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EVER Use Them.">Network Solutions is Despicable. Never EVER Use Them.

January 8th, 2008 by Vishen Lakhiani Read more about Articles, Reviews

A few months ago we were about to launch a new blog. We spent 3 hrs try­ing to think of the per­fect name. And we found it!

Boy was I excited. I had one of our edi­tors search to see if the name was avail­able while I hopped out of the office for lunch.

It was avail­able! And it had never ever been reg­is­tered in the past.

She was unable to reg­is­ter the name till I got back.

2 hours later we went online to try to make the pur­chase. But the name was snapped up? How on earth did a name that had been avail­able since the dawn of the Inter­net sud­denly dis­ap­pear within 2 hours of our search?

We were shattered!

Some­one was snoop­ing on us. And you would not believe who.

Turns out that many domain reg­is­trar have been snoop­ing on cus­tomer searchs and quickly reg­is­ter­ing any hot name a cus­tomer searchs for but does not reg­is­ter imme­di­ately. These reg­is­trars know these domains can later fetch pre­mium prices.

How Vile!

One of the biggest cul­prits is Net­work Solu­tions (www.NetworkSolutions.com). Before GoDaddy came along with its Super­Bowl adver­tis­ing, many peo­ple fool­ishly paid Net­work Solu­tions pre­mium prices to reg­is­ter domains. GoDaddy by com­par­i­ons — charges way less.

Net­work Solu­tions (NetworkSolutions.com) lost a lot of busi­ness to GoDaddy. So they appar­ently turned to the busi­ness of snoop­ing on cus­tomers and grab­bing names that peo­ple search for but do not imme­di­ately buy.

Accord­ing to dis­cus­sions crop­ping up at Domain Name News, Slash­dot, Red­dit and Domain­State dis­cus­sion boards.

“Net­work Solu­tions has insti­tuted a four-day lock on all domain names searched on their site. They are effec­tively using phish­ing tech­niques to hijack or steal domain names and forc­ing domain name reg­is­trants to reg­is­ter their names at Net­work Solu­tions. The stan­dard domain name reg­is­tra­tion fee at Net­work Solu­tions is $34.99–significantly higher than the lead­ing alter­na­tives,” com­plained one commenter.

The deny this charge of course.

But one cre­ative user at the site Reddit.com proved their guilt by search­ing for the domain name:

http://www.YouGuySeriouslyRegisterEverythingISearch.com/

Which Net­work Solu­tions promptly snapped up. You can see what they’re doing with it here:

http://www.youguysseriouslyregistereverythingisearch.com/

The full story on what they’re doing and how is avalaible here:
http://commandline.org.uk/more/squat-for-the-win-2008–01-09–03-36

Have you been screwed by Net­work Solu­tions? Share your expe­ri­ences in the com­ments below.

Last 5 posts by

About the Author

Vishen Lakhiani Vishen is a co-founder of MindValley. Before MindValley, he was an exec in Silicon Valley and New York for several internet and technology firms. He turned bedroom entrepreneur at 27 and by the time he was 31 had founded 6 web businesses and never had to work a conventional job again.

Check out other posts by Vishen Lakhiani

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26 Responses to “Network Solutions is Despicable. Never EVER Use Them.”

  1. January 9th, 2008 at 8:13 am Network Solutions is Despicable. Never EVER Use Them. | Online Reviews

    […] Orig­i­nal post by We Test the Lat­est Online Mar­ket­ing Tac­tics, and Share Our Results to Help You Bet­ter Sell Your Site Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social book­mark­ing sites where read­ers can share and dis­cover new web pages. […]

  2. January 9th, 2008 at 10:06 am Brian

    Net­work Solu­tions kicked my dog, and then vehe­mently denied doing so.

  3. January 9th, 2008 at 11:05 am drew

    Quick note to author: “the deny this charge of course.”

    Also: “youguy­se­ri­ously” instead of “youguysse­ri­ously” in the first instance.

    But I sup­pose we could reg­is­ter that as well!

  4. January 9th, 2008 at 11:35 am Jay

    Marc Perkel once got screwed by Net­work Solu­tions real bad.

    http://marc.perkel.com/2004/02/29/network-solutions-sucks/

  5. January 9th, 2008 at 12:02 pm Network Solutions is Despicable. Never EVER Use Them. | Sell Domain

    […] Orig­i­nal post by We Test the Lat­est Online Mar­ket­ing Tac­tics, and Share Our Results to Help You Bet­ter Sell Your Site Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social book­mark­ing sites where read­ers can share and dis­cover new web pages. […]

  6. January 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm Francois

    I’ve encounter the same adven­ture already 2 times. I can’t remem­ber if it was Net­work Solu­tions. But I was search­ing avail­abil­ity infor­ma­tion about domains for a cus­tomer. Domains were avail­able and the time to get my cus­tomer on the phone to receive a buy in con­fir­ma­tion … the name was locked.

    I didn’t make any search to under­stand what was going on … but now I’m not that I’m not alone :)

  7. January 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm Network Solutions bloque des noms de domaines disponibles — SHOOB

    […]  Net­work Solu­tions is Despi­ca­ble. Never EVER Use Them. […]

  8. January 9th, 2008 at 1:30 pm John

    I owned ‘hennhaus.com’ for sev­eral years, but lost it by not renew­ing in time. Not smart, but spam­mers had been using my domain name as a return address for their spam, so I fig­ured let­ting it lapse might thwart them. (I don’t know if it had any effect.)

    I thought the domain might come back on the mar­ket when NetSol-cum-VeriSign (in ’03, prior to the sale) dis­cerned I wasn’t going to renew. I was wrong. I set Big Daddy up for a year to let me know when its sta­tus changed, but the domain imme­di­ately went into a parked sta­tus where it’s pretty much been ever since.

    Though I’ve had noth­ing to do with it in years, the site’s name still comes up if you search for my name. :(

  9. January 9th, 2008 at 1:52 pm Pete

    Just tried this… searched for and found a free domain at NS, then searched for that same domain with GoDaddy. It’s true, of course. NS is screw­ing the peo­ple who search with it’s sys­tem. And even better/worse, it says it’s doing it to help you the con­sumer. Lovely. Never ever, NS.

    The domain I used: f***younetworksolutions.com

    The edit is mine, of course.

  10. January 9th, 2008 at 1:57 pm pj

    nev­er­mind the first com­ment i left, this is the link i had them buy up.

    http://thisonetimeatbandcampistuckitrumpetupmy.com/

  11. January 9th, 2008 at 3:27 pm skyshoes

    I han­dle sites for peo­ple. One per­son I talked into set­ting up a site in the early days of the web lost his Nwrx­sol pass­word. I have been bat­tling with these dweebs for over a year, hav­ing sent Dri­vers license, tax bills and and water bills just to get a redi­rect on their DNS they deny every attempt. They did respond when I wrote the iso­lated behe­moths at ICANN to com­plain but they still wont let me get in.…. Some­thing is very strange

  12. January 9th, 2008 at 7:08 pm Well, duh

    Just wait 5 days, and then buy domain name from GoDaddy. Bit of a has­sle. but no big­gie. On the other hand, if you are going to use your new blog like this one (repost other peo­ples info in a way that’s more bor­ing then how they did it. Or, tak­ing a red­dit thread, cre­at­ing a bs post arround it, sub­mit­ting it to red­dit, and etc.) please don’t bother with it.

  13. January 9th, 2008 at 7:56 pm no name here

    Well, I thought you guys were wrong but I tried it too.

    That’s pretty disgusting.

    After you search on a domain, the only way to get it is to reg­is­ter it through NS.

    That is really gross.

  14. January 10th, 2008 at 12:35 am bill o'reilly

    I searched for godbuttfucksjesus.com and now it’s under construction.

    Maybe we should let the chris­t­ian right know about that.

  15. January 10th, 2008 at 4:07 pm sam

    I used to check whois on NetworkSolutions.com about 10 yrs back, but I no longer do as I knnow do it via DNSstuff since a few yrs ago. I always had a nag­ging sus­pi­cion that some of the reg­is­trars might abuse this sys­tem since domain squat­ting and hoard­ing is get­ting into a big biz and com­pa­nies like NS no longer have monop­oly. And of course, its best to run these checks from a more neu­tral site or site which has its prime biz doing net­work­ing stuff or do it from a *nix machine as you chances are that its sources are more neutral.

    Its a dog eat dog world and nowa­days it never hurts to be mind­ful of our sources so to speak. I def­i­nitely did not expect net­work­so­lu­tions to be the one since i used them exten­sively pre­vi­ously but one could never know, right… ah, thats one of the down­sides of mon­etis­ing too much a pre­vi­ously more “free” inter­net has caused

  16. January 13th, 2008 at 12:02 am puttputt

    Con­ter­at­tack with a bot that searches at ran­dom and forces Net­work Solu­tions to buy bil­lions of domain names until it goes broke.

    Call the bot Dogeatdog.com

  17. January 15th, 2008 at 3:53 am Jon L

    Could some­body write a script to run end­less ran­dom domain name searches on the net­work solu­tions site? Surely then it would be rea­son­able to hand over this script and accom­pa­ny­ing own­er­ship records of the appro­pri­ate domains to what­ever reg­u­la­tory body exists for domain names (if indeed there is one) in order to prove an abuse of the system.

    As a more long term approach, domain squatting/hoarding really needs to be addressed by some­body. The whole phe­nom­e­non is utterly despi­ca­ble from the word go. How about some­thing along the lines of no organ­i­sa­tion or indi­vid­ual can own more than one domain name unless they can rea­son­ably prove that addi­tional names are directly related to their inter­ests, busi­ness, or trademarks.

    Then again, I guess this would put admin­is­tra­tion costs through the roof and increase the cost of domains by some huge amount.

    *Sigh*.. the world we live in… :P

  18. January 18th, 2008 at 12:20 pm Mark

    What do you know, just found a new web­site ( http://www.SwiftDomainSearch.com ) address­ing the Net­work Solu­tion issue. I must say that was quick

  19. January 20th, 2008 at 11:46 am Andy Schmidt

    just hap­pened to me today !!!

    searched for a name, found it, reg­is­tered it with NS, my CC was billed.

    then i get this email:
    ================================
    Sub­ject: Re: RE: Unable To Process Your Order

    Dear Net­work Solu­tions® Customer,

    Thank you for your order and for giv­ing Net­work Solu­tions® the oppor­tu­nity to serve your online needs.

    Unfor­tu­nately, we were unable to process your request. None of the ser­vices in this order have been ful­filled, includ­ing items that have deferred payments.

    We will refund the credit card you pro­vided dur­ing your trans­ac­tion, and the refund should be cred­ited within 3–5 busi­ness days.
    ================================

    i go and do a whois, and sure enough, the name is now reg­is­tered to net­work­so­lu­tions and there’s a “under con­struc­tion” page with an option to “make an offer” if i want to buy the domain name …

    that has to be crim­i­nal! i can’t believe they can get away with this …

    so mad,
    Andy

  20. January 20th, 2008 at 1:23 pm Dan

    I agree with Sam, how­ever going the unix route might not an option for many. Best bet would be a neu­tral site. One site doing the rounds since the NS fiasco is http://www.SwiftDomainSearch.com

  21. January 21st, 2008 at 5:04 pm Y'arr

    I just tried a few, to check it out, and they were all reg­is­tered within a minute by Net­work Solutions.

    I decided to have a bit of fun with them:

    Net­work­So­lu­tion­sEatsCock
    NetworkSolutionsBlowsDick

    Then, I won­dered if it was pos­si­ble to get in trou­ble for claim­ing major com­pany names as your own trademark:

    Microsoft­I­sATrade­markOfNet­work­So­lu­tions
    Win­dow­sOSWas­Made­ByNet­work­So­lu­tion­sNot­Mi­crosoft
    GoogleIsATrademarkOfNetworkSolutions

    And then, to really play a bit of risk:

    TimeToBringJihadToThe.us

    But it seems they don’t reg­is­ter .us names auto­mat­i­cally. How­ever, the .com ver­sion of jihad was snapped up quite quickly. So, to play with more fire:

    Time­To­BringJi­had­ToTheUS

    Every one of them, snapped up within about a minute by Net­work Solutions.

    . .. … I really hope Big Brother doesn’t get upset at me for that last one.

    Fun times all around.

  22. January 22nd, 2008 at 3:38 am Network Solutions Follow Up: Even Dumber and More Evil Than Before!

    […] Net­work Solu­tions Fol­low Up: Even Dumber and More Evil Than Before! Jan­u­ary 22nd, 2008 by Mike W. Read more about Arti­cles, Reviews A few days ago we wrote a post on how Net­work Solu­tions screwed us out of a domain and we rec­om­mended that peo­ple avoid Net­work Solu­tions at all cost. […]

  23. January 22nd, 2008 at 10:32 am What Would Matt Do » Shame on you Network Solutions

    […] From mind­val­ly­labs: Turns out that many domain reg­is­trar have been snoop­ing on cus­tomer searchs and quickly reg­is­ter­ing any hot name a cus­tomer searchs for but does not reg­is­ter imme­di­ately. These reg­is­trars know these domains can later fetch pre­mium prices. […]

  24. January 26th, 2008 at 1:03 am MarcusBrutus

    You guys do real­ize that Net­work Solu­tions doesn’t keep the domain names you search for right? That they are released within 5 days? This seems alarmist and unin­formed. While I do agree that they really don’t have any legit­i­mate rea­son “taste” your domains, there’s no rea­son to get your panties in a bunch..

  25. January 27th, 2008 at 5:32 am Havvy

    This arti­cle man­aged to make it into what­ever Vancouver’s major news­pa­per is.

  26. January 27th, 2008 at 3:36 pm Can never transfer from Network Solutions

    I’ve spent four months bat­tling Net­work Solu­tions to move my domain name from them. First they told me I was not the pri­mary con­tact. The pri­mary contact’s e-mail address had changed five years ago. They told me it would take 8 weeks to get this changed after fax­ing all the proof that I owned the domain and busines (driver’s license, elec­tric bill in my name, etc.).

    Even after the eight weeks and finally get­ting the pri­mary con­tact changed to me, I ini­ti­ated the trans­fer and again, they locked the domain. Why, you ask? Because they claim it’s a safety fea­ture to pro­tect me from hav­ing the domain transferred.

    No kid­ding. The whole point of me chang­ing the pri­mary con­tact was so that I could get it changed. Get­ting the lock removed required a whole bunch more call­ing and e-mailing. That took another 8 days. Now, when I finally think I can trans­fer, the mes­sage I get from GoDaddy is that it’s still wait­ing approval from cur­rent registrar.

    I called Net­work Solu­tion again to find out why this is still not hap­pen­ing and they told me they’d e-mailed me to con­firm the approval. Yet what they e-mailed me was a mes­sage that some­body was try­ing to trans­fer the domain and I didn’t need to do any­thing. They would wait another 5 days unless I said I didn’t want to move from Net­work Solu­tions. So here I am, three months later and still can not get ride of these guys.

    Any­body else get the runaround like this? I would never, ever buy a domain name or do busi­ness with these peo­ple ever again!

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