No i believe it might have been necessary just to renew..if they didn't pay up and renew maybe the could have lost the domain..certainly can't do that..
And I said they already paid for the domain until 2018. Unless they were making constant changes that were time consuming and costly having a company website is not a big expense. We're talking hosting of 25 dollars a year.
You are making an assumption like someone is going in constantly and making updates and changes on a daily basis and that is just not the case.