Network Solutions is evil!. I looked up a domain. It was avail. I went to buy it 5 min..later....

[zonkers]

it was sold... to NETWORK SOLUTIONS! N.W. had alrady bought and registered it for themselves...and now they upped my purchase price from 9.99 tp 34.99 and I could not buy it anywhere else. This was all in 5 minutes. Total sleazebags crooks. I verified this status with a who is search. I still cant cbelieve it

Lesson: Do not use them to look up website availibilty. They will screw you. I just got lazy. In fact, try it for yourself... look up s something totally stupid like dogeidkeidie.com and revsiit the site ten minutes later. They will own that site and therefore charge you a premium price. And you will not be able to buy it anywhere else.

[ThomCat]

1. Their scam is getting a lot of talk around the internet.

Some people are deliberately doing searches for really off-the-wall domains just becase Network Solutions is automatically buying them.

www.networksolutionssucksmydick.com
www.networksolutionscheatspeople.com

etc.

They're getting a lot of bad publicity, and now they own a whole lot of interesting domains. :P

[zonkers]

2. Haven't they made enough dough hoarding first tier names since the

the internet's creation? Names like water.com, baseball.com, etc. They must be out of Virginia. Maryland or DC. A bunch of insiders boys making billions with a room full of servers.

[supernova]

3. Hah hahahahahahahahaha!

:rofl:

Thx, ThomCat, I needed the laugh this am. :D

[China_cat]

4. I still had a year to go on one of my domains

for a client when NS cancelled my ownership and grabbed it for themselves. They said it was expired but I still had the original invoice and an extra year on it. They wouldn't let me renew or even answer my emails about it.

It took 6 months but GoDaddy helped me get it back. In the meantime, I had one royally pissed off client (a labor union local).

I'd never recommend anything other than DON'T USE NETWORK SOLUTIONS FOR ANYTHING.

[ThomCat]

10. That kind of fraud should have severe penalties.

x(

But as often as I hear stories like that, people don't pursue it after they get the domains back.

[China_cat]

11. Have you ever looked into what it costs to persue

these people? Even trying to get a lawyer to look into a class action suit is difficult. They don't even want to consider it.

I don't have the money to do it individually. I've got the domain back and I can spread the word. Eventually, enough reports like mine will have an impact.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. I use DreamHost...

...and you can do lookups here:

https://dreamhost.com/domains.html

With a hosting plan, the first domain registration is free, as are renewals for thew life of the plan. They also do private domain registrations...none of your personal info goes into your "whois" record.

I long suspected that Network Solutions was buying and registering recently searched domains. When I was a little more "wet behind the ears" and just starting my business I did registrations through them. Not anymore.

I also use 1&1 for Web Hosting certain clients and you can get the same features that DreamHost offers.

[electricmonk]

8. I use them to host with

I get my names through Namecheap.com. Never had a problem with either one. Been with Dreamhost for 8 years and been using Namecheap for about 4. I do have one name registered through DH since like you said it comes with the plan.

[DarkTirade]

6. I made sure not to do anything for my website

until I found a provider that had been recommended by a few people. :)

Unfortunately it's now been sold to someone who's a little more heartless corporation-y than help-the-little-guy-y, but whaddya gonna do. It's still not as bad as a lot of the big-names.

[Indi Guy]

7. Well the good news is that dingledorkers.com & .net is still available (after 10 minutes)...

Get it now!

[gmoney]

9. yeah, that scam occurred to me years ago...

Find it hard the FTC or ICANN would allow such a sleazy practice.

Private Enterprise... market forces make everything perfect!