The dark patterns of Network Solutions (opens in new tab)

I was automatically given a Network Solutions domain after winning a SnapNames auction. As this article correctly states, they require you to call a number to retrieve an auth code faster than the 3-day waiting period. In my case, the domain was within the Auto-Renew Grace Period, so I called the rep to speed it up.

First, Network Solutions tried to require me to pay a "domain redemption fee," falsely blaming the fee on ICANN. After I told the rep ICANN charged no such fee, they waived it.

Next, the rep refused to give me an auth code unless I signed up for an additional year of service. When I pointed out the exact ICANN regulation forbidding them to require this, the rep still refused to give me the auth code on the spot. (However, ICANN requires them to provide the auth code within a certain number of days, and I eventually received it.)

I submitted a complaint to ICANN, but they replied that action would only be taken if Network Solutions flat-out refused to provide an auth code.

NetworkSolutions has an interesting history of having been fortunate enough to be issued a monopoly by the US Government in the early days of the internet. This placed them firmly into the defense industrial complex, and for a time they were a subsidiary of major defense contractor SAIC/Leidos. Ultimately, though, NS cranked up rates so high that complaints from industry were a big factor in precipitating the formation of ICANN. NS reacted to the loss of their monopoly by going almost comically far in the direction of the villain, and has spent the better part of 30 years desperately trying to entrap their customers due to their general failure to innovate.

Of course that's a very critical take on the company, but I don't think I'm anywhere near alone in finding it frankly astounding that NetworkSolutions still exists as a major concern. The writing was on the wall for NetworkSolutions, as far as technical leadership, by the time they went public. Despite this investors have seen them as a milkable cow and the cash grab continues to the present.

My first thought was "which PE firm acquired Network Solutions and caused this?" So I looked it up and indeed its parent company is owned by Siris Capital Group which is in their own words: "a private equity firm that invests in mission-critical, mature tech & telecom businesses at strategic crossroads." translation: Buys struggling businesses that have locked in clients to squeeze every last penny of profits out of them.

I had a domain registered with Network Solutions for over 20 years in part out of inercia and in part because their transfer process is so scary. I actually started the process twice over the last 10 years and they offered me a half price for a year ($15 which is still expensive) so I let it stay put both times.

This year I finally decided to move out and it was a full week with the exact issues described in this post and it was a scary week! Network Solutions, never again.

Their admin interface have popup advertising. If you want to edit your DNS records you have to click on « advanced DNS settings » and then you are redirected each times to an intermediate page with a popup to subscribe to some of their antimalware stuff.

As someone whose first Real Job was sanity checking and transcribing registration requests received by fax, setting up nameservice and then sending a properly-formatted email to have it installed in the root servers ... Network Solutions' behaviour makes my skin crawl. It didn't have to be this way.

They've been like this as long as I can remember. Whenever we onboarded a new customer in IT one of the first things we'd do is transfer their domains off Network Solutions, even Godaddy was never that bad.

I would pressure Snapnames to partner with a less trash company.

Not sure if this is still true but in the early 2010s I documented several scenarios where searching for a domain on network solutions (but not purchasing) resulted in it getting automatically purchased and parked with network solutions, with a list price of $500.

I registered my first domain back before they charged money for the service. Almost as soon as they were allowed to charge, they began to be an exemplar of "dark patterns", before that was a term.

I'm glad to have had nothing to do with them for 12+ years, from this testimony I see they've gotten even skeezier.

It took a whole mess of domains getting stolen for them to add even some token level of 2FA, too (mine was one of them and it took nearly a day to get it back; others like Perl.com weren't so lucky). I have only one domain left with them and I don't intend to renew.

The article actually misses a Network Solutions dark pattern that really struck me: all monthly rates are actually 4 week rates, meaning you are billed 13 times a year.

I started with Network Solutions some 20 years ago and left about 10 years ago after they failed to informed me that one of my prized five-letter domain name had actually expired then.

Yeah, never looked back since then.

All of this is really offensive, and doesn't match my previous impression of Network Solutions as a business.

They have lost a lot of respect from me, based on this article. I won't be doing business with them ever again.

NS used to be one of the better, more reputable places to register a domain. Sad to see how far they’ve fallen.