Again and again we come across this situation where a business has got someone to register their .com domain name and then the kid has grown up and moved away. We have now spent 3 full days tracking this kid down in order to get the domain name renewed.
The client has spent years advertising the .com address and it is in all the search engines and on all her stationary etc. The fact is that you have less control over you .com than a .ie domain name.
If you are not in control over your .com domain name, you can loose years of hard work in getting the name up on search engines and linked in from all major portals and high page ranking sites.
Get you domain registered by a professional from the start, its will be cheaper in the long run!