Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620
Record expires on 09-Jan-2009.
Record created on 09-Jan-2008.
Database last updated on 9-Jan-2008 16:10:03 EST.
It also just guaranteed that LLLL.coms are going to rise in price even faster than they already were
It's probably only going to be a matter of weeks before all half decent brandable (CVCVC/VCVCV) 5L.coms are either regged or being held hostage by NetSol. Some people are working on scripts as we speak to ensure it
You can still reg the name if you go to Netsol and do it, they are just not advertising the fact (any more on the landing page) that the name is for sale to others.
I guess they realized it was not a very smart move considering they are supposedly acting on the behalf of their customers.
If you can reg names and hold them for 4 days for pennies (if that), why not? I highly doubt they need more than 1:1000 conversion to make this profitable... When you factor in the potential to sell hosting and other related services as well, 1:1000 conversion may be a conservative estimate by an order of magnitude.
Yup, all that's changed is that those beautiful ad filled pages have been replaced with the standard coming-soon page. You can check this freshly regged domain for example:
Whois Record
Registrant:
This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620
Record expires on 09-Jan-2009.
Record created on 09-Jan-2008.
Database last updated on 9-Jan-2008 19:05:41 EST.
.......and they are filtering the registrations all of a sudden. eg they won't register tits-tits-tits.com for some reason. I thought they would want that one.
They don't seem to mind the ones calling them tasters/cybersquatters, etc though
You need a proxy to keep searching after awhile, otherwise they figure you're a domainer with nothing better to do and stop regging what you search for.
This just happened to me. I usually check availability of domains with Netsol and then register them at GoDaddy as I like Network Solutions search tool... Earlier in the day I had checked a domain and it was available... later in the day I decided to register it and went to Godaddy to do so and it was "taken". So I double checked on Netsol again and it was available. I called Netsol and said that I wanted to register it and that I was confused as to why it was showing up as available there but not elsewhere... the rep that I spoke to said that they were now locking domains that were searched and found to be available on Netsol "for our users protection". She said that someone "from some foreign country" was watching which domains were being searched for on Netsol and then registering them and trying to re-sell them at marked up rates to the original searcher(s). This seemed within the realm of possibility but probably way way too much effort for a hijacker to undergo simply because the value of most domains is so questionable and subjective. I eventually got her down to $8.75 per year for the registration (3 year min) but this was still 22% more than what I would have paid at GoDaddy (at $7.15 per .com) for only a one year commitment. I agree with all the posters that I've read and Network Solutions is not only cheating, but also their actions could be deemed illegal. Now that this is out in the open, this has got to be something that can't last or should cause an uproar of some sort.
I also submitted this information to TechCrunch in the hope that they may post something about it that would greater scrutiny of this questionable practice...
_Notlikeyou_ 