I am still convinced eNom stole my domain name

Alright, so here's the story. The last year or so I've been taking it very easy, spending most of my time with my girl. I've been working maybe 3-5 hours a week at best, but took October till March off (nice, I know).

None the less, I have been wanting to buy a new house with my girl, which obviously costs money. So I've been quite motivated to work on some new projects and stuff. After all, pretty much since 1998 I've only been involved in 3 different projects, and while I don't want to complain since I've made a nice living off them all, you do tend to get burnt doing the same stuff all the time, fixing and updating code on the same site, etc.

Now we fast forward (or I guess as of now it'd be rewind) to about 9 or 10 days ago. One approach I had come up with this time was to make a lot of more specific niche sites or try the "army of sites" vs "one good site" approach because as I become older and older I have less and less motivation to do long term projects. I've been averaging about 4 years per, and one idea I had was to start utilizing some of the domains I own for AdSense domains. I'm sure you've seen it. None the less, one of the best domains I had (and I would not be able to use for another 2 years minimum due to the product still being in development) mysteriously was gone from my eNom account just two days before I was going to utilize it beyond a parked domain.

I know what you might be thinking: "Geez, 6 month vacation no wonder it dropped" but that's not even remotly the case. First off, it apparently dropped 3-21-2009 but I beg to differ. I have 90% of my domains set to auto-renewal, the ones I do not are the domains I do not personally own. Keep in mind I'm a sub registrar @ eNom, so some domains are my clients and may not be auto-renewable, which brings up a certain scenario.

Yes, I'll even go as far as to say I might not of enabled it when I picked up the domain in 2007 but if this were the case it should of expired a year ago. OK, it might even be possible that I manually renewed it in 2008... but assuming I "dropped the ball" by letting it go here is the part I do not get.

I had stopped using the bterrill.com blog in mid 07 just because I honestly forgot my WordPress pass and the lost pass thing didn't work and I hated it anyways. I decided I would re-develop it myself but the domain was about to expire! I login to eNom every month atleast once and of course for the bterrill domain I noticed this in my eNom panel: Expiring Domains: 1 -- it always tells you. Heck, right now I have a Redemption: 1 from a domain that expired in Febuary 2009 (clients), which brings me to my point...

Domain expiration goes something like this:
1) It expires and enters a grace period of 90 days
2) If after 90 days the domain has not been renewed it drops to the pre-release/backorders then the public if no one buys it

Taking the drop date of 3-21-2009 would mean if it did go the 90 days it dropped 12-21-2009. I renewed my friends domain on 12-9-2009 and I saw no expiring/expired/redemption domains listed (it should of been under expiring). I renewed bterrill.com on 2-17-2009 and I saw no domains under expired or redemption (it should of been under redemption). I registered another friends domain on 3-10-2009 just 11 days before it dropped to the public and guess what? I saw jack shit in the expired/redemption again (it should of been in redemption).

So, assuming I let it drop by missing the expiration emails, and notices in the panel (atleast 5 times! 3 with PROOF from purchases through enom!) and not one time did I see anything related to this domain being expired, about to expire, or in the grace period. I stand by the fact I got screwed. If I was going to let it drop, which was never going to happen, I would of sold it for a few hundred dollars since it was a premium name for the niche and a one in a thousand lucky grab on my part a few years ago. I obviously complained to eNom to no avail but this makes me a bit nervous. I have domains from pre 2000 and a lot from 2001-2003 that are nice and aged and some I even paid a few thousand each for and I don't want to have to think about another "fluke" costing me a domain that I'll never ever be able to get back. After all, if their system doesn't drop it they just keep it for ads.

I suppose had I not lost the domain I would be busy working on that site instead of this one and then who would I of complained to? Obviously not eNom again.