Hi Genie, We can't lose sight here: Verisign is the "bathwater." What I'm calling "two-party consent" works fine when there is someone to appeal to when Registrars do not act in your best interest. Clearly, there's nobody out there with any teeth.
As to this 30-day development, I love it! I was prepared to sue these jerks last year but I ran past the 6-month point. A new bad action would open it back up and allow me to sue them for $2-3,000 in Small Claims court. Bring it on Verisign! The "bad action" is a sudden enforement of a policy that, until now, had been "waived" by non-enforement. Then -- obviously without notice -- they enforce it. Last year they did the same thing by suddenly blocking transfers beyond the expiration. Genie, early in May I moved 23 domains without a hitch, many that were within the 30 day period. Are you sure this is now prohibited? Was some policy in place, or did they update their user agreement without notice? Best, Loren "Genie Livingstone" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Folks: While I passionately sympathize with Loren and agree that as a Registrant I would want the current Registrar protect my domain from hijacking, I also stand on the other side of the fence and see the incredible abuse of power by the Verisign Registrar to it's customer base. We run http://www.nsihorrorstories.com and Jamie's description of events is NOTHING out of ordinary. As a matter of fact hundreds of savvy and not so savvy Verisign customers are reporting Jamie's story over and over again there. I read them all. It appears the Verisign is escalating this abuse in a desperate effort to retain what's left of it's cash cow... while it lasts. I have been transferring hundreds of domains away from Verisign and every time I DID the transfer, knowing all the quirks of Verisign system, I have never had a problem: until May 19th when I initiated yet another routine transfer from Verisign to be confirmed by my standard [EMAIL PROTECTED] email and for the first time I never received the request for authorization to transfer (nor the old format: http://www.nsihorrorstories.com/verisign-transfer-old.html nor the new: http://www.nsihorrorstories.com/verisign-transfer-new.html ) instead I received the standard "admin contact did not respond to verification so we are declining the transfer request for your protection" from Verisign. At this point I am going to DEMAND a proof from Verisign that they indeed sent such email as I was monitoring all incoming email specifically for this transfer approval request. If denying my right to transfer is based on Registrar's sending me an email, they have to be able to prove they did send it. I already know the outcome of my call to Verisign: they will refuse to produce it since they know they are untouchable and consumer has no recourse. Complaining to ICANN does not work and there is no other Agency that would have the power to revoke their license to be accredited purveyor of domain names. The abuse of a consumer by Verisign Registrar will exceed your wildest imagination. Having a benefit of hearing from both Verisign customers AND Verisign employees, both privately and publicly on NSIhorrorstories just confirms even the wildest speculations how VeriBad things got since 1999 when competition begun to chomp away from their market share. I will attempt to take you all down the memory lane with the best of evidence collected over a period of two plus years. None of the evidence, hundreds of complaints and cases documented and submitted to ICANN and NTIA have ever made ANY difference and I do not expect that this post will make any difference in the scope of the whole situation either, but perhaps it might brief some of you in a form of consumer digest. VRSN purchases NETSOL for 15-21 billion dollars in 2000 EXPIRED DOMAINS EVOLUTION March 2000 first reports surface of NSI Hoarding expired domains June 2000 article Verisign sends out expiration notices with a "If you do not PAY or DELETE (the account) as above by (June 28,2000), we will enter the domain name in Network Solutions' NEW AUCTION site in an attempt to satisfy the registrant's payment obligation," the notice read. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,37191,00.html October 2000 First Class Action Filed Against Netsol for domain Hoarding October 2000 Verisign heavily invests into NameZero who is giving away free domains (NameZero is Verisign's Reseller) http://www.thestreet.com/comment/siliconstreet/1123774.html Analysts expect Namezero to account for as many as 600,000 of Verisign's 2.1 million new names. A goodly portion of these -- 200,000, according to VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos -- are freebie dot-net or dot-org names, which Verisign signed up through promotions meant to generate business from an underutilized asset... November 2000 - July 2001 - Over 300 protests against Verisign domain hoarding practices posted and filed with ICANN and US Dept of Commerce http://nsihorrorstories.com/archive.shtml 2001 - Verisign becomes SnapNames affiliate - customers who call Verisign customer service inquiring about when particular expired domain will be released, are referred to buy a SnapName service on it December 2001 Verisign unveils Expired domains Wait List Service (WLS) DOMAIN TRANSFERS EVOLUTION June 1, 2001 Network Solutions implemented "Take No Prisoners" policy by creating additional level of bureaucracy and superfluous approval requests to NSI customers who decide to move their domains from Network Solutions to another more competitively priced or more customer friendly Registrar. This resulted in round of protests by other Registrars during ICANN Registrar meeting in Stockholm in early June aiming to stop NSI from blocking mass exodus of NSI customers by inappropriate methods. http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/registrars/Arc01/msg00625.html Roger Cochetti writes to Stuart Lynn on July 16, 2001 http://www.icann.org/correspondence/cochetti-to-lynn-16jul01.htm where Cochetti accuses other Registrar's of "failure to obtain express authorization may have resulted from what is known in the telecommunications industry as "slamming"-transferring customers to their registrar without any notification whatsoever." ICANN Transfer Forum Feedback contains good number of testimonies on the issue, yet ICANN took no noticeable action to resolve it http://forum.icann.org/regxfer/ March 2002 Verisign takes up Domain Poaching as their own practice sending out predatory Expiration Notices to customers who registered their domains at competing Registrars http://nsihorrorstories.com/images/front.gif May 15 2002 BulkRegister wins Preliminary Injunction against Verisign - judge orders Verisign to stop sending misleading expiration notices to slam competitor's customers http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/020515/200205150251000157_1.html May 21, 2002 After Court Injunctions, Verisign Employee reports that Verisign is going to happily disregard the injunction http://nsihorrorstories.com/cgi-shl/news/news.pl?action=view_comments&id =789 May 25, 2002 we received first MODIFIED poaching Domain Name Expiration Notice May 28, 2002 Class Action is filed against Verisign for domain slamming http://www.reuters.com/quote.jhtml?ticker=vrsn&qtype=sym&dd=cs&qcat=sbox &btn=sbl Verisign Executives touted their aggressive marketing campaign at VeriSign analyst day on May 9 in Redwood City, California. ATTACKER, NOT PREY "We're becoming the attacker and not the prey," said John Donoghue, senior vice president of the mass markets division at Mountain View, California-based VeriSign. "We're aggressively going after competitor's customers at the time of renewal." A VeriSign spokesman said the company's policy is not to comment on pending litigation, but said VeriSign was complying with the Baltimore court's injunction May 2002 Verisign makes an effort to hide transfer confirmation email verification as it's own Spam, old format http://www.nsihorrorstories.com/verisign-transfer-old.html with a subject "Change of Registrar Authorization Request" morphs to new and improved new format with a subject "Information about your account" where transfer instructions are buried under several paragraphs on fluff advertising, easy to discard as yet another SPAM by a consumer May 28, 2002 many customers complain of significant increase in unjustified denials of their transfer requests away from Verisign, not having anywhere to turn. Over the years it was discussed that Verisign is unfair, anti-competitive, engaging in illegal activities that are the farthest thing for "Trust" and "Service" oriented entity it is trying to project. Customers get angry and frustrated. But when alleged Verisign employees/insiders begun confirming these claims in a public forum : http://nsihorrorstories.com/cgi-shl/news/news.pl?action=view_comments&id =565 http://nsihorrorstories.com/cgi-shl/news/news.pl?action=view_comments&id =700 It's food for thought. Nuf Said Genie Livingstone > > > "Jamie - Lists" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In my specific case we've made it a moot point by simply renewing - I get > paid something like 30K per year, which comes out to an hourly rate of just > under $15 per hour. If I spend more than 2 hours arguing with Network > Solutions, it isn't cost-effective to continue. Of course, I have an > extreme hatred of that company so I stretched the time spent, but I can only > do so much. I am the "domains guru" of my company so I have a good number > of other projects to pursue and can't waste my time here. > > The thing to remember is that regardless of the myriad number of responses > I've gotten from an undertrained staff at Network Solutions, the one answer > they all have given me is this: "It is written in our terms of service that > you cannot initiate a transfer of registrars within 30 days of your renewal > date." I've just gotten off the phone with Marilyn regarding this matter, > so it is being looked at - what will come of it I don't know. > > To Recap for those that have gotten lost: > > - I initiated a transfer of registrars for a domain that my company has > registered via Network Solutions > - this transfer was initiated a full 60 days before the renewal date > - the first transfer failed due to my employer not responding to the NSI > Notify email > - i re-initiated the transfer about 45 days before the renewal date > - my employer never got the NSI transfer notification > - at this point I made 3 separate calls to NSI in order to find out why; I > was advised to re-initiate > - I reinitiated > - still no response after 5 days, so I contacted NSI around the 16th of May > (still about 35 days away from the renwal date). The rep told me that there > was a billing lock on the domain - it was in UNPAID status, even though it > was not due to be renewed for a good while. She said she was escalating the > ticket to the Billing Department > - I waited a week or two, then recontacted NSI and inquired if the billing > hold had been lifted > - a supervisor at NSI told me that the domain was in UNPAID status as it > should be as it was within 30 days of the renewal date > - after much arguing, the supervisor asked me for my tracking numbers from > the other transfers. I supplied these, and all he could say was that they > failed because the Admin Contact never replied to the Notify messages. I > pointed out that they never arrived, and he said that was not the case - > they were definitely sent. Regardless of what happened, he said it was a > moot point since the domain was within 30 days now and could not be > transferred no matter what. End of story. > > Fear for your client's domains. > > Jamie Price > hostmysite.com > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Loren Stocker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Cade,Marilyn S - LGA" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: "Jamie - Lists" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 9:34 AM > Subject: Fwd: [Re: [Re: [Re: Transfer of Registrars, ICANN, NetSol]]] > > > Marilyn, > > If the following is true, who can stop this illegal practice immediately and > without delay? Verisign must be issued a mandate at once. This week. No > kidding! Help us pinpoint someone who can stop this practice. > > In a nutshell, Jamie is being denied a transfer because Verisign has moved > there billings up 2-3 months -- and he's now being told (in May) he's late > and > "unpaid" when, if fact, he has no obligation to pay for this domain until it > expires on June 23. This is clearly illegal. > > Please advise, forward, and provide phone contact so that I can follow-up. > This is a most serious development. > > Best, Loren > > > > > > > >
