[QCLUG] Revealed.net domain sold *again* ?

[Dave Bergert]

I recently helped the QCMUG - whose website has been down since Oct  
2007 - get this transfered to a different registrar and hosting  
provider.  www.qcmug.org

(BTW- support@nbson.com) has been CC'ed to this email as well.

Some notes:

The admin contact on Whois for the domain - was changed to "Victor@soloconnect.net 
"  -- being the admin contact - when we tried to transfer the domain  
to a different registrar - the admin contact would be the one who  
would get the emails to approve the transfer -  victor never returned  
many emails or phone calls, nor did anyone else at soloconnect   -   
Luckily in the end we found that the domain name was purchased from an  
online reseller (incidentally the support listed for this was hostmaster@nbson.com 
  -- the Geneso guys) - and we were  able to login and change the  
admin contact detail - Luckily we found that old email..  Otherwise I  
suspect that we would be filling out domain dispute forms and faxing  
documentation to prove the domain name was ours.

Also the DNS records in whois where set to www.1and1.com -- apparently  
1&1 account were setup by Solo/Revealed - but never paid for -  but  
since we could transfer our domain we could change the DNS settings.

I didn't contact anyone at Nbson - the geneseo group -- although they  
appeared to provide more information on their website about the  
history of the problems-- See the google cache: http://tinyurl.com/6boxsj 
  -- this was the message on their website - that gave a little  
history.   I wanted to have control of everything and not - have the  
some situation repeat itsself - so We maintain the domain name, and  
registrar information .  So nbson wasn't even an option for us --  
which maybe a little unfair (to them) - but we were left in a tough  
position with the revealed/soloconnect/nbson deal.  --

$60 for email hosting is something that I could probably live with for  
a year to regain my email account, and have a year to transfer to a  
new gmail or email domain account - however $60 to setup a forwarder,  
for loyal customers seems to be price gouging - especially for people  
who haven't had the change to change email addresses from many  
websites, and feel that they are forced to do this to receive their  
email.  Perhaps they could offer an option to host their email for a  
fee and forward the email for another free.    Revealed customers have  
been dicked around - that being charged a high fee for there email  
would make we want to trade providers -- which is a little sad because  
most people who were revealed customers liked to support "local"  
companies, and will probably move on.

--DB


On May 20, 2008, at 1:26 AM, Mark Riedesel wrote:

> This obviously isn't directly Linux related, but I know a few of us on
> the list had been faithful revealed.net customers in the past years.
> We're all aware of SoloConnect's acquisition and resultant sub-par
> customer service, they were at least courteous enough to provide free
> email forwards for our old revealed.net e-mail addresses.
>
> Well, it seems as though SoloConnect has sold the revealed.net domain
> name to Network Business Systems ( nbson.com ) located in Geneseo, IL
> who are now offering @revealed.net addresses for $60/year which seems
> rather exorbitant considering all the excellent free email providers
> available nowadays. The real kicker is that they've also chosen to
> charge the same fee for e-mail forwarding which is unfortunate for
> those of us who have had revealed.net addresses since the early
> 1990's.
>
> So my question for the old revealed.net address holders, what are you
> guys planning to do? The other question being for anyone else that's
> had a situation where an ISP sells off a domain name to a
> exponentially less courteous company? Obviously if you own a domain,
> you get to choose what you do with it, it's just unfortunate in
> situations such as this one.
>
> Mark
>
> *grumble grumble*
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Dave Bergert
dbergert@gmail.com