Eric Wolfram's Writing, How to Transfer Domain Registrar

Transfer Domain Registrar

The problem: a former monopoly dominates the domain name registrar industry and they practice deceptive marketing. The solution: Migrate your old domains to another registrar to establish equalization in the industry.

If you don't know why you want to migrate from networksolutions then read my networksolutions rant. This page addresses the solution -- to migrate. Where to? Many professional internet developers use joker.com as an alternative to the others. They tend to do so because of low costs, excellent service, and lack of extra marketing hype, spam, or the outright deception and fraud that is unfortunately the common practice of the former monopoly of domain name registrar -- the polymorph -- internic aka networksolutions aka netsol aka verisign aka veri.

On the other hand, joker.com is a stable and established alternative from the European continent with the fine reputation of being an honest open and friendly.

  • DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying Joker.com is perfect, in fact, I'm sure they are not perfect. German law compelles them, for instance, to suddenly discontinue service to domains that are "judged" by German courts to be serving up web content that is unacceptable in Germany, but would otherwise be allowed in countries like the United States. In addition, Joker did cause me issues and I did get double charged once, but I still like the company because they are very open honest and not deceptive. In addition, one other person complained to me about Joker, but that's beside the point. All I'm saying is that "I" am a customer of joker.com and I wrote down the following instructions as a service, not necessarily as an endorsement. In fact, I'd like to publish instructions on changing to other registrars to give people more choices. I've heard many good things about godaddy.com -- if you decide to try them, please keep a log of the process and send it to me to publish here.

Verisign recommends that you start the transfer at least 30 days before your account with them expires. However, as of February 2003, joker.com gives credit for the remaining portion of your verisign account, so you may as well start the transfer right away. Check Joker's helpful section on Transferring domains for details.

Instructions for transferring domain to joker.com
Initiate the transfer with Joker.com
  1. Go to the register or login
  2. request to "transfer" your domain
  3. fill in the three web pages of forms, which include contact and credit card information.
  4. joker sends email to the administrative contact and the owner of the domain, to verify that the request is legitimate -- make sure that those emails are replied to -- reply to the joker.com emails until you get an email from them saying that your credit card has been charged.
  5. Wait for an email from networksolutions.com -- a part of Versign. If and when you get the email *, click on the link inside the email -- DON"T SIMPLY REPLY TO THE EMAIL. You must do this within 14 days of receiving the email. The link is almost at the end of the email and by click on the link you will be approving the transfer

    * -- Now here's an example of how Networksolution is tricky. They don't send the confirmation email. They only send the confirmation/Denied email a week later because you didn't reply to the confirmation email (which they never sent.) Joker will reinitiate the request and the process will happen again -- you will only receive the confirmation/denied email. By many accounts, this happens. Some people blaim their spam filter, but I did not receive any confirmation email. Some people claim that they get the email and it has a subject of 'Information about your account' -- but it's not from a networksolutions email address. Others claim that they reply to the email but networksolutions says that they didn't. Still others claim that an email was never sent -- that's what happened to me.

  6. So you are advised to call network solutions 24 hours after you initiated the transfer from joker.com (and I agree that this is probably the best way to do it):
Contact information for Networksolutions
Customer Service at 1-888-642-9675.
Choose option 2, then option 8.

Tell the person who answers the phone that you initiated the transfer of your domain over 24 hours ago, you didn't receive an email conformation from Networksolutions/Verisign/NetSol; and since you've read on the internet that this happens when dealing with Networksolutions/Verisign/NetSol, you are requesting a manual transfer of your domain. Whatever they say, keep repeating to them that they should contact the Versign department who handles manual transfers of domian names right away -- and that you want them to manually transfer your domain as soon as they can. If they tell you to go back to the other registrar (joker) and request the transfer again, you say "Okay, I'll do that again right away if you agree to tell the Versign department who handles manual transfers of domian names that I want them to manually transfer my domain as soon as they get the second request from Joker. Repeat.

My Story with Networksolutions
When I called in early Feb. 2003, I waited about 20 minutes on the line for someone to pick up. On Feb. 14th 2003 -- I called I accidently pressed option 2 (I think) and then * (yes *) and someone VERY friendly and intelligent picked up the phone right away helped me right away! (I may have only pressed *) She told me that I have to initiate the request and then call them within 24 hours -- don't wait for any emails. I did get her to agree that email would be better, but they want the phone call 24 hours after you give the request to joker.com. On Feb. 15th, 2003 at 10:46am, I pressed * and waited for 10 minutes until an operator picked up.

Ghost confirmation authorization email
If you don't receive the authorization email you won't be alone. Many people don't receive the email because of SPAM filters -- or so they say. I didn't receive two authorization emails at all (email thread below)

I received this email from Networksolutions, but not the request to confirm email

>From: support@networksolutions.com
>To: ewolfram@INFINEX.COM
>Subject: Change of Registrar - Request to Change Not Confirmed/Denied
>
>
>Dear Network Solutions Customer,
>
>Because your intent to Change the Registrar of your domain
>name, WOLFRAM.ORG, to CSL Computer Service Langenbach GmbH was not
>confirmed, Network Solutions(R), a VeriSign company, has instructed the
>Registry not to process the Change the Registrar request.
>
>If you have any questions regarding this e-mail, please
>contact us at registrar@networksolutions.com.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Network Solutions, Inc.
>Change of Registrar Group
>http://www.networksolutions.com
Sending mail to support@networksolutions.com (ie Replying to that email) gets you nowhere. For instance, I wrote:

Hello,
Twice we have requested to change my domain and twice I have been informed by networksolutions that I didn't confirmed the change. I am willing to confirm however I have never received a request to confirm email from networksolutions -- I only receive these Confirmed/Denied emails -- which is a tad frustrating.

I would like to confirm that I am changing the registrar of my domain wolfram.org

Please tell me the exact procedure for confirming that intent. Please tell me exactly were to go, exactly what the subject of the confirmation email, the exact email address that you're sending the request for confirmation from, and the exact text of the confirmation email so that I can filter that email to my attention.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,
Eric Wolfram

That got this -- a bounced email from their support line -- ha!:

>Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 11:40:25 -0500 (EST)
>To: ewolfram@infinex.com
>Subject: Re: Change of Registrar - Request to Change Not
>  Confirmed/Denied
>X-Loop: acknowledgement@networksolutions.com
>From: acknowledgement@networksolutions.com
>
>
>Thank you for contacting VeriSign!
>
>The email addresses help@networksolutions.com and help@netsol.com are no longer active.
>
>Please re-submit your inquiry to http://www.netsol.com/en_US/contactus.jhtml or go to our website at
http://www.netsol.com and click on the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page in the red bar.
>
>** Though your inquiry is important to us, replies to this email will not receive a response, as the address has been
deactivated. Please do not reply to this email. **
>
>Best Regards,
>
>VeriSign Customer Service

so I went to the website and submittend the same information into their form

>Dear Eric Wolfram,
>
>Thank you for contacting Network Solutions.
>
>Please check if the email is under a filtering system or our email was mistaken as spam mail. The VeriSign
Administrative Contact listed for the domain name did not respond to the request to authorize the transfer of the
domain name to your account. Without explicit authorization, VeriSign cannot transfer a domain name from one party to
another. Please contact the current Registrant (Account Holder) for the domain name to ensure that they intend to
transfer the domain name and then submit your request again.
>
>With regard to your inquiry, you may have received a
>message concerning the continued registration of your
>domain name with Network Solutions.
>
>Whenever we receive a request to change the Registrar of
>a domain name, in order to protect the integrity of our
>clients domain information, we will send an e-mail to the
>Administrative Contact on the domain record to obtain proper
>authorization for this change request.
>
>If you wish to remain with Network Solutions, you can either
>reply as indicated in the email or just send no response.
>If we don't receive a response from you within 3 calendar days
>from when the e-mail message was sent, the domain name will
>remain with Network Solutions.
>
>If you want to change your registrar, please reply exactly as
>indicated in the e-mail message.
>
>Please know that these procedures have been put in place to
>insure your domain name against an unauthorized transfer, and
>that we appreciate your patience in this matter.
>
>If you have further questions concerning this process, please
>forward them along with the following to:
>
>customerservice@networksolutions.com
>
>a) A detailed description of your question or concern
>b) The domain name
>c) account number
>
>Thank you again for contacting us, and for choosing Network Solutions,
>as your domain Registrar.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Marie003
>Network Solutions, Inc.
>http://www.networksolutions.com
I already called to confirm my change request -- by this point. I was still interested in seeing what they say about the ghost email. So I wrote: Dear Sir or Madam:
Please understand that I did NOT receive any email that requests a confirmation of change. I am very interested in seeing this email, the email address that you're sending it from, and the exact text of the subject line.

I repeat: It did NOT get lost in my filters. I read EVERY email I get. Although I receive many other emails from networksolutions about other offers and deals, I have NOT received a request to confirm my request to change my registrar from networksolutions -- PLEASE send me an example of the email that was allegedly sent.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,
Eric Wolfram

They never replied!

About This Page
I maintain this page because Verisign and Networksolutions practice deception and I intend on providing continued maintenance to this page. Please let me know if anything on this page is misleading or needs updating or additions.

eric@wolfram.org

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