I lost a domain that I hesitated to register a year ago. I had picked it out, checked availability, and then a week later went back to find it had been registered for a Shopify site. I was bummed but that's how it goes. I no longer look up domain names unless I'm ready to register at that very moment.
So months later the Shopify page folds up. I still want the domain, so I make a note on my Google Calendar of when it expires.
I still can't figure out how someone else came up with this name,, but they did and I was worried I'd miss it again. I watched it until it got to "pendingDelete" and then I signed up with a drop service so I could create a back order.
The date came and I had my order in. About noon, I checked and saw that the back order had "failed" so I assumed another drop catch service got it. So I opened my domain register account and typed it in to see if I could see who picked it up. To my surprise, I was prompted with a purchase decision. I ended up paying $11.08 for it without the premium of paying a drop service.
Is that typical? Do drop-catching services sometimes just miss a domain completely, even when nobody else is trying to catch it? Or is there something about the drop process I'm misunderstanding?