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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 !
anywhere else but in this persons claim.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People have tried forcing people to buy their services before but you can't charge for a service someone didn't ask for. Well you can try but there is no legal power behind it. Things must be getting desperate over there.
Call collect.
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.
Businesses hate chargebacks, they cost them money. If you're ever in dispute about a credit card charge and you've given a company a fair chance to resolve it just call your credit card provider and dispute the charge.
Contact your credit card company and dispute the item. I've heard rumored that credit card companies tend to take the customer's side as a form of insurance against losing a customer.
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.)
Are you sure that the charges are unauthorized? What's in Network Solutions customer agreements? There might be some very small print that allows NetSol to add security services and charge for them.
I just scanned the agreement and could not find anything that would allow NetSol to add products without authorization, but then I am not a lawyer.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
In a free market there is no fraud.
We strongly encourage you to take advantage of this security program and register Certified Users before the program launch date...your credit card will be billed $1,850 for the first year of service on the date your program goes live
The email implies it's an opt out but, it's not clear to me that he'll actually be billed until he sets up the enhanced security. Regardless, I've avoided Network Solutions for a long, long time and would never consider doing business with them.
A free market for credit reporting agencies would select for those agencies which best differentiate between real and fraudulent claims :)
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
If the feature doesn't exist (which it probably does, considering a co-commenter noted the name is at least used in one of their official documents), then it merely turns into a story of network solutions' official twitter account (as pointed to from network solutions' website) stating that a document that would be completely false, is in fact completely authentic, and make it rather strange that they would tell the guy to contact them directly so that they could explain.
I'd love to read the explanation, regardless.
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.
A couple years back, Network Solutions "opted me in" for automatic payment of all my domains via credit (debit) card. I didn't want this, as I don't habitually keep enough money in the account to cover random charges; I put in what's needed, when needed, and that's how I like to roll. There's an opt-out checkmark; but it doesn't work. You have to call and it tells you so. Then when you call, they say "oh, hey, for some reason this isn't working..." So since I couldn't turn it off, I just changed to an expired card. Then I get panicked form emails about how it won't charge, and I pay by paypal. That worked last year. THIS year, though, what happens is that the Paypal charge is now automatic -- by paying once, you're opting in (without recourse of course) to paying them via paypal automatically forever. I found that once you paid, Paypal (not Network Solutions, but Paypal) has a way to disable the "agreement" and get you back to payment only when you authorize it. Takes some menu mining, but it's there. Or at least it was a few months ago.
The only reason I continue to use Network Solutions is because over the years (and yes, some of my domains have been up since the 90's as well) I've watched other name registering outfits come and go, seen various name server problems, etc., and for all their horrifying business practices and high prices, my sites seem to always work, which is what I place the most emphasis on.
Interesting note: When the above happened, I submitted the story to slashdot. Initially, it got high ratings, and I thought for sure it would post. Then it disappeared. I mean literally -- I could no longer find it in the submissions cue. It disappeared from my profile, too. Older and newer submissions remain. I have no idea what that means, but I thought it was weird. No other story I have submitted has disappeared like that.
Yeah, I recently had two domains I was planning on letting expire get auto renewed for 5 years for a total of ~$380. I went to check and they were set for auto renewal (I don't remember requesting that.) When I went to turn auto renewal off it stated that I had to call. It was a big PITA but after 20-30 minutes talking to the nice guy in India (naturally) I had my money back and auto renewal turned off. They're hoping people are unattentive. Not too cool.
...
Footer fortune atm: "And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb." -- Spaceballs
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
Chances are, if you send them a properly formatted invoice for toner, they'll pay it (most companies do). See how much you can get before someone notices. It's no less fair than what they do. Just make sure you have a payment EULA that authorizes the charges.
Learn to love Alaska
It's worth noting that this action (auto-enroll and bill) is illegal in Canada. Each province/territory has its own consumer protection act that requires explicit opt-in for any new services that are provided to existing customers, in writing. You cannot auto-enroll people and require them to opt-out to not be charged.
Source (for Ontario, at least): http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/ht...
Non-legalese summary provided by the Ministry of Consumer Services of Ontario: http://www.sse.gov.on.ca/mcs/e...
I'm pretty sure it is illegal. Would love to see the contract.
Through what? Wishful thinking? Certainly not based on the hundreds of years of history of corporate behavior.
In a free market there is no fraud.
Fraud is illegal. In a free market, nothing is illegal. So yes, you're right. But so what?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
By reading this post, you are agreeing to my charging you $1000. Please provide CC info here: ___________
Damnit. Okay, my card number is XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX exp XX/XX ccv XXX
ICANN has rules for how accredited registrar must handle such things. They could be fined or have there accrediation pulled.
FUCK YOU.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That's what the government is supposed to be. Not a group of elite telling the plebes how to live.
Learn to love Alaska
In a true free market people will choose not to do business with a company that engages in fraudulent behavior, of course. They will fastidiously research the companies they enter relationships with to ensure that they are behaving in a moral manner. Just like how they will research their grocery store to ensure they store meat at a safe temperature, or the farm where the store gets said meat at to ensure the animals aren't being fed cancer-causing growth hormones.
Well, in the normal course of the business cycle you'll get many competitors when times are good and then the poorly run ones fail, or get acquired in the bad times, leaving just a handful. But absent barriers to entry (yay regulatory capture!), there will be a new crowd when the economy comes full circle, and one of the new guys often displaces an older firm when the next culling comes.
That's the normal way it's supposed to happen, if not ruined by bailouts or other government selection of winners. Lots of competition during the boom, a few survivors during the bust, and repeat.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well said! It's quite sad how people naturally distinguish the two. This is the second time we've faced such corporate entanglement in government, and the second time we've had the government more interested in the "spoils of victory" than governing, but it's the first time we have both at once. I really hope we can avoid the violence that accompanied the last cycle, as I doubt we have a Chester A. Arthur out there man enough to step up.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
The problem is not the one man to step up; but the many men and women to stand behind him.
That's you general public. Take the responsibility.
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.
I am currently in the process of moving over 100 domains away from NetSol to Hover. I'd used NetSol since I started getting domains in the 90s, but it has changed from a trusted institution on the web into a scam. Everything is an up sell, and everything is designed to confuse you into buying things you don't need. One personal example. Last year I set up a client on a basic WordPress account, but later wanted to move the domain. They would not let us access the .db file until we upgraded the account. They wouldn't give us our own data!
So now I am going to through the multi-stage process of moving all these domains, waiting days for each authorization code. These guys are crooks, so stay the fuck away from ever doing business with them. And if you have domains there, run away!!!
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
Did you know it's ok if you type your credit card number information into slashdot? The site will replace the numbers with *'s. So you will see it as 1234 5678 9012 3456 exp 12/12 ccv 123, but everyone else here will just see it as **** **** **** **** exp **/** ccv ***. It's really cool that they do that, try it out sometime.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.