I don't know about the relationship to Covid, but it sounds like the person's credit card wasn't charged, thus the domain wasn't renewed. After the missed renewal, a squatter bought the domain in hopes of selling back to the original owner (renter) at a premium.
I think the lesson here is prepay for a domain for several years ahead if you plan to keep the domain long-term.
I'm not sure if this was added after your comment, but in the second line of their post jamiek88 said
> To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as always.
One can infer that the credit card did not auto-pay, the domain expired, and Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter rather than first reaching out to jamiek88 to confirm that the non-renewal was intentional.
> Namecheap immediately resold the domain to a squatter
No I don't see how their post allows one to infer that Namecheap "immediately" resold the domain. Their policy is a 30 day grace period, and within that 30 days the domain should become non functional, so if you're actively using it then you would know something is up.
Sounds like jamiek88 was squatting on a somewhat desirable domain and is just sad they couldn't follow some basic instructions.
I have no idea what the "because of COVID" thing is about.
Breaking the site guidelines like this is definitely not ok and will get your account banned, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Pay a bit more annually to a reputable DNS company. For example, I initially whet with GoDaddy, until about ten years ago when I read that they were shutting down people's domains simply upon a "we're investigating thisbperson, kill their domain" letter from the US Marshals (a Federal police force). Around the same time I heard about easyDNS in Canada, and discovered that they will only ever seize one of their customer's domains if they receive proper papers from a court---i.e. a search warrant. I like that they're committed to rule of law rather than politically motivated deplatforming.
Can you elaborate? As a Namecheap customer, this is concerning.