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

[Cody Wilson]

Hello LUG. 

My name's Cody, and I too am a casualty of the former Revealed / 
SoloConnect tsunami, but from the inside.  I am a former Revealed / Solo 
employee that worked under our dear Roadkill (who was the best boss I've 
ever had, hands down. Thanks again, RK.)

Network Business Solutions isn't a "terrible" company, but they are 
still no Revealed as far as the support and services they are offering.  
Then again, part of that is charging people (in some respects) a little 
fairer price for the services they are getting.  I dunno though too much.

The $60/yr e-mails they are offering are Google Apps hosted domain 
e-mails.  I mean, if you -really- want that revealed.net e-mail address, 
by all means, but Google Apps e-mail is extremely easy to come by (I've 
moved my domain's e-mail to it with 0 pain, and unless Google really 
screws something up, I don't think I'll be going back.) 

I'm sorry things had to go the way they did with Revealed, as I didn't 
really want to leave.  It was a great learning experience for me, and a 
blast to play with so much cool hardware. But when Solo stops paying 
you... you kind of have no choice but to leave. :-\

If I were you... buck up and just drop the rotting husk that is 
www.revealed.net and move on.  It's not Bill Reveal behind the company 
anymore... everyone that you know from the Revealed family is moving on 
to bigger and better things, and the magic behind the ISP is dead. 

-Cody Wilson
belthesar@belthesar.com
www.belthesar.com

Dave Bergert wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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