Ok, I offer domain name registration as part of my suite of services, but I just want to make sure people are aware of all the consequences of doing domain name searches with Network Solutions…
I think that Network Solution is back to its old tricks again. For the last year, there was a loophole in the domain name registration rules that allowed unscrupulous folks to reserve a name without paying for it for 5 days, set up an advertising portal on that name to see if it was worth buying, and if it was had some traffic to it, they would use a series of shell companies to continually re-renew a name (for free) every 5 days and not let anyone else buy it. Thankfully, this practice was ended recently, but just in time for it to be fresh in everyone’s mind, NetSol started a new practice billed as a “Protection Measure“.
Basically if you look up the availability of a name using NetSol’s name-lookup function, they lock up the name for you ‘for your protection’. BUT, they only lock it up so that no other registrar can reserve it – not so that no other customer can reserve it. In other words, let’s say you have a great idea and use Network Solutions to see if “XYZABCNet.com” is available, but you’re not sure you want to grab it right now, so you let NetSol ‘lock’ the name for 5 days. The problem is, they have no problem with anyone else coming along and reserving that name, just as long as they don’t use another registrar to do it. So anyone can come along and take your great domain name idea if you don’t register it right away. So you have two choices:
- Purchase the name right away for $35/year (plus numerous ‘add-ons’ like $9 private registration, etc.)
- Don’t get the name, and wait 5 days until NetSol releases their hold and then register it with another registrar (like It Won’t Byte, for $25/year + free DNS & private registration, ‘natch), and hope that in those 5 days, someone else doesn’t register it first…
I personally think that locking someone into doing business with you is not a way to build long-term business relationships, so I recommend against doing WHOIS/domain name searches with Network Solutions until they can start playing nicely again…