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What to do when your registrar (NSI) ignores you?
Frustrated Webmaster writes "For the past two days, I've been trying to make modifications on a domain name I registered through NSI/Verisign. The problem is, they refuse to accept changes through email, and their login system is apparently broken. What are my options? How do I transfer the domain away from NSI if I can't even login to their system?" CD: When I heard that NSI was going to go through yet another interface change, I moved the domains that mattered to me to another registrar. For what it is worth, I can totally reccomend EasyDNS.
Ask /. is going straight down the crapper.
This is totally a plug for easyDNS, and anti-verisign.
The answer to the question is trying using the phone. You know, the thing you use when you can't email?
This isn't something worthy of discussion.
I must say, chrisd, your articles blow.
I had a similar problem. We had transfered our company website to another server, and I needed to transfer DNS record information over in NSI.
Unfortunately the MAIN e-mail for their records was going to a non existent e-mail matth@ptd.xxx. Yet, on the contact it listed matth@shell.xxxxx.com. I still dont' totally understand it, they said something about how that e-mail address is hard coded when you setup the account and you can't change it... so I'd either have to send an e-mail from the @shell.xxxx.com address or the @ptd.xxx address.
Our mail system runs on a dynamic DNS system. My e-mail would come from: matth@shell.xxxxxxx.com
but for some reason NSI would read it as our dynamic DNS name which would be: matth@andromeda-xxx.dyndns.org. Needless to say, they said I needed to fax a document over with identification like a phone bill or drivers license ID. I said, umm look here, there aren't any phone bills that come to the business because it's a home business, and my drivers licenes doesn't have the business address, because I don't live here! They were like, ok then just fax it over, and exlpain that. I did.. it came back.. you must include ID. After several days I called them again, and said, that I'd like to know why their e-mail system is reading my dynamic domain instead of the domain I'm sending e-mail from, they said it wasn't their problem. How can you argue with someone who's reading from a script and doesn't understand what you're talking about!??! even when I got someone who understood, somehow they still seemed to find an intellegent way to not answer the question. In the long run I ended up forging an e-mail from the main e-mail address for the account which no longer existed (the main problem in the beginning) matth@ptd.xxx. So I forged the e-mail, and forged a return form, and got the domain trasnfered. *sigh* Why does NSI make me do things illegally in order to transfer my DOMAIN? I even went over this on the phone with the lady.. I said.. look why do I need to fax you all this junk? I could just forge an e-mail from my old address, and have it work. she's like well I'm sorry that's how things are.
Unfortunately, NSI has much worse problems than that. My domain has been expired on their database since Dec 99 and they wont let me transfer it to another registrar because it is "on hold". I called them and asked them how long it would take until it is deleted from their database and told them it has been over a year and they said "Oh, it will be much longer than that".
This has to be a violation some kind of law.
Anyways, all of my new domain business goes to Dotster, as well as my clients'. Too bad I purchased the domain before NSI lost their monopoly.
You should switch registrars as soon as possible, not only because NSI is unethical, but because your first few attempts may fail because NSI is very, very bad.
I work for an small ISP and whenever an NSI-registered domain we host comes up for renewal, we suggest that the domain owner switch registrars. We recommend Gandi, a bunch of French Linux geeks who we've never had a single problem with. They charge 12 euros a year, about $10-11. It helps that they are one of the cheapest, because transfers are often denied by NSI, meaning you lose your 12 euros. Make sure to start this process a while before your registration expires, so you can attempt multiple transfers if need be.
Be very, very careful not to let your domain expire. Occasionally, a customer will call up because their web site isn't working and we look into it and see that their domain name expired (generally because they forgot to pay their bill). In that case, we tell them to pay NSI ASAP or we often pay it ourselves, because of the NSI horrors we've had in the past.
One of our customers forgot to pay their NSI bill and the domain expired. NSI deleted it from their database, but it was still in the master registry. So the registry shows the domain as registered through NSI, but NSI has no records for it. This means that nobody can register the domain until it is expunged from the registry (which, funny enough, is also run by NSI). This takes an undetermined amount of time, meaning that they could do it today or they could do it in six months, but they absolutely will not tell you when they're going to do it.
In the case of our customer, it took about six weeks for NSI the registry to expunge the domain, which generally happens around 6:30 a.m. eastern time. As soon as it was expunged, a domain name hijacker registered the domain and won't relinquish it without getting a wad of cash.
We are doing everything in our power to eliminate doing any business with network solutions. When I started at ISP A, they were using previous BAP (some sort of business partner agreement) as the basis of doing registrations. Network Solutions proceeded to move towards their new interface, things changed subtley. Things would stop working one day. Managing a NIC Services domain was pretty easy to do as long as you were the proper contact, under the BAP agreements. managing WORLDNIC domains, which were the new interface worked horribly. I spoke with multiple people trying desperately to come to some sort of terms with their new partner agreements, as I was under pressure to maintain our previous level of service. What really bothered me about there new agreement programs was how silly they were. If you are an affiliate partner, network solutions/verisign would only allow you to list two nameservers. We maintain four for redundancy. Every domain that we'd register would have to be corrected afterwards. Verisign said it was technically impossible to change the number of name servers for an affiliate partner. What ended up coming out later, after a couple of conversations was that they wanted to discourage the affiliate program, so that people would become preferred partners. If you were a preferred partner you could list four but not otherwise. I thought this was lame. All of these problems all because there was no way that we were going to take over billing contact for domains.
In the past year, registrar agreements have posed the biggest nightmare in my daily duties.
We have looked to GKG.NET, and they seem reasonable. I would like to explore their affiliate/partner programs more.
Oh, and did I mention I had to submit 12 different Global Updates to update 750+ domains. I submited the first one, called them up as our deadline approached. I was asked for my TRACKING NUMBER. Explained that I did not get a tracking number. Was told to send it again. Wash, rinse, repeat. 12 times. Finally right before our deadline, I get an email stating it has been completed. Shortly afterward I get my Tracking Number. Periodically for the next two months my global update requests would be return rejected. Very bizarre. I guess their is one man behind the curtain responsible for global updates, I was told their was at least a 30 day delay. Man, I don't want to have to do it again, but our domain count will in the near future triple due to migrations coming to fruition....
What a nasty business... I don't know if I ever figured out the process for transferring registrars with network solutions either...
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
What is even more interesting lately is they have added in a second confirmation step. They have deliberately worded the confirmation so as to make it confusing, many of our clients reply "yes" only to find out that they basically had confirmed: "Yes, I want to keep my domain registration with Verisign". When in actual fact they thought they were replying: "Yes, I want to move my domain to the new registrar". They are using every tactic in the book trying to hang onto their sagging market share, of course trying to keep everything "borderline" legal so they stay out of real trouble. If you read through the ICANN website and visit the forum section you will see how many complaints have been filed regarding this sort of treatment and unprofessional tactics on Verisign's/NSI part.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
You really should remember about the whole aol.com fiasco where their domain was hijacked by some crackers with a simple forged email to NSI. You shouldn't use email as the method of change and hopefully NSI has disabled this feature.
The book http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com/ should provide more information on this front.
Like almost ALL the other ranking sites out there, the company must pay a 'sponsorship fee' to get on the list. Funny coincidence is that the ore you pay, the higher you get ranked. This same phenomenon exists on the web host ranking sites too.
I feel your pain. A couple of months ago, I had to transfer some domains for a few websites that I was taking over when the last webmaster quit and the host went bankrupt. I've done this before and never had any problems, BUT there were two emails set up to allow changes to the domains, and neither email was active anymore. So I made some phone calls, and I'm pretty sure that verisign has all of their tech support done in call centers in India. I was listening to the BBC a while back and they were talking about how its a big business over there to have call centers for US companies since it's so much cheaper for them rather than having it in the continental US.
Anyway, I appreciate the hard work phone tech support people do, they have a tough job, but I could not understand anyone from their end. I called back every other day for 4 weeks because nothing was done to make changes, and everyone gave me the same story.... "wait for 2 days, the system just takes a little while to get everythign through" Talking to their supervisors did nothing to expedite this either. It took over 1 month to finally change all of the DNS settings, and the sites were down in the meantime which meant lost business (and a lot of explaining on my part). My advice is to make sure you know that email address and it's active, give verisign plenty of time to make any changes, and just hope your host doesnt go out of business, because if you have to call Verisign to make changes, you're in for a big headache.
I read once (I forget where) where someone was describing their expierence with network solutions. Their software was choking on their email, it had something to do with not liking how most mail software creates mail headers. This person had to use trial and error to figure out which one, then forge a 'properly' formatted email from himself.*
Another solution would be to get a decent regristrar, but that can cause other problems and can take even longer to sort out. Once you get it sorted out it will probably be very good, but actually making the transfer will make you question why you are doing it.
The easiest solution is likely to figure out what it doesn't like about your email, and forge one it does like.*
*Note to U.S. government. This is merely offered up as a hypothetical solution. I do not advocate the forging of email, nor the impersonation of oneself.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
I have a relevant experience to relate concerning this issue:
/. about how NSI was getting ready to take possession of unrenewed domain names, auctioning them off. I was starting to feel a little paranoid about losing my domain name, so I decided to just do the more expensive thing and renew the name with NSI in order to avoid the transfer process and simplify the issue.
About 6 months ago, I wanted to transfer a domain name from NSI to another registrar. I'll mention here that the domain name is a fun one, and could potentially be used by any flesh peddler out there (although that's not what I'm using it for).
I tried the transfer at least 3 times over a two week period. Failures every time. At the same time, I successfully transferred three unrelated (and less valuable) domain names from NSI to my new registrar using the exact same procedures and information.
I became suspicious, and figured that maybe NSI had some kind of technical problem. I then read an article on
I couldn't renew the domain name through their website either. I got very odd, vague error messages on their website when I tried to pay via credit card.
So I decided to call their 800 number and renew over the phone as a last-ditch effort. First the person on the phone told me she couldn't renew the domain name. When I pressed for details as to why, she claimed that she didn't know. She sounded confused by what she was seeing on her computer, and put me on hold. I was transferred to someone higher up the food chain, who tried the same process, and apparently encountered the same difficulty.
After about an hour on the phone and 4 or 5 long hold sessions, a person in accounting took my credit card info and forced the transaction through.
Funnier still - the computer system wouldn't allow me to renew for only one year, until the issue was manually overridden by someone in accounting. My only option was a two-year renewal according to the people I spoke with before that.
I was very concerned at this point. I waited on the telephone until receiving my renewal confirmation email specifying the new expiration date.
At the end of the phone conversation, I told the latest representative of the problems I had run into on their website paying by credit card, despite successfully doing the same thing with another domain the day before. She sounded surprised, and put me on hold again.
When she came back on the line a few minutes later, her voice had gone very stiff. She said "There is no problem with our website, sir." I expresses a little surprise, and told her that she could check the unanswered technical support emails I had sent a few days before to confirm that I had been having the problem I described.
"There is no problem with our website." she replied, very monotone, all traces of her previous friendliness completely absent.
I transferred the domain name the next day to another registrar. NSI still sends me renewal notices for this domain name.
As an Internet professional, I can resoundingly confirm the negligence, ineptitude, lack of ethics, and failures of Verisign/NetSol.
I can also confirm that Verisign has outsourced the "call center" to locations in India and the Phillipines. I feel badly for the offshore call center reps (they are just trying to make a living), but they simply cannot address issues and are generally untrained. It is almost impossible to reach a US representative of Net Sol. The following telephone number (if it stays connected) may help: 703.742.0400. The toll free telephone numbers on the invoices are wrong -- as of 10.08.2001 -- or directly connect to the offshore call centers.
I ended up filing a formal complaint with the Office of the Attorney General in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Perhaps if more complaints are filed, the AGs in the US will hold Verisign/Net Sol accountable. Filing a complaint is easy and can bring results.
It is easy to bad mouth a company, and I normally refrain from doing so -- being a business owner myself. However, if you want to look at a serious and flagrant example of corporate abuse of customers, Net Sol/Verisign, without exception, gets my first vote (not just of technology companies but of all companies).