Aberdeen Bites Back at NSI's Domain Name Deletion

Computergram International, April 13, 1999

Upsetting technology analysts that write about your business is not usually a good idea, but that's what's happened to Network Solutions Inc, the exclusive registrar of internet domain names. The Aberdeen Group, based in Boston, Massachusetts issued a research note yesterday, entitled "Network Solutions Dog Bites Aberdeen Group, Aberdeen Bites Back" by David Alschuler, the company's VP, e-business and enterprise applications that described how Aberdeen's aberdeen.com domain name was deleted from the root zone files on April Fool's Day for three days, despite the company having paid its $35 renewal fee more than a month earlier.

Alschuler told us he is "surprised at the risk factor" involved in renewing a domain name - a service that is crucial to many of the companies that it advises that rely on the internet for their business. Aberdeen claims to have ended up paying for its renewal twice, but the extra $35 is obviously not the real issue. Aberdeen had "an extremely bad customer service experience," Alschuler says and in his note he says NSI's "customer service team should be sent back to the Gulag for re-education." NSI says Aberdeen's is "obviously a serious case" and it is looking into the matter, but had no further comment yesterday. Aberdeen received warning from NSI in early March that it had not paid its renewal fee, but Aberdeen had already paid and told NSI as much. NSI repeated the warning in late March and Aberdeen replied with a letter by overnight courier enclosing the cancelled check as proof of payment. But that was apparently not enough proof. Finally, on April 1 NSI deleted aberdeen.com. Aberdeen didn't notice what had happened at first, but soon its web site and email service vanished. NSI demanded a credit card payment to restore the name and Alschuler says an American Express card was duly produced and the second $35 was paid. But, he says NSI has never admitted that it was wrong in the whole affair - an approach he describes as "arrogant." The note describes the research company's "fear" at having advised its clients to embrace the internet, only for it to be undermined itself - and all for the cost of a $35 renewal fee. Aberdeen says NSI "clearly needs to review its procedures for termination of registration rights." It says that, with a monopoly hold on the service that it won with its 1993 cooperative agreement, "the potential to abuse such status is vast - and such abuse is the stuff of regulatory oversight." It notes that "competition for NSOL [NSI's ticker symbol] is now lurking in the nearby wings. And we, for one, can't wait."