If you had a dream of starting your own website, your online abode, and you wanted to see whether the pretty little name for your dream house is available or not, what do you do? Check its availability on one of the many domain sellers’ sites. And if you picked “Network Solutions” to do the search, then you have just been scammed my dear friend.
Did you wonder, that though Network Solutions showed the domain name as available, but yet when you searched and found a cheaper registrar, the domain name was suddenly…GONE..What about the second one you had searched for at NetSol? Gone. Third One? Gone. Now, what is the probability of all 3 names being registered within 5 minutes of you searching for them? Probably one in a billion. No, its one in one (100%) if you searched on Network Solutions, as a friend of mine found out the hard way.
Donning the detective cap, if you do a whois for all those domains, they will undoubtedly be registered with Network Solutions. And you are now in there clutches, to buy it for their exhorbitant prices, almost 4-5 times the normal prices.
Actually, its not that bad as of now, because NetSol doesn’t really “buy” all those domain names (otherwise it’ll take less than a day for them to go bankrupt). They register it with ICANN but are allowed to cancel it within 5 days so they don’t have to pay any money. This clause was made to protect registrars from Credit Card fraud, but NetSol is using it to create their own fraud. As now, they can block the site for 5 days for free and people panic and buy it from them for their higher prices. They say that they do it to “protect” their customers. Hell, all they are protecting is the customers from buying it from their “cheaper” competitors as NetSol will sell it to anyone who pays and not just the guy who searched for it.
So, if you have become a victim of this and can wait for 5 days, then do that instead of paying through your nose. I call for a boycott of all services of Network Solutions and not just the domain whois, so that they can learn a lesson.