By now Snapnames/Network Solutions' decision not to apply WHOIS privacy by default when you've caught a domain, thereby exposing your phone and email to thousands of spammers, is well-known and all over the internet, which I had already known through my research and was trying my best to avoid. When signing up for their service I completed the standard email verification and then promptly changed my email and phone number in my account to avoid this problem.
A whole week or so later, I tried to place a backorder for some domains, and was told that it was too early to do so and I needed to wait till the next day, although it added them to my cart anyway. At no point while adding these backorders to my cart was I informed of any block on my account.
The next day, hours before the domains were due to drop, I find I'm blocked from being able to do anything in my Snapnames account because of a notification that says:
Your SnapNames account has been suspended. For assistance with re-enabling your account, please contact a Customer Service representative at 1-877-352-5630 (or 1-570-708-8760 outside the United States).
Apparently I still had verification hurdles to jump through, but the notification to do so went to the throwaway email I changed to avoid spam. Fine. Or at least it would have been if Snapnames trusted its customer support with basic account privileges.
I called the US number and the customer support lady, although abrupt at first, was nice enough after I explained the situation (and she got past my Northern English accent). I explained to her that I couldn't remember what email I changed it to because it was a throwaway I made to swallow spam and didn't intend to regularly log into. She was apologetic but said that she couldn't see or change the email registered to my account, and warned me that I needed to get back into this account because if I had already placed any backorders or I would lose those domains.
Thankfully after putting the phone down and doing some more thinking I managed to remember the email address I used, log back into it and start the verification process. Even more thankfully I used a permanently registered email as the throwaway rather than an actual disposable email service like I was about to, otherwise my account would have been lost permanently and Snapnames would have had no way to recover it, and then I would have had to chargeback any payments from them for domains I'd won, lost those domains and gotten my account banned... all because I wanted to avoid them spamming my phone and email.
To top it all off, I was told by support that these details needed to be kept up to date at all times and could never be changed, so not only do Snapnames automatically expose your details to the public (lawsuit waiting to happen for someone who has the time, especially those based in the EU), but they also block you from taking measures to prevent this happening. Why they even require a phone number at all when they're already using a separate service is beyond me. As an aside, the whole verification thing is a weird process that forces you to download an app and keep it on your phone for 24 hours, the worst possible implementation of this I've ever seen - most websites that do this can do ID verification in minutes using a link.
Of course, I missed out on the domains I wanted to backorder and ended up getting those through DropCatch instead.
A whole week or so later, I tried to place a backorder for some domains, and was told that it was too early to do so and I needed to wait till the next day, although it added them to my cart anyway. At no point while adding these backorders to my cart was I informed of any block on my account.
The next day, hours before the domains were due to drop, I find I'm blocked from being able to do anything in my Snapnames account because of a notification that says:
Your SnapNames account has been suspended. For assistance with re-enabling your account, please contact a Customer Service representative at 1-877-352-5630 (or 1-570-708-8760 outside the United States).
Apparently I still had verification hurdles to jump through, but the notification to do so went to the throwaway email I changed to avoid spam. Fine. Or at least it would have been if Snapnames trusted its customer support with basic account privileges.
I called the US number and the customer support lady, although abrupt at first, was nice enough after I explained the situation (and she got past my Northern English accent). I explained to her that I couldn't remember what email I changed it to because it was a throwaway I made to swallow spam and didn't intend to regularly log into. She was apologetic but said that she couldn't see or change the email registered to my account, and warned me that I needed to get back into this account because if I had already placed any backorders or I would lose those domains.
Thankfully after putting the phone down and doing some more thinking I managed to remember the email address I used, log back into it and start the verification process. Even more thankfully I used a permanently registered email as the throwaway rather than an actual disposable email service like I was about to, otherwise my account would have been lost permanently and Snapnames would have had no way to recover it, and then I would have had to chargeback any payments from them for domains I'd won, lost those domains and gotten my account banned... all because I wanted to avoid them spamming my phone and email.
To top it all off, I was told by support that these details needed to be kept up to date at all times and could never be changed, so not only do Snapnames automatically expose your details to the public (lawsuit waiting to happen for someone who has the time, especially those based in the EU), but they also block you from taking measures to prevent this happening. Why they even require a phone number at all when they're already using a separate service is beyond me. As an aside, the whole verification thing is a weird process that forces you to download an app and keep it on your phone for 24 hours, the worst possible implementation of this I've ever seen - most websites that do this can do ID verification in minutes using a link.
Of course, I missed out on the domains I wanted to backorder and ended up getting those through DropCatch instead.
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