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FTC Investigates VeriSign Domain-Slamming 20

Posted by timothy from the harder-harder dept.
securitas writes: "Remember all of those recent misleading 'invoices' and other VeriSign tactics that resulted in transfers of domains to VeriSign from competing registrars, domain deletions and other domain-slamming shenanigans? Well the Federal Trade Commission has decided to investigate VeriSign's domain practices. This kind of probe is long overdue."
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FTC Investigates VeriSign Domain-Slamming More

FTC Investigates VeriSign Domain-Slamming

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  • somebody steps up? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by The Rogue86 ( 588942 )
    i wonder if this has anything to do with the unix.com events of late or is this just something that should have been done in about '95 that had its ass draged around for a while
  • C'mon. How is this news? We are well aware the the FTC, SEC, FCC, FBI, and EIEIO, are all conducting investigations right now. What about a YRO story from Reuters and how Washingtonpost.com is requiring [reuters.com] personal data?

  • Verisign has other tricks... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SkipToMyLou ( 595608 ) <b@b.b> on Wednesday August 07, 2002 @02:15PM (#4026462)
    Things like this are exactly why I no longer use Verisign/NetSol as my registrar. However, unfortunately this not their only dirty trick.

    Aside from this, which is very similar to long-distance carrier slamming, Verisign also has a nasty habit of holding onto domains/not allowing customers to transfer their own domains. I know several people who were forced to wait for MONTHS for Verisign to finally go ahead and transfer their domains to another registrar, and that was only after repeated calls to them. Verisign's own transfer process was completely ignored, in the hopes of squeezing another $35 out of the billing contact.

    Verisign also uses deceptive overbilling; if you register a domain with them for a year, come renewal time, they will send you a renewal bill for $70 or more! Of course, only in the very fine print do they tell you that it's $35 a year, so they are trying to make you renew for 2+ years. Yes, you can select 1 year, but they should not default to 2 years unless you previously paid for 2 years. It is very carefully worded to make it look like you actually owe them $70+.

    Lastly, they make it ridiculously tough to modify your own contact information for a domain. I had a domain which was registered in my name, and with an email address that was now expired. So, you have to fax them a paper requesting a change of email address. Fine, no problem there. However, I had to send them nine faxes before it got changed. I would call to followup the fax, and they would repeatedly claim that it was never received. It took over 3 1/2 months for me to get an email address changed on a domain contact!! Of course, if you sign up for their expensive premium services, it only takes a day; glad to know where regular customers stand with Verisign.

    I recommend that anyone who does use them to switch elsewhere. A company like Verisign/NetSol does not deserve our business.

    • I've been trying to transfer one of my domains away... their WHOIS records say I've paid through 2004, yet they reject the transfer each time. The e-mail says it expired earlier in 2002. WTF? Their own WHOIS doesn't reflect their own records?

      Thank goodness for easyDNS [easydns.com]... I've moved all but that one domain over to them. Great service!!!
      • It took me three tries to move stonehenge.com [stonehenge.com] away from Verisign earlier this year, even though I was in good standing and paid up for another year.

        On the first two attempts, they claimed to the new registrar that I hadn't replied positively to the transfer when asked, or that I had declined. When the new registrar got me a trouble ticket number on the second attempt, I went 5 rounds in email with Verisign, with various non-sequitor responses quoting FAQs at me.

        On a whim, I tried the third time, and had to jump through about three or four messages with URLs for confirmation buried in the middle of an apology and near-demand to stay with Verisign. I just kept saying "no no no, let it transfer, yes, transfer, yes." And finally, I am free of the beast.

    • I recommend that anyone who does use them to switch elsewhere.
      If anyone's thinking of switching from Verisign, don't wait until your domain is up for renewal.

      Make sure there's plenty of time left before it expires in case you need to iron out any problems in the transfer process so you don't lose the name...

      To add to the recommendations in other comments on this story, easyDNS deserves a mention. Their web interface is pretty good, better still they'll secondary from your master nameserver. Quite useful if you want to run your own DNS but only have ADSL.

    • I had some domains with Netsol for some customers... I decided to cancel this particular customers domains (they felt they shouldn't have to pay anymore, so I felt they shouldn't have a website anymore :) ), so I sent in a cancelation slip to Netsol *two* months before the domains expired. 7 weeks later they sent me a letter saying they couldn't cancel my domains because *they were up for renewal* (which they wouldn't have been if they hadn't waited 7 weeks to process my cancelation).

      Long story short, they wanted me to pay the renewal on the domains to cancel them ... I let them lapse...

      Just one of the reasons Im never gonna go back to the HTML business :)

  • Did Verisign start it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by netringer ( 319831 ) <.maaddr-slashdot. .at. .yahoo.com.> on Wednesday August 07, 2002 @02:43PM (#4026725) Journal
    I had a handful of domains registered with Verisign/Network Solutions. The first renewal notices I got in the mail came from about every registrar EXCEPT Verisign. Most were pretty sleazy, trying to imply that they were authorized by Verisign to handle the renewal. The real notice from Verisign/Network Solutions came weeks later.

    With the recomendations here, I transferred the domains to Go Daddy [godaddy.com]. I STILL get renewal notices from the other sleazeballs.

    I think this is a case of Verisign deciding to play the same game and then getting called on it beacuase they're the big boys.
  • I threw out several domain "renewal" notices from at least two registrars--Verisign and one called "Domains USA" or similar. Why aren't the FTC going after all of them? It's not unique to Verisign. I feel bad for those companies whose accounts payable departments paid these "bills" and got "slammed" into another registrar. It's just like the old sweepstakes entry form slam-scam that long-distance telephone companies still do.

    Kris
  • I recently recieved an e-mail from a company telling me they were interested in BUYING one of the domain names i own... er owned... yeah you read right, they wanted to 'buy' a domain from me that I had let the lease run out on. Interesting.

    They included a link to an 'offer' form where I could give them my offer to sell. It also had a link to a site where i could check the availability of the domain... and re-register it.

    So either this company was just being incredibly daft or they were fronting for a domain registry and trying to get me to re-register the name in the hopes that i would be getting a pay out in the near future.

    Has anyone else had this experience?

    Looked pretty sleazy to me considering as how my claim to the domain had died out several months before... not several days.

    Interesting. Be wary of such tactics.

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