When you own your own business, the worst thing that can happen to you in today's online world is to see one of your unhappy customers register your business' domain name to smear your reputation and business name in front of the online community.

This is exactly what recently happened to Encore Exotics, a small "not so honest" luxury car dealership in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. An amazing story in this day and age...

Encore Exotic's advertising strategy had been to use a variety of well known car portals to advertise their line of used luxury vehicles, instead of owning their own domain name and web site.

That business strategy worked out well until an unhappy customer decided to register a derivative domain name of their business name, www.encore-exotics.com, in order to publish negative comments about his car purchasing experience with Encore Exotics.

Right or wrong, this car dealer has just joined the 21st century in a hurry and will think twice about leaving their business domain name unregistered and in the hands of upset customers.

They should have registered their "premium" domain name a long time ago, but instead www.encoreexotics.com, is currently a parking page and registered by Bradley Creger of Loris of South Carolina. It would be interesting to know if Mr. Creger actually owns that business trademark?!  Or is he a cybersquatter hoping for a phone call from Encore Exotics willing to pay a premium to gain control over their "premium" business domain name without having to go through a UDRP dispute. Who knows, he may be willing to turn over the domain in exchange for one of their luxury toys...

A UDRP dispute?

If Encore Exotics had never heard of the importance of owning your own business domain name and related derivative domains, I am quite sure that the term "UDRP" is a foreign concept as well. Whatever, the case may be, all this could have been prevented with good business judgment and "Internet foresight".

Assuming, Encore Exotics owns their business trademark, the least costly choice for them is to have their lawyer write a cease and desist letter to those owning domain names with the keywords "Encore"and"Exotic(s)", whether they are separated by a hyphen or not makes no difference. If the cease and desist letter is not sufficient in convincing the current domain name owners to relinquish the names, a UDRP dispute will eventually grant them the rights to those domain names.

A story like this would have been understandable about 8 or 9 years ago, when most people didn't even realize what a domain name was. But today, in 2008? Quite unbelievable that there are still business people out there who do not understand the value of owning their domain name, not to mention all potentially harmful derivatives of that domain name, be it the hyphenated version, the plural and singular versions, other gTLD and of course the international ccTLD versions. Yes, it may cost them a few hundred dollars a year to safeguard those domains but isn't that better than having your unhappy customer cause irreparable damage to your reputation, even if you deserve it (in this case)?! 

In the meantime, the world is learning that Encore Exotics is not the best place to buy your next exotic used car. But then again, didn't we already know that?!

Source: Written by Roland Buck - Chief Editor - DomainNews.com - May 6th 2008