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Bulkregister Sues Verisign Over Marketing Campaign
zentec writes "An article at Datacenter wire indicates that Bulkregister sued Verisign over their often confusing and pretty slimy mailing campaign. The campaign is (of course) targeted to domains registered somewhere other than Verisign. The mailings are nothing more than domain "slamming", and look like renewal bills rather than a solicitation to renew with Verisign. What's particularily slimy is that the mailings are for renewals on domains either recently renewed with someone else, or for domains expiring between 120 and 180 days! Bulkregister is also seeking an immediate injunction against the mailings saying that they are an impediment to current contracts with their customers." There's also a Reuters article, or see our original story. Bulkregister has run their own sleazy marketing campaign in the past, and paid the price for it.
VeriSign promotion yields lawsuit. This is also about BulkRegister. And I was about to submit it too ;-)
This would definatly fall under falls representation. Although I can't see it being wrong in the situation where The customer was a verisign customer then renewed with another company. dont phone companies do this all the time after you have switched.
I've been wondering when I'd start to see noise about this. I recently received a number fax(!) solicitations to renew my company's domain through a registrar that we've never used. (BTW, aren't there laws against unsolicited faxing)?
The domain registrars have become shady businesses, and its high time that they be accountable for their actions...maybe instead of these companies suing each other, the FTC can start reviewing their processes.
-Turkey
-Turkey
Verisign Plays Dirty!
If you have a domain with them, look into moving it elsewhere, these people do not deserve our business.
is that, when I recently tried to acquire a .net domain held by Verisign, I had to send 4 mails before they even responded, and when they eventually did, it was just to say that my request had been forwarded to the sales dept (impressive since I had a cc to sales@verisign.com) and I would be contacted within 24 hours. That was 3 months ago. I've given up and purchased a .be domain instead.
...
I don't know if they're just to busy marketing, or perhaps don't like overseas clients... All I know is that it's damd frustrating to see a domain for sale (at a reasonable price even) and not being able to get a hold on a salesperson
Well... maybe I shouldn't register domainnames anyway. After all, there are so many domains nowadays that the good old reflex of www.somethingyourelookingfor.com rarely send you to a relevant page anymore.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
This was a particularly underhanded marketing campaign and I figured it was only a matter of time before *someone* sued.
Thankfully I had a heads-up to this debacle and was able to contact all my clients and inform them not to transfer (or should I say renew?) their domains to Verisign. Turns out that two of them had already filled out the forms and were just about to send them when I called. Crafty.
DigiSquid Design.
I got one of those letters. For a second I thought DomainMonger had been bought out by Verisign.
I didn't read all the way through the letter before it hit the trash, but i don't remember seeing anything remotely hinting that my site wasn't originally registered with verisign and that I didn't have to send them $29. It's more than sleazy, it's illegal.
D
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From now on, they get all of their "renewal" forms back, torn into little pieces. Thoughtful of them to provide a postage-paid return envelope.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
I think they have a pretty solid case here. Anyone who has seen the letters verisign sent can tell you that they are aboslutely 100% trying to trick people into unknowingly switching registrars. My company has it's domains on dotster, and we've gotten several of these bullshit notices from verisign.
Aside from their sleazy methods of stealing customers, they're a shitty company to deal with (as an intentional customer) as well. A friend of mine got a (real) renewal notice from them (for a domain actually registered with them), and decided he was tired of their fees so he wanted to switch elsewhere. Turns out, you can't transfer a verisign domain in the last 90 days of registration. So to move it away, he had to pay for another whole year.
Go bulkregister!
I hope verisign gets taught a lesson.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
I wonder if those companies would start DoSsing each other if they had no law covering their revenues.. and after a little (in internet time) period of chaos, I think that the net could auto-regulate itself.
think about it: if there were no laws covering companies that are making money off the Net, there would be no spam around. Also there would be less bandwidth available, and the net would be less spread. But with no money on the net, 80% of the web contenent would be gone (it's all about flashy animations that have to catch customers)..
would it be worth?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
As I wrote in my last journal, Verisign's tactics with their own customers seem to have become more suspect. I especially like how they tried to get me to renew for 2 years @$70 when elsewhere on their site I got 3 years for $69.99. I'd really like to jump ship but it seems transferring registrars has been problematic for so many.
After I recently renewed a couple of my domains, I received their mailings. One has to look really hard to find language that states that it is a transfer. Total slimeballs. I am in the process of changing the registrar of the domains at the gig now. Price, maintenance procedures and slimeball tactics are enough already. I'm voting with my dollars.
"To deny our own impulses, is to deny the very thing that makes us human." - Mouse
I registered through GoDaddy,
I can see the verisign logo on the letter,
I know GoDaddy != Verisign
so what is the problem?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
no way to tell? funny mine all had a VeriSign logo on the front of the mailing...
do you not know who you registerd through?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
My domains I've had since college have my mother's address listed as the contact. Verisign sent her renewal letters for six of my domains, and she opened one to recycle it, thinking it was junk mail. When she read the "danger of expiry" and "please renew" messages, she jumped in her car & drove them over to my new house -- 40 minutes away.
She had read about claim jumping porn sites and was afraid if I didn't get the letters that I'd lost my websites and thus my paycheck. I have since explained to her that verisign are dicks, nobody in their right mind pays $30 per year for a domain name, and that my registrar (directnic) emails me automatically to renew...i just have to reply to the email. Also, that no technology company that does business via snail mail will be in business long enough to survive.
My poor mother. She thought she was helping me out...and instead she was wasting gas & time thanks to scare tactics from one of the least trustworthy companies in the net world.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The mailings are nothing more than domain "slamming"
obviously the writer doesnt have a clue as to what slamming is
I used to work at WorldCom, slamming is switching long distance without the customers permission/knowledge, if the customer returns this card to VeriSign, then they give permission, its not VeriSigns fault that the customer is clueless...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Trust me, this isn't new. Some scam "Yellow Pages" (no, not the real thing) sent out similar notices for directory listings that mysteriously never get published. Companies would pay hundreds of dollars to take out ads in these false directories, after receiving what looked like an invoice from what appeared to be their local phone directory.
The scam isn't new. It's just being put on to a new media, much like Reed Slatkin, and modern day ponzi schemes and "make money fast" schemes sent over the net.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
True, the business practices that some domain registrars have been employing have ranged from the appalling (see article and links) to the amusing and rather clever (marketing the Western Samoa domain digraph - .ws - as "website"). But when it comes right down to it, we're all paying way less than we did when NSI was the only game in town. Given a choice, I'd rather keep careful records and read the fine print than subsidize yet another monopoly.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
I've always been a little baffled by the domain registration business. What exactly are you paying for? Do the registries have any costs other than advertising? IIRC, the whole thing is kind of a protected monopoly. I don't think domain names are necessary. I'm willing to live with a single.host.thats.part.of.a.big.domain.com, and I'd be find with an IP address as well. Of course, for dynamic IPs you do need some kind of lookup, but DNS wasn't meant for that to begin with, so something like a search engine would make just as much sense.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
They're obviously trolling the WHOIS database and spamming domain name owners, isn't that illegal or at least against the "official" WHOIS rules?
Why isnt Verisign being punished for this?
My response to the last message that I received from Verisign; it was probably never really read by anyone, but I enjoyed writing it. I'm currently working on a letter that I'm going to send to Verisign's marketing department every time that I register a new domain through one of their competitors... :)
Subject: Re: Urgent: ALIENABDUCTIONS.com Is About to Expire
To: VeriSign Renewals
No, it's not. The registration for the referenced domain expires in September of this year, about six months from now.
As the person who receives this email likely had absolutely no say in the decision to spam me, nor in the decision to employ a crude and poorly thought out marketing campaign that is clearly intended to deceive consumers, I will simply ask that person to pass this message along to the people who did make these decisions:
Congratulations. I have registered domains through Network Solutions since 1996; though I have not always been happy with the service that I received, inertia would have kept me working Network Solutions. This marketing campaign, however, has irritated me to the point that I am going to make a point of using another registrar. You've lost one more customer. Nice work.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
I recently got one of those friendly letters from Verisign, and I have to agree that they're absurdly misleading, unless you're paying attention and read all the fine print. While this may not be exactly "slamming", it's fairly close.
Probably the best phone company analogy would be for $LONG DISTANCE CARRIER to send out "bills" for long distance service that contain, burried within the fine print, your agreement to switch your service to theirs. If the company were careful, and the customer weren't, they'd likely get plenty of checks from busy people trying to do the right thing. It's not Verisign's fault that the customer is clueless, but they are definatly trying to exploit it. (Letting them get away with claiming that is like Jeff Bezos saying, "The patent system needs to be reformed!" while at the same time suing B&N for infringing their stupid little patent.)
Illegal? Technically not, because the customers are agreeing to transfer their domains. Immoral? Misleading? Definatly. Worth bringing down the wrath of the FTC/BBB/whomever? Most likely.
GoDaddy's management system quite frankly sucks.
I work for a large web hosting firm, and a major part of my job is modifying customers' domain name information (contacts, nameservers, etc.). Many of our customers use GoDaddy, and I have found that about 60% of the time, changes that I make are never sent to the root zone servers, or otherwise horribly screwed up.
I have made changes to the nameserver info, only to have the new info show up in the WhoIs database, but never on the root zone servers.
I have made changes to the nameserver info, only to have the domain disappear completely from both the WhoIs database and the root zone servers.
I have made changes to the nameserver info, only to have both the WhoIs database and the root zone servers show no nameservers at all for the domain.
Like I said above this is a major part of my job, and I know what I'm doing. I never have these kinds of problems with any of the other registrars (Verisign, OpenSRS, Register.com, etc.).
Granted, as soon as I call GoDaddy and complain, they fix the problems manually over the phone, but their web-management really stinks.
I wouldn't ever use them for my personal domains.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I recieved two of these "domain renewal" forms. One of them (from a company whose name escapes me at the moment) at least put "Domain Transfer" near every instance of the word "renewal." Sure it's still underhanded, but they made some tiny attempt to remain above the boards.
Verisign, however, had no mention of domain transfer at all. It only said "Domain Renewal" and looked exactly like a bill. If I hadn't know better, I would have thought that was the bill to renew my domain and I should send in a payment. Then I would be transferred to NetSol without my knowing.
Of course I did realize what was going on for three reasons: 1) I moved away from NetSol when they couldn't do a simple contact info change in under 4 months. 2) My domain registrar (DirectNIC) is cheaper than the "special deal" NetSol was offering. 3) I actually know the name of my domain registrar... and it's not Verisign/NetSol! (See #1.)
Still an underhanded move which only serves to lower my already rock-bottom opinion of Verisign.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
1.2 Required Disclaimer
The solicitation must bear on its face either the disclaimer required by 39 USC 3001(d)(2)(A) or the notice:
The statutory disclaimer or the alternative notice must be displayed in conspicuous boldface capital letters of a color prominently contrasting with the background against which it appears, including all other print on the face of the solicitation and that are at least as large, bold, and conspicuous as any other print on the face of the solicitation but not smaller than 30-point type
There's no sign of the required disclaimer in Verisign's fake invoice. This is a matter for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which has law enforcement powers. They can also cancel Verisign's bulk mailing permit, or deny them permission to mail at all.
And I was awfully confused for a bit. I come home and open up the mail and think "Who the hell is "Interland" and why are they trying to charge me for domain renewal." I was real close to calling my actual registrar and asking if they changed their name (and why they were trying to move my nameservers) when it hit me that this was the DNS equivalent of "slamming".
I then got *very* irate. (and my roomate was forced to hear me rant about deceptive buisness practices for 20 minutes.) I came very close to calling Interland myself and accusing them of fraud, but decided against it, as it I'm sure they wouldn't have listened.
"Mom, Verisign are dicks. Stay a while, have some pie." :-)
Freedom: "I won't!"
Here's a picture of the notices sent out by verisign.
A while back, some companies were getting in trouble by sending businesses "invoices" for office supplies when they were in fact nothing more than a cheap attempt to get office managers to accidentally sign off on them. I'm pretty sure that you don't see this as much anymore because the offending companies got the smackdown from the government. These "renewal notices" seem to fall under the same guise.
I've received letters from registrars I don't use asking me to renew my domain(s) with them.
I've also received letters from registrars I don't use asking me to renew domains with them THAT I DON'T OWN. Most strange that... I mean, sure, I live in Omaha, but that doesn't mean I want good-news-bears-of-omaha.org
-- dR.fuZZo
I loathe, hate, despise, abhor and revile the scummy crew that is now Verisign. I rarely feel moved to violence but they get me close to it. WHAT a foul and awful outfit they are.
Having got that off my chest, I want to say something nice. The people who handle the UK domain registrations are, in my experience, an object lesson in what can be done (I don't want to get into the current WHOIS argument that they have stirred up). It's been a pleasure to deal with them at every level so far.
AND they manage to provide instant turnaround of domain registration for the hefty price of GBP 5 per two years, or about US $8. Based on that, they make an embarrassing amount of money - as they are a not-for-profit business. I don't know how they do it. I have no financial interest in what they do - but am hugely grateful to be working mostly with them and not the ratshit raggle of scumsuckers at Verisign.
If you look at verisign.com, of course, you see no evidence that there is anything wrong.
I wonder if there are any stockholders in this company that might be upset over the concealment of information about issues detrimental to the growth of the business?
If they fail to include this issue in their quarterly report, the stockholders should file a class-action suit against the company.
Get off my launchpad!
The result of this was rejected as a Slashdot story but CNN reporting "A U.S. court on Tuesday ordered Internet naming giant VeriSign Inc. to immediately cease a direct-mail campaign that used what a rival called deceptive advertising to poach its customers. "