Originally Posted by lagcam

Sounds like they are holding it themselves, and THEY are the "particular customer" that "would not answer any emails you may want to send"

There was a recent post by $5submissions linking to an article about expired domains that whilst old still appears relevant.

A couple of months ago, I was getting daily emails saying the owner of liveasiangirlcam.com (singular of my domain) was for sale and inviting me to make offers. I checked the whois and it had expired 2 months before, and was "pending delete". as I didn't respond to any of these emails, they then sent me a last email saying that I could enter the final bidding for just $100.

I didn't. Instead, I waited until the day specified in the article (from memory I think it was about 80 days or something?) and then I went to another registrar and got it for $9.

I didn't really need that domain, but I didn't really want it appearing on a dropped domain list and somebody else doing something with it so I could be patient, but if the domain in question is important to you, don't risk doing what I did.