BEWARE!
If you own domains at Web.com, Network Solutions, Register.com, and Yahoo! Small Business, be
sure to keep a wary eye on your digital property.
The above
registrars have been known to transfer domains, without your permission or even
knowledge, to a domain warehouse called New Ventures Services Corp.
Some of these domains have expired, but some have not –
Some
have just been plain hijacked, mostly from small business users and personal
website owners, often ordinary people who have scant knowledge of the domain
business.
Better yet,
transfer your domain(s) to a domain registrar that places the domain rights of
customers ahead of their own special interests.
Just do so well
before the expiration date because the above registrars have been known to use
delaying tactics and bogus transfer rejections, hoping that customers will give
up.
Go Daddy, a registrar
that does business the right way (for the most part – there are no totally clean
hands in the domain name industry), allows domain owners to renew their expired
domains up to 45 days after expiration; in fact, Go Daddy allows customers to renew
at regular registration fees, up to day 12 after expiration. After that time
they do charge a premium of $80, which is not unreasonable,
OR,
better yet,
The
option of transferring your expired domain out to another registrar (the new
registrar will charge an owner a small transfer fee and add a year to the registration
date – just don’t transfer to the above registrars).
In other words,
Go Daddy offers its customers every opportunity to reclaim their domains, even to
the point of losing money, customers, and/or domain names in the process.
However, the
above greedy registrars will simply dump your domain into a New Ventures Services
account for the purpose of exploiting website owners, and when the customer calls
customer service, the rep will throw up his/her hands, pretending that New
Services Ventures is a separate entity, when, in fact, it appears to be a shell
company of Web.com, who happens to own Network Solutions and Register.com.
Extensive details about these registrars
and other bad players will soon be posted on my main website, and a link to it will
be posted here. Keep checking back.
These connected businesses,
in addition to other sketchy companies, forgot who they were designed to serve.
Meanwhile, keep
in mind that your business practices reflect who you are.