Web design & hosting forum: beware of networksolutions

Hi all,

Just as a heads up for anyone that was thinking of maybe using Networksolutions as a registrar - don't. I was with them for almost 10 years and had no real issues since I never needed anything until in the last week when everything went wrong.

It started by them billing me for a domain name 32 days in advance of the expiry date. This domain happens to be a project we are currently discussing what to do with and may not choose to keep so being billed in advance that far is silly. This is also a domain with additional services we decided to cancel anyway, and would have done well before expiration date.

I then logged into the Network solutions account manager to turn auto-renewal off just to be informed one has to call their helpline in the US to do this, although everything else I can change directly online. We are an art collective based in Berlin, Germany, so calling US is awkward times because of the timezone difference, not to mention money. At this point I chose to open a support ticket in which you have a number of options, but of course no "payments/billing" option, just to obscure things. Getting more and more upset with this "service" we decided to file with PayPal to reverse the charges, and that turned out to be no issue with PP and within less than 24h PP stopped payments. PayPal admittedly were on our side in thinking that the charges were not correct.

At this point Networksolutions finally replied to my petition with an answer that they had "escalated" it to some department and I would receive an answer within 1 day. No answer 2 days later, and looking at what they call their "support ticket" system, the mail is not even assigned to a department. Great!

Adding to injury, they charge between 35 and 40 Euro per domain per year, so it's a very expensive service. Not being a "professional" web developer, none of us thought about it much but after some research a few days ago it turns out we can have a registrar for as little as 10 USD. Wow! With 7 domains it does make a difference. Should have checked it way earlier but we all have other things to do. Well, learned a lesson there that could have saved money...

Anyway, this morning I decided to move all our domains to a new and cheaper registrar (with good reviews), went through the process of unlocking and receiving EPP codes for all domains, and then filing a transfer request with my soon to be new registrar. I received a mail from Networksolutions that all domains where unlocked but that they recommended to contact their customer support and speak to a "transfer expert". Yeah, right!

Meanwhile, they also sent me a "confirmation" of my transfer to the new registrar which was worded in such a way that it makes one think that you need to confirm the transfer from your side, but if you really read the print you realize that it asks you in a very round-about way to confirm you DON'T want to transfer. It is all written in a way to deliberately confuse and obscure.

Not fallen for that, it would all have been fine if not that the Networksolution server keeps blocking the domains although they themselves have CONFIRMED they are unlocked for transfer. They are really doing everything to force one to call them!!

And of course, no possibility to answer a ticket without opening a new ticket, all emails received from them say one can not reply directly, and so on. That from a company that seriously overcharges for its services.

So far today no resolve but just for all to know where not to go for your domain names...

Best,
Kult