So I was looking for a perfect domain for my project and of course everything good .com was already taken. But when I ran a whois on my first choice I saw that it has expired - owner did not renew it! It was registred at godaddy, so I figured I'll go and backorder it at godaddy. But what happned? Domain passed the redemption period, passed the pending deleted period and got deleted! Of course godaddy was unsucessful catching it, snapnames beat them. I mean WTF you were the registrar, why not just give me the damn name? Why delete it??? How stupid is that? So this domain went to snapnames auction with start price of 39$ (I guess nobody backordered it there, else start would be $60). I was hoping that no one will notice it/want it. I decided to bid in the last five minutes and I did it. And luckily I got it for 39$. What I learned from this story: Godaddy sucks with domain backorders. Snapnames is good, but there is no need to backorder domain there. They will try and snap the name if it is backordered or not. It will go on a 5 days auction. Just wait for the last 5 minutes of auction and bid than, not to attract too much attention from other domainers with insane offers. I was probably lucky that nobody backordered it at pool.com or enom.com, as I could see they both beat snapnames usually. This is actually second really great .com domain I got from Snapnames for $39 and I guess I have an incredible luck.
I have never back ordered a domain, but I do have a friend who just recently backordered like 3 expiriing domains with GoDaddy, but didn't have a problem. I'm surprised they would let it slip, I would figure they would be a little more aggressive with a backorder.