Avoid Network Solutions at all costs

Recently Laissez Faire Books was about ready to go hot with a new e-commerce site, the long-awaited upgrade that we needed. As you may know, when ownership was transferred it was necessary to pull down the old site.

We hired a web designer. Actually it was our second designer. The first designer started things, closed the old site, and then went out of business. We were working with the new designer to open this site as quickly as possible.

But in the process we were consolidating all our domain names with the same server. So we contacted Network Solutions, where the names had been registered, and asked them what we needed to do to transfer them. We followed their instructions. This after having to wait about 40 minutes before a customer service rep answered.

The next day they sent us an email saying they have locked two of the five domain names to "protect" us from unauthorized transfer of our names to another server -- this in spite of them knowing it was authorized and that it was done directly on the server, and after we answered their security questions. So we called them again and had to wait at least another 30 minutes before their service rep answered the phone.

At this point we explained to them that they locked two of our domain names and we needed them released and that were actually harming us not protecting us. They said they would expedite the release. One day later they send an email once again saying that they would not unlock our domain names in order to protect us.

Yesterday we also sent them an official request from the email address on record with them asking to release it. We responded to them when they emailed the official email address on record. And still they won't release our property to us because they are protecting us.

At this point I don't believe they are protecting us. They know we authorized the transfer so that our new e-commerce site could go into operation. It appears that they are trying to cling to our registration for another month in the hopes of forcing us to stay with Network Solutions. We were moving to GoDaddy because our parent organization, the Interntional Society for Individual Liberty, has a dedicate server there and their domains names registered there as well. We prefer to deal with one company instead of two. But now that we see how Network Solutions is inflicting financial harm on us it is clear that the sooner we cut all ties with them the better.

As soon as the new sites is available we will let you know. At this time Network Solutions is blocking laissezfairebooks.net and laissezfairebooks.com.