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If you had a dream of starting your own website, your online abode, and you wanted to see whether the pretty little name for your dream house is available or not, what do you do? Check its availability on one of the many domain sellers’ sites. And if you picked “Network Solutions” to do the search, then you have just been scammed my dear friend.
Did you wonder, that though Network Solutions showed the domain name as available, but yet when you searched and found a cheaper registrar, the domain name was suddenly…GONE..What about the second one you had searched for at NetSol? Gone. Third One? Gone. Now, what is the probability of all 3 names being registered within 5 minutes of you searching for them? Probably one in a billion. No, its one in one (100%) if you searched on Network Solutions, as a friend of mine found out the hard way.
Donning the detective cap, if you do a whois for all those domains, they will undoubtedly be registered with Network Solutions. And you are now in there clutches, to buy it for their exhorbitant prices, almost 4–5 times the normal prices.
Actually, its not that bad as of now, because NetSol doesn’t really “buy” all those domain names (otherwise it’ll take less than a day for them to go bankrupt). They register it with ICANN but are allowed to cancel it within 5 days so they don’t have to pay any money. This clause was made to protect registrars from Credit Card fraud, but NetSol is using it to create their own fraud. As now, they can block the site for 5 days for free and people panic and buy it from them for their higher prices. They say that they do it to “protect” their customers. Hell, all they are protecting is the customers from buying it from their “cheaper” competitors as NetSol will sell it to anyone who pays and not just the guy who searched for it.
So, if you have become a victim of this and can wait for 5 days, then do that instead of paying through your nose. I call for a boycott of all services of Network Solutions and not just the domain whois, so that they can learn a lesson.
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Quote of the day: Homer: [drunk] Look, the thing about my family is there’s five of us. Marge, Bart, Girl Bart, the one who doesn’t talk, and the fat guy. How I loathe him.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:10 am
The thing is that you can’t take action since they are not doing anything illegal, they are merely exploiting a loophole for 5 days after which the domain will be released & would be available to be registered via any registrar. I wrote about this front running of Network Solutions sometime back with a possible reason(with analysis) behind this.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Actually I think something can indeed be done. Atleast in the US/EU under the Anti-trust laws maybe. Although they do mention this policy of theirs in their “Terms of Use”, but there is no explicit checkbox etc to allow the user to know that there are “strings” attached…
March 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Well actually, I don’t think they can because it says in ICANN policy that a domain can be registered & deleted in 5 days without charge to the registry. The grounds on which they can be sued will be that the registrar is not supposed to take a domain which a person searches on their website, unless ofcourse they make it plain to the person looking for the domain that any search will result in registration of available domains!! So looks like finally someone has sued Network Solutions(link).