The Sky is Falling

and Verisign is beating me over the head with it

[idiotgirl]

Today must have been make-your-quota day at Verisign because I received multiple emails that several client domains were going to expire! Yeah, in 200-frigging-3. Unfortunately, panicky clients also received the emails and rushed to contact me about the big crisis - wondering where to blindly send their money before they lost their domain name.

It's so sad. It's almost... predatory. (Sometimes I feel like I'm barring the door against the wolves for them.)

I know - if you bother to READ the danged notices it's obvious there isn't a REAL crisis. But there are a lot of people out there - adults - who buy into the hysteria and part with their cash much too easily.

There outta be a law. Couldn't these notices be interpreted as misleading?

[crash]

When we started getting hit by these fools we sent an email and posted comments on our site showing them how to check their registration themselves and explaining exactly what these email (and mail) notices were.

Verisign isn't even the biggest offender I've seen, there's another - Domain America or something, atleast 20 emails a month - tho they are a bit clearer that it's an advertisement, unfortunately many don't actually *read* the text, they just see Domain Expering

[toolman]

>>>It's so sad. It's almost... predatory.

Haha. Yep. It's funny because there are different "levels" of marketing when you understand the internet and how it works. Some companies talk to you like you're stupid (and charge accordingly) and others talk to you on your level. Yet others talk to you like they are stupid (UBE spam). I guess by trolling with a net at each "depth" one can produce predictable results.

It's a good thing your clients have you to watch out for them or they would have been taken in by yet another "troll" tactic.

[Mardi_Gras]

Magazine publishers do the same thing. It is all about accelerating cash flow and making the budget. They will gladly sacrifice that renewal revenue in 2003 in return for your $$$ today.

[mivox]

There outta be a law. Couldn't these notices be interpreted as misleading?
The FTC is looking into it... (from [webmasterworld.com...]

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0208/08.verisign.php

The FTC probe comes on the heels of a series of lawsuits filed against the Mountain View, California, company by rival registrars claiming that VeriSign tried to take their customers by sending out deceptive domain name renewal notices. The notices informed customers that their domain names were about to expire and encouraged them to renew the domains with VeriSign, the lawsuits claim.

It's about time someone started taking a close look at that... everytime I get one of their phony domain renewal notices, I imagine ten less internet-savvy people getting suckered in to "renew" their domains at 3x's the rate they were paying with their original registrar.

[idiotgirl]

Well, these clients actually were registered with Verisign, since being grandfathered in from the good old NS days (before there really WAS a choice). I haven't received anything from Verisign, personally, to renew a domain registered with someone else. I do, however, get registration offers from all kinds of companies on domains I have registered with Verisign, or other registrars. I guess anything is fair game to these people.

But the "troll" aspect of the whole thing is what makes me mad. I might tell them (registration spammers) to shove it sideways, but there are lots of people that aren't very internet-domain savvy that are being taken advantage of by being put in a false "predicament". They panic and they pay without question. And that's exactly what senders of these phony renewal notices are banking on.

Verisign, by virtue of being one of the very biggest, automatically has a tremendous intimidation opportunity. When left to their own devices, they're as scummy as the next domain spammer.