I just happened across the funniest article I've seen in a long time! The reason it struck me as amusing, is only because I can totally relate to what the writer has endured with Verisign/Network Soulutions, Inc.
After attempting several times to change my DNS servers within the Verisign/NSI system asylum, I finally was forced to transfer my domains away from Verisign/NSI. Luckily, unlike the poor fellow in the article that you are about to read, I still had my old e-mail address that I originally had used when I registered my first domain name, doubters.net.
After successful transfer of my domains, I was elated! I had felt like I had escaped a prison and was now a free man! I now had control of my domains, instead of being enslaved to an entity that took my money annually — and a lot of it, by the way — and provided the worse excuse for service imaginable.
So, when I read the following article, I couldn't help but laugh. It's so true!
If you're not a webmaster, one thing you need to understand in order to really appreciate this story, is that a few years ago, Network Solutions was the only company in existence that registered domains. They had won the contract with the government for domain name registration and they were a monopoly. If you wanted a domain for your site, you had to pay NSI $70 for a two-year contract on your domain. Renewals were then $35 per year. If you wanted more than one domain, you had better get ready to shell out the bucks!
It might have been better, had the company provided good service once you were a client.
Unfortunately, even the most routine account alteration — such as change of contact information, etc — was a nightmare. They had a bunch of forms that you were suppose to print out, fill out, fax, or copy into your e-mail client, and mail to NSI. Again, this would not be a problem if you knew which form that you were supposed to fill out. But alas, the dear ones at NSI had apparently gone weeks, perhaps even months, without sleep in their quest to make the process — every process you attempted to undertake — as painful as being gang-raped by a herd of baboons!
At any rate, I'll let Rick Bradley tell you his story, as it is similar to my experience.
Back in the day, Network Solutions was where you went to register a domain name. They charged $35 a year (not quite highway robbery, but at least a footpath mugging), with a 2-year minimum, had pretty crappy customer service, and you had no other choice, so you took what they gave you, AND YOU LIKED IT. Well, not really, but you took it.
Fast forward a few frames and Verisign owns what was NetworkSolutions and the rest of the domain market has opened up. There's an open registry now and actual competition between registrars on price, value-added features (hosting, email, disposable websites, etc.), and quality of service. You can get domains for well under $10 a year, with free DNS forwarding, butt-cheap web and pop3 hosting -- all from people happy to serve you and excited to get your business. OR, you can pay Verisign $35 a year (now officially highway robbery), get crap, and get jerked around for it. Over the past couple of years Verisign has used a slew of dirty tricks (like the "time to renew your domain!" courtesy notice which is actually an authorization to switch over to Verisign -- I've got a couple of these in my files in case you're a Verisign lawyer thinking of getting your libel suit on. Just try me.) to steal customers away from other services, and they've gotten in the habit of refusing (for no reason) legitimate transfer requests by owners trying to move their domains to non-ruined registrars.
Also back in the day: I registered a domain (roundeye.net -- if you don't already know, don't ask) with NetworkSolutions. Since then I've registered a number of other domains, all with other registrars, some good, some bad. Being the path of least resistance I left roundeye.net with Network Solutions for quite some time. Eventually I moved to Texas and did something stupid -- I left the contact address for roundeye.net set to my old BellSouth email address -- but I no longer was on BellSouth.
I tried to update my contact information, but I couldn't communicate with NetSol through my contact addres. No problem, since I'd set up an alternate authentication via password that I could access through their web servers. Only... the password no longer worked. Yes, it was the correct password, but it didn't work. Well, o.k., since there was an interface to answer the challenge question you'd selected. Nope, no dice. Evidently I don't know my own personal history.
At this point those of you who have dealt with NetSol/Verishit before are cringing. You know what comes next, and it's not pretty.
Ostensibly in order to reduce fraud, stolen domains, the painful drawn-out death of infant children from bitrot, etc., Verisign has an elaborate fax-based authentication procedure, rife with independent points of catastrophic failure (both human and technological), and designed from the ground up with plausible deniability as a prime consideration. The way it is claimed to work involves filing a ticket on their website, faxing the ticket number and a copy of an id plus a bill with your address on it, and waiting for the email that tells you everything is now Right With the World.
The way things actually go is like this:
You get lost amongst the various possible forms that purport to do something like what you want. The 3 conflicting FAQs that turn up on the matter do little to resolve the situation. After a couple of browser crashes and a switch to a different unsupported browser, and back, you eventually get a form submitted that looks like it will work.
After a day of no response you go back and do the whole thing again.
With any luck a 30Kb auto-response comes back at 4am.
After extracting the ticket data and following the various links in the auto-response to eventually find a faxable form (and two more conflicting FAQ/help documents) you get the form printed.
After photocopying your driver's license and enough identifying material to get you through the Brandenburg Gate, you shove it into the fax machine (bonus points if, like me, you're at the time an office-appliance Luddite living on the Mexican border getting hit for $5 a fax at the local copy shop) a couple of times before it goes through properly.
If you're impatient you send the fax again the next day and really screw things up later when Verisign refuses to process multiple requests on the same domain/account (whichever is less convenient) "for security reasons"
After a day or two, with any luck, you receive another 30kb auto-response telling you that your fax was received, along with some identifying numbers, etc., and that they'll be back to you Real Soon Now.
About a week later you call Network Solutions and talk to 4 or 5 different people (all of whom are either nursing Amway freebase habits or studying from the Colonel Klink Management Textbook Series), the last of which you pester enough to finally get a fragment of information about your account.
Basically, despite the auto-email to the contrary (the numbers in which mysteriously don't correspond to actual transactions in their system), your fax was never received.
Attempts to corroborate receipt by any of 34 different pieces of identifying information all fail.
You can: attempt to perform the process again, yell and scream a lot at the Veribots on the other end of the line, attempt to transfer the domain away, or just wait for a while and pay $35 to renew for another year (which is the whole point of this exercise anyway from Verisign's point of view), or let the domain expire and hope you can re-register it later.
Let me help you out a bit, since I tried all of these (except the expiry), some multiple times: none of them will ever satisfy you.
Not being able to get access to my BellSouth email I couldn't transfer the domain (since I couldn't ever change the contact info). Finally, I moved back to BellSouth territory. I decided to get DSL from BellSouth again. When I got service set up I went ahead and registered for a second email mailbox and was thrilled to find that my old BellSouth address was available. I grabbed it and made sure it still worked. This week I went over to DirectNIC (not the cheapest domain registrar, but their management tools and customer service are excellent) and filed a transfer request for roundeye.net. After jumping through the proper hoops it appears that either Verisign has stopped wrongfully denying transfers, or I just got lucky (I'm putting my money on the latter) -- I finally got the damned domain away from them.
Which is why I now feel I can finally go on record without Verisign having something to hold over my head:
If you ever consider doing business with Verisign (/Network Solutions), for any reason, I strongly recommend you reconsider. They are a cyst on the groin of the Internet. Do not support them. Pray for their failure and the safe reemployment of all those unwitting workers too unfortunate to have a better place to work.
And to anyone at Verisign reading this, barring the 5.88% of people I spoke to at Verisign who were actually civil, I just want to say, "F#*@ you and the sorry a$$ backroom politicking you rode in on."
Without being quite as frank, I have to echo Rick's sentiment. Do yourself a favor and avoid this company like the plague!
And if anyone from Verisign happens to read this, instead of trying to sue, how about making some improvements in your service so that you can compete? Because I have a feeling that the only reason you are still in business is that you have so many people and companies from the past trapped in your system like rats, they have no choice but to continue paying $35 a year and putting up with what's probably the worst internet company in dot com history.
Sooner or later, the last of your clients will either give up and let their domains expire out of frustration, or they'll finally figure out a way to escape the dungeon of despair that is your company.
