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Verisign Ordered to Stop Deceptive Renewal Notices
Ummagumma writes: "CNN is running a story on how the courts have ordered Verisign to stop their deceptive 'renewal notices' to other registrars' customers. I've gotten a couple of these, and was smart enough to figure out what's going on, but this is a dirty practice, of borderline legality. Let's hope they get smacked down hard for this one..."
Today I received a message from Bulkregister about this as it would appear to be because ofthem that Verisign are restricted by this injunction.
:o)
Bulkregister are collecting evidence for the forthcoming trial from Bulkregister members - if you're a member send you details including BR membership number to injunction@bulkregister.com
They may require a fax copy or affidavit but personally I think that it's worth it to show Verisign what we think.
I'm not connected with BulkRegister in any way other than being a satisfied customer of their.
M@t
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
I had a domain hosted by a company in india which registered the domain for me for 2 years. After a year, I transferred to a hosting company in the US. When the second year was up, I was thinking that I need to track down who the registrar is and renew, when I got a verisign e-mail saying I need to renew. Thinking that was convenient enough, I renewed with them. About a week after I did this I started to see all the articles on slashdot about domain slamming. I looked through some records and realized that Verisign was not my original registrar and they grifted me good, like Homer and the Cooders. I'd like to say I was beaten by the best, but...
Verisign is, by offering the 9-year plan, making similar mistakes to IBM when they sold instead of leased their mainframe hardware.
So if everybody (who is a Verisign customer), were to go ahead and buy for 9 years, Verisign would actually see a good profit this year, then work that profit direction into future plans' budgets, only to have them fail utterly because nobody would be buying anything from them the next 3-8 years...
Stock prices would drop. Execs would be canned. Heads would roll...
"My God, it would be beautiful..."
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I couldnt agree more. I know at my school (Drexel), business students are not required an ethics course, but engineering students are (req'd for accredidation), as well as other majors (accredidation again).
As a side note, the original judge in the MS anti-trust case has said he feels Microsoft would not be where they are today (a monopoly found guilty of anti-trust) had Bill Gates finished college. He apparently never took an ethics course required by Harvard.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Besides the deceptive fake billing notices from VeriSign and other (American Registry?), VeriSign employs a few other sleezy tactics.
I use OpenSRS for all my registrations, and one of my customers just lost control of his domain name to VeriSign (who also stripped his e-mail, name and company name off of the domain record - and when he called VeriSign they denied any knowledge of them having the domain in their system - even though whois clearly showed it!) Anway, someone in his office paid the "invoice", thus initiating the transfer. The real registrar (OpenSRS) sends out an e-mail to the admin contact notifiying him of the transfer and providing a link and a password to approve the transfer. Unfortunately, ICANN rules state that if you do nothing in 5 days (i.e. specifically deny the transfer), that lack of action in 5 days counts as an acknowledgement to approve the transfer! Bang - bye bye domain name.
Another customer got his renewl notice from VeriSign (a legit one), paid it via credit card, and 4 days AFTER he paid it, VeriSign sold his name to a company in Taiwan. Now VeriSign is telling him there's no way to get the domain back. Argh..
And my final vent on VeriSign. I was watching a domian that expired in March 2000 on their system. I had opened up 3 separate trouble tickets with VeriSign in an attempt to get them to release the domain so I could buy it. Not once did I ever get a response back on one of my trouble tickets. I checked the domain for release almost every day - until one day I see that's it's now owned by a company in Taiwan who is just simply reselling it now for $1500.