Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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