Network Solutions domain squatting?
:: Saturday, January 12th, 2008 @ 11:20:54 pm
:: Tags: Computers
If this article is true, then I am going to move all my domains to GoDaddy and boycott Network Solutions. (via Alex)
Now the accusation is that Network Solutions are spying on the users of its whois service, by recording the searches and then reserving the domain. This doesn’t bankrupt them because they can drop the domain before the five-day grace period ends. This has the result that for those five days, the customer can only buy the domain from Network Solutions, other domain name companies are locked out.
I should probably move away from them, anyway. GoDaddy, which manages many of my domains, is much cheaper; it’s got a pretty crappy-looking website and cheap-sounding name, but it works.
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i moved from netsol long time ago, just because they made it so hard to move your domains it was unfair (plus they are really expensive)
I switched my last domain to GoDaddy from Network Solutions two weeks ago. Frankly, despite the crappy looking web pages, I find that GoDaddy has far more features and obviously much better prices. The thing that surprised me was how great GoDaddy.com’s customer service is. Both Live Chat and email respond almost immediately, and with email the SLA is measured in hours, not days.
Network Solutions uses pretty much ever trick in the book to keep you from switching, but in the end, I can’t figure out what value they add over competitors, at all.
Go GoDaddy.
Here’s one vote against Godaddy. I had my domains hosted with them for 3 or 4 years and then got a $10 administrative charge out of nowhere for having erroneous whois information on my domain records. Asked them to remove the fee or provide free private whois records. They refused so I jumped ship to Namecheap (speaking of cheap-sounding names… haha) and haven’t run into any problems in the year+ I’ve been with them (paying the $3 a year or so for private whois records w/them). I prefer their interface to Godaddy’s, but no big differences otherwise, other than the aforementioned charges :P
Anyways, you know me and how irked I get at (perceived) bad customer service, but that’s my take ;) No idea if namecheap does name squatting itself. Bleh.
I’ve been absolutely loving dreamhost since I switched from running our server out of my apartment a year ago. Just to get in a plug for another service. :) The flexibility and user support are top notch; I was especially impressed that they BELIEVE YOU when you say you already know what you’re talking about, and will skip past all the “did you hit ‘reload’” kinds of questions to get to the point!
And shell access, mmmmm.
GoDaddy is replete with horror stories. Check out DynDNS for any domains you care about.
I’ve never had any problems with GoDaddy (about half my domains have been with them for a couple of years already). Most of my NetSol domains are paid for until 2010 or later. I guess I’ll wait until then to switch.
Anastasia — I cannot stand Dreamhost’s flippant attitude when they screw up. I would never do business with them.