New Ventures Services Corp.
An information security consultant dealt with New Ventures Services Corp., the domain warehousing branch of Network Solutions, in order to regain control of his expired domain.
Mark Burnett‘s family domain, Burnetts.net, was registered in 1998 and over the course of several years he managed it along with several hundred other domains at Network Solutions.
Eventually, he moved most of them out to the registrar of his choice. In the process, an outdated email address with his Netsol account led to getting no expiry notifications about the domain Burnetts.net.
Subsequently, Burnetts.net expired, and dropped; surprisingly, New Ventures, the domain warehousing branch of Network Solutions, snapped it and listed it for sale as a premium domain.
Mark Burnett dealt with the company, buying back the domain that had now lost its original registration date, for $500 dollars.
He shared his frustration over this experience with New Ventures in a series of messages, on a forum discussing ICANN policies:
“I have owned that domain since 1998, for the last 15 years it has been paid on my credit card, so it slipped through the cracks among all my other domains. The primary contact email address was on a domain I no longer own, so those emails should have bounced. The administrative and technical contacts were email addresses I still own and I never got any notifications on those. When the domain expired, http://register.com kept all the DNS records the same, so there was no indication that it had expired and gone into the grace period. Apparently it then went into an auction, but again the DNS records hadn’t changed. After the auction, netsol picked it up.
“My original registrar was namebargain, a http://register.com reseller. What was unusual is that when I called them, the customer service rep immediately gave me the New Ventures phone number, like it was a number stuck on her monitor. Googling this, I have seen a number of people make the same connection between http://register.com resellers, New Ventures, and Network Solutions.
“The shady things are that they only sent emails to my account contact (which bounced), not any of the others, that they didn’t change any DNS or name server records even after it went into auction, that New Ventures wanted so much for a personal .net domain of my last name with little commercial value and refused to negotiate any lower knowing they were holding my email domain hostage, and that this company was really Network Solutions pretending to be a tiny company (see http://newvcorp.com )”
“Paul is the manager of my domains, at the time I had about 600 domains and thought I had transferred all of mine to my own registrar. With so many domains it slipped through the cracks. Certainly it is my fault in the end but the point is that technically they followed all the guidelines, they did the absolute minimum. And every other registrar kills the nameservers when a domain expires. Also, when the main contact email bounces, that should be a pretty good indicator to send an email to the administrative or technical contacts. Making even a little more effort contacting the owner clearing isn’t a priority.
“And that still doesn’t change the fact that Network Solutions does this shadier part of their business through a small-looking company. Furthermore, when you call their number the message says they are now called “New Ventures” so apparently they change the name of the business when they get too bad of a reputation. When major companies feel like they have to hide behind another shell company that periodically changes that usually means they don’t want to be connected with that type of activity.
“Oh yeah and this is Network Solutions, a company that has a long history of unethical, misleading, and outright illegal behavior.”
In a separate case involving Network Solutions and New Ventures, a domain investor acquired the domain DomainNames.com, paying $2,577 dollars, and receiving the domain three days later.
DomainNames.com was subsequently removed from his Network Solutions account; his money has not yet been refunded and no explanation has been given.
DomainNames.com is a corporate asset of Network Solutions, most likely since 2004.
