Beware Of Network Solutions Domain Expiration Dates

I was transferring some domains out of Network Solutions, like I always do, when I noticed that a domain I didn’t intent to transfer out, as it was expiring in 2 years, was instead expiring in a few days in my NS control panel.

All domains I have with Network Solutions are domains won in auctions at Namejet. I have not registered on renewed a domain in Network Solutions and I don’t intent to. Network Solutions is a company that keeps your domains hostage when you are trying to transfer out your domains and sends you the auth codes 3 days after you request them.

I use a software program to keep track of all my domains that queries whois servers. I use it to check what domains expire within the next few months in registrars I don’t keep domains with. That particular domain was never on that list.

It was not on the list because contrary to what Network Solutions says the domain does not expire until 2016. Both the external registry and registrar expiration date is 2016 yet the internal expiration date is 2014.

I call the dates external and internal because I have had this conversation with Network Solutions again a couple of years back when I found a domain name expired inside Network Solutions but not really…

It seems that Network Solutions does not care about the registry expiration date and only cares about how much money it has taken from YOU. If you have paid for 1 year (combined with the auction fee) then your domain expires in 1 year. It doesn’t matter when it was expiring before the auction.

If the domain name expires according to the internal Network Solutions expiration date then it enters the “pending renewal or deletion” status and it WILL be auctioned off or dropped!

And I am sure that if you try to renew the domain for the maximum of 10 years then Network Solutions will take your money even though they will add 8 real years to the domain. If you then transfer out to another registrar then your extremely large renewal fee will be lost.

The story only gets better from here. I was curious why this is happening so I dug a little further using domaintools.com.

The domain in question at some point was expiring on 10-Oct-2013.

On 13-Sep-2013 the expiration date changed to 10-Oct-2016.

Yet on the 12-Oct-2013 the domain status changed to “Pending Renewal or Deletion” and of course kept 10-Oct-2016 as the expiration date.

Then I won the auction for the domain at Namejet and the expiration date remained 10-Oct-2016. According to Network Solutions my domain is expiring in a couple of days so I am transferring it out together with all my other domains. Because do you know what will happen if I don’t transfer out? The domain will expire and the only way to save it will be to pay the ridiculous Network Solutions renewal price. I know because it happened to me before and no matter what I said and tried to reason with them they just told me to pay up or bye bye domain. So I did.

What happened with this domain and why this keeps happening with many domains? Is it a glitch or a bug? Is it something else? I guess we will never know because Network Solutions will not reply nor explain any of this.

All I can say is this:
TRANSFER YOUR DOMAINS OUT OF NETWORK SOLUTIONS AND ANY OTHER WEB.COM COMPANY NOW!