I purchased the domain name "carone.com" in the early 90's and then
publicized the email address associated with it for both commerce
activities and medical research I am involved with. A few years later,
I started receiving hundreds of unsolicited email messages from
individuals who thought they were writing to carone.com.ar, which is
the domain name for a company called Car One in Buenos Aires. As I
understand, they are the largest auto dealer in South America. This
problem began once they launched their website. Most individuals email
me with requests for information on auto purchases, and they often
follow up with angry letters when they do not hear back or they
express frustration in not finding the website they're looking for.(I
understand enough Spanish to interpret the messages.) I have also
received highly confidential and personal email from the company's
employees, business associates and others. To date, I have received
nearly 10,000 messages. I've attempted to contact the company for
several years to see if they are interested in purchasing my domain
name, but they have never responded. This situation has rendered me
unable to use my domain as I intended because of the huge volume of
unwanted mail I receive. (I have used filters to redirect these
messages, but they fill up my web hosting account nonetheless and
require me to pay additional fees for storage.) Also, many of the
messages have viruses attached, which is another problem. Ideally, I'd
like to keep my top level domain name and use it as intended (although
I would consider selling it) but this situation is preventing me from
doing so, and sifting through my messages and theirs has become very
burdensome. What is the best way to resolve this?

Hi, 

Wow.. that sounds a bit rough. There's nothing on your site at the
moment, it appears that you have no real problems moving your site. It
also looks like you have started using a different email address,
which is good as well. So, we have several options here.

Nasty Option. 

Since the company is refusing to contact you with some solution, and
if your offered price is reasonable, get a new url for your business,
and setup shop so that your customers can find you. Add the cost of
this to your bid and document this for later. Keep this URL and add a
forwarding page on your current URL to this address :
http://www.valiant.org/argentina.html

They will love you for it, and you will probably be contacted by the
other company with an offer to buy pretty soon. Turn off email at your
ISP for the careone.com domain. The server will just start bouncing
it, and you will stop being charged.

Not so Nasty Option and a little more fun. 

Contact several of the auto dealerships in Argentina and offer to put
the forwarding page to their website for a nominal fee. Explain the
problem, and have your message translated to Spanish professionally.
Do this in an honest up front manner. Write basically exactly what you
put in your question to us. See if anyone bites. You will probably get
a few offers. Charge twice your monthly ISP charges. You are happy,
they are happy and again you will probably get an offer to purchase
fairly soon.

Passive Resistance Option. 

Close the ISP account altogether and keep the name. Keep it registered
and up to date, but don't put it anywhere.

The real point here is that this is not really a problem, it's more of
an opportunity. You have the domain, and they are not responding to
you. You are free to do anything you want with it. Get copies of your
emails to them and save them on CD rom.

This site is getting a lot of traffic and that is the selling point on
the web. Make money with it, if not from them, then someone else. Send
out a few emails to resorts, car rentals, travel agents, whatever and
see if they would like to have the traffic you are getting hit their
site. There is nothing dishonest or even rude about making this change
on your site, and there is no real reason for them to purchase the URL
from you, until they see they are loosing revenue from not doing so.


Thanks and good luck, 

webadept-ga