There are 219 folks on the DrakChat list on Yahoo!® and it is a pretty active list. A few times, we’ve tried to move folks to a forum like everybody else in the entire darn industry - it appears, though, that our clients are determined to be different. They like the list, and they like that it’s off network in case of a crash. So, the list remains.

One of the more important discussions that’s happened in the last few months was a discussion about domain tasting, domain kiting, and domain front running brought to you by your old friends at Network Solutions getting busted being jerks. I won’t even link to them, I’m just that annoyed with them.

In the past six months, we saw an upsurge in hosting orders naming new domain names that when it came time for us to register them they were not available. Now, we’ve seen this before and frankly, usually it was a case of PEBCAK (problem exists between chair and keyboard) and a situation where someone a bit newer to what all this web hosting stuff was either didn’t do a whois to see if the domain was available, or did something they though was similar to a whois (like simply typed the domain in the browser and assuming that if it didn’t resolve it wasn’t available), or something along those lines.

Network Solutions changed that assumption. They have admitted to holding any domain name looked up on their availability checker so that it cannot be registered by any other registrar, forcing people that wish to buy the domain name they looked up to purchase through Network Solutions - who still charge $35 per year, a price that has not come down since registrar competition was instituted. They claim to be doing this to thwart domain tasters that seek to monetize domain names, or hold them for ransom - perhaps feeling that holding them for a $35 ransom is the lesser of two evils.

It is ironic that they are guilty of domain tasting with a stated reason being they are trying to thwart domain tasting, which also has the side effect of forcing people to do business with them simply because they used a free resource on their site to check availability - a free resource that does not openly list any disclaimer that by simply checking availability, the domain name will be held and will only be able to be registered at Network Solutions. There is absolutely no notice to inform the consumer at all.

So, don’t ever check domain availability at Network Solutions, unless you have some burning desire to pay $35 a year to register your domain name. (There has been some argument/insinuation that GoDaddy is guilty of this as well, but at least they’re cheaper.)

Tags: domain frontrunning, domain kiting, domain names, domain tasting, Network Solutions

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under DrakNet Banter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.