I would like to purchase the domain name off of someone.
I am a bit worried about sending them the money then waiting for them to transfer me the domain. Is there a service which can make this transaction more smoothly and safely?
If you have registered any domains before, even if your ISP did it for you, then you will have a “NIC handle,” which is the name that InterNIC gives you when you are a registrant. You can lookup the previously registered domain, find your own NIC handle, and use it in the registration form for your new domain. That will save you from having to fill in repetitious name and address section multiple times.
Once you have filled out and submitted the form, InterNIC will email you the form, and you simply reply to the email. You don’t have to place any new info in the form, just reply to the email, sending the info they have sent you back to them. They do this to stop people from registering domains under other people’s name without their consent.
Although I said you don’t need to go through your ISP to actually register the domain, that doesn’t mean that your ISP won’t come into play here. You’ll need to give them a call or drop them an email explaining what you are doing, and they may charge you a fee to setup the domain on their system and add it to the DNS files. There will of course be a fee for you to actually host the site on their servers, although you are under no obligation to host it with them. Once the domain is bought and paid for, you can move it to any ISP or host you wish.
Merlinclancy I’m sure, a lot of people register their domain name through their domain name registrants, not through ISP. And if you have your contact details in the domain name administrative contact details you will be allowed to do whatever you need or whatever you want with the domain name. No need to ask for someones permission.