StudentAid.com was owned by the U.S. Department Of Education after a Federal Lawsuit.
StudentAid.com, which has been registered since May 26, 1998 and owned by the U.S. Department Of Education recently, allowed the domain name registration to lapse on May 25, 2017 while registered at Google’s domain registrar and it has since expired.
The domain name is currently on public auction, at DropCatch.com with a current bid of $6,002 with over 24 hours left in auction. You can view the auction here. The auction ends on August 3, 2017 and will likely sell for $xx,xxx or even higher! At time of posting, 77 bidder are in the auction but anybody can still join in. Update: The expired auction ended for $20,151 after 84 bidders and 193 bids took place. 420Domains were the winners.
The domain name was owned by Student Financial Aid Services, Inc of Sacramento, California prior, for many years. On July
23, 2015 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a complaint in federal court against Student Financial Aid Services Inc. for illegal billing of 100,000 students. According to the ConsumerFinanace.gov website and the relating article:
Student Financial Aid Services, Inc. made millions of dollars at the expense of consumers through its illegal recurring payment scheme,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Our enforcement action will put money back in the pockets of consumers who were misled while seeking to access federal student aid.
The website FAFSA.com which was also owned by Student Financial Aid Services, Inc. was transferred ownership to the U.S. Department
of Education as noted in the above linked article. No mention of the StudentAid.com domain name was made in the article, but whois records showed the domain changed ownership from Student Financial Aid Services, Inc. to the U.S. Department Of Education around the same time as FAFSA.com did.
To note, FAFSA.com has expired as well, as of July 28, 2017 with the domain resolving a message of this: “FAFSA.com has expired”.
SFAS.com closed operations but still resolves currently, directing visitors to FAFSA.gov
While StudentAid.com was under ownership of the U.S. Department Of Education, they redirected the domain name to: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/
The U.S. Department Of Education dropped the ball on this one IMO and should have never let a valuable domain name asset of this caliber simply to expire and drop from the registry. I would assume this was an oversight and I have reached out for comment but I did not hear back at time of posting. It was in good use redirecting to StudentAid.ed.gov/sa as was FAFSA.com redirecting to FAFSA.gov. At a minimum, the proceeds from the sale of the domain names could have went towards the victims of the recurring payment scheme. FAFSA.com can still be renewed, StudentAid.com is going to require winning the expired domain name auction.
