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Network Solutions Opts Customer Into $1,850 Security Service
An anonymous reader writes "Brent Simmons has posted about a troubling email he received from Network Solutions. He registered two domains with them in the 1990s, and the domains remain registered today. Simmons just received an email informing him that he'd been opted into some kind of security service called Weblock, and that he would be billed $1,850 for the first year. Further, he would be billed $1,350 for every year after the first. Believing it to be a scam, he contacted the official Network Solutions account on Twitter. They said it was real. The email even said he couldn't opt out except by making a phone call."
Wow I am just utterly speechless...that a site could stay up for that long!
So, I don't know about you, but this is straight up criminal behavior where I live.
Not shady, questionable, or dirty. Criminal.
In addition to ceasing business with this company I'd inform your credit card company. If you don't end up needing to dispute the charge, I bet lots of other people will be.
Free market, bitches! Suck it you socialist faggots!
Free market means exactly that - if the vendors do something despicable the customers stop doing business with them and choose other vendors who won't do similarly despicable things to them.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Their letter says they want to charge him that much for adding security to -their- website. To prevent changes to their data. It doesn't add any value to his service at all. Just theirs. How do people live with themselves.
In a truly free market, customers roped in this way would be free to simply not pay, tell the vendor to go to hell, and take his property (the domains) elsewhere.
"Then they'll send you to a collections agent and have that appear on your credit report."
They'd better not. Unauthorized charges to cards are pretty damned illegal. In fact, I think that amount would qualify as felony fraud. Grand Larceny. (Hell, it should anyway. Sounds like larceny to me.)
I googled network solutions "weblock" and got their service agreement which refers to a service by that name.
From the ToS:
Although WebLock shall provide for additional domain protection, you acknowledge and agree that the Service is not a guarantee or policy of insurance of any kind, and in no way will the use of or enrollment in the WebLock Service diminish or otherwise alter the other sections of this Agreement, including but not limited to, Section 7 (Exclusive Remedy) and Section 8 (Disclaimers of Warranties) above, which shall continue in full force and effect.
Can't be the only one here wondering...For $1850, just exactly what in the fuck are you getting then...
Credit reporting agencies aren't about reporting credit, they are gangs who job it is to record which of the peons isn't being compliant.
Yes, and if they get enough chargebacks then their credit card provider will drop them as a customer.
I'd rather have lawmakers understand the field they're making laws in. You can always get lawyers to help you write legal documents, that's their job, but good luck getting a lawyer turned politician to understand medicine, physics, environment, psychology or economics.
The real solution for the "natural monopoly" is to have the infrastructure owned by the government, and providers buy service from there. It works great for mobile service in Europe (or did, until privatization took hold, and the assets were sold off below market, and the profits were lost and service got worse.
It doesn't even have to be the government, rather it's an entity that has no commercial interests in the infrastructure they're providing. This can be done by making the wholesale provider a completely separate corporate entity from retail providers (and preventing the wholesale provider from being a retail provider).
A government service like a infrastructure provider can be corporatised and run on it's own $0 profit mandate without govt interference. They only have to make enough to meet costs (incl. expansion costs).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I guess I am spoiled. I grew up in Conservative Texas, where the communist TXU provided power, cheaper and more reliably than anywhere else in the US. Though power in TX went to shit when they privatized.
Same story with Australian states that went the same way. I'm in one of the lucky states where the power distribution utility was corpratised, so no longer under direct govt control but still has no profit motive. States that went for full privatisation ended up with horrible power bills.
Private companies that had capped profits is what brought us AT&T and the insurance industry.
Corpratised entities aren't technically private. They're more like non-profit organisations that have to provide a service. At the very worst, they have to turn over their profit to the government.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.