Has this ever happened to you?
You log in to your registrar’s site, and renew one of your domains. While you are at it, you initiate a transfer for that domain – maybe away from the registrar – maybe just from one owner to another.
So far as you know, everything’s just hunky dory.
Suddenly, people start complaining that they can’t get to your site. Some can, but lots can’t.
Concerned, the first thing you do is do a “whois” on your site, to make sure that the renewal payment went through and the domain is still active. Yes, the whois data shows that you are paid up through next year now, and everything appears to be in order.
Well, it’s not.
At least if your registrar is Network Solutions, what has happened is that the act of initiating a transfer at the same time as making a renewal payment has actually put the payment on hold until the transfer is completed.
That means that if the transfer gets stalled, or doesn’t go through, neither does your payment. But, because you did submit a payment, they “helpfully” update your whois record so that when you check that, it looks as if you are paid up through the next year, even though as far as t hey are concerned you are not.
So your domain expired.
The lesson here is, if something like this happens to you, call your registrar. Don’t assume that because the public data leads one to believe that there is not a problem with the domain on the registration level, that there really is no problem. The owls are not what they seem.