Network Solutions: Bad On-line Services!

When the Internet first started, a government agency first handled the domain name registration for people who wanted an independent URL address online. Customers were charged $100 for name registration. People were never told they have to renew the registration until the service was handed over to private companies. After this, people were asked to pay $30 yearly to renew the domain name that was already paid for at the time of the initial registration. Failure to pay on time will result in receiving a threatening letter from Network Solution of their intention to cancel the online business name. Many customers thought this was a rip off and since Internet business was new, people did not want to challenge the private companies which had taken over from the government. These private companies decided to make a killing billing people every year for the domain name they already paid for initially. What a rip off! It is nothing but a ploy for some big businesses to get rich at the expense of small businesses who wanted to retain the names for their companies online.

Registering a name was not difficult since it is done by the computer system. Problems come when customers who were already on one server wanted to move to another server for what ever reason. Businesses are experiencing great difficulties in changing from one server to another since the domain name is registered to one server at a time. Despite all the complaints from customers wanting to move their domain names to another server, Network Solution is unable to respond. Like any online business who discourages telephone calls, Network Solution did not make it easy for people to reach the company off line!

Most of the time, people believe that when a private company takes over a project, the service will get better. This is not true in all cases and inability to transfer domain name is a typical example of the greed presently experienced by consumers. Businesses want to make a killing, yet they do not want to hire adequate staffing to serve the customers.

The process of moving a domain name from one server to another is like registering a new name on-line. While new name registration is easy, it is difficult trying to transfer an already established name to another server. After going to Network Solution's site and filling in appropriate on-line forms, customers are still waiting for the name transfer after many weeks a change was requested. Like many other businesses who would be losing customers to their competitors, customers waited on the telephone for a long time trying to talk to a computer after being transferred to numerous layers of computer telephone answering services. "Your call is very important to us, please wait and your call will be answered by the next available agent," becomes a very annoying slogan of greedy businesses who choose to insult customers when they request for services. The situation is compounded when the final outcome is a stupid computer which chose to hang up on you just because you picked a wrong choice. Sometimes, this may lead only to a computer answering machine with no hope of finding a live person at the end of the telephone. This is similar to what people are experiencing when calling Network Solutions. A customer who succeeded in getting through to a live human being screamed and yelled for his domain name to be changed immediately. He was told the company was 48 hours behind in name transfer, the customer waited for over a month and the name has not been changed even at the time of this article.

A Case of an unhappy Customer: Take the case of Askdatasystems.com which was initially registered through a server --- Primary.net. Later, the company owner moved to another server web 2010. Despite Askdatasystems.com did not even house a site through Primary.net, (only a name registration) it was difficult to transfer the name to Web 2010 which is the new server. After filing appropriate papers online, calling Network Solutions with no result, the owner had to re-file the name transfer by fax to Network Solutions. It has been almost two months since Askdatasystem initiated to move to another server and still has not been successful. Sadly, Askdatasystems.com had sent out mails to potential customers thinking the name will come alive by the time the mails reach respective destinations. It has not happened yet.

White House Response: After numerous customer complaints  and lack of response from Network Solutions this delay in name transfer is delaying many of these businesses marketing plan. Consequently, we took the case back to the government. On calling the Vice President's office, we were told he has nothing to do with the Internet despite all the political hypes that he did a wonderful job in engineering the Internet. Later we called the White House to find out what is going on since people have nowhere to file complaints and Network Solutions would not return calls. From the White House Press Office, I was told that the Internet is booming and it's going to go through some growing pains, but no major problems. I was directed to the commerce department to see if solutions can be found for the customer problems created by the Network Solutions. In addition I was given the name of another company, ICANN which was also supposed to be working with Network Solutions.

After all the telephone calls, interviews and inquiries, it seems that there is no end in sight regarding the major problems created by Network Solutions inadequate staffing. They only know how to collect money and threaten to cancel domain name if they do not receive payment on time, but their services are unsatisfactory! Capitalism and greed are at work as the consumers pay the painful price!

Report by 'Yinka Vidal, OUTCRY Magazine