notice, wouldn’t you? To NOT de-activate names and then sell them off like this, no matter what the time frame is, is an egregious breach on GoDaddy’s part. This basically screams that they are more interested in selling a client’s domain to someone else for more money than to protect the Registrant’s interest.

If one looks closely on the “top” area of the whois -

ICANN Registrar: WILD WEST DOMAINS, INC.
Created: 2003-06-24
Expires: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2009-06-29
Registrar Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Registrar Status: clientRenewProhibited

So it looks like it was renewed, but I don’t think it was recorded or updated in GD’s records.

Yes, it is expired. Yes it still resolves. Yes, that is an F’d up thing to do to someone as a Registrar…

“No, sir.. your domain was expired and we sold it”
“But it was working just fine yesterday…”
“Too bad sir. Thank you for calling customer service.”

This maybe one of those companies that wakes up one day to find there site gone, sold at auction.