Needless to say this also goes for website hosting and any service that have an expiration attach to it. You may asking does all domain name registar behave this way? Yes! because they are the middle man to the www.interNIC.net where all the domain name are registered and also ICANN
Domain name expiration
When a domain name that you had previous owned gets expired it goes into what is know as a "redemptionPeriod" which means you can not renew the domain name on your own in the back office of the registar site. You then need to call domain name registar tech support, which will be able to renew the domain name for you at a price point exponentially greater than the price you pay for the domain name to begin with, or what it's worth.
