Me vs. NetSol

Learning valuable lessons really suck sometimes. Last evening I received an e-mail from Network Solutions stating that I would not receive a refund, as I was told, for the $12 Web Forwarding service I blogged about on Sunday. Since I had to get up very early today, I didn't want to get into all the major specifics, so I sent them a quick reply asking for my money because their provided service shutdown all my websites.

I receive an e-mail this afternoon instructing me to call them. I didn't feel like dealing with it, but I felt I had the moxie to take care of it. I call and I get a fella named Frank who, after looking at my file apologetically tells me that I will not be able to receive a refund as it supposedly states in their Terms of Service. Whatever! Who reads the Terms of Service anyway, right?

I asked to speak with a supervisor and he said, "If I knew it would make a difference you would be on with him right now. He would tell you the same thing but be more blunt." He follows it with, "That's how Network Solutions does it." WHAT!?! I thought it was a great quote that made me laugh inside, but I was supposed to be a disgruntled customer so I didn't give any indication of my delight.

After ten minutes, I hung up the phone with Network Solutions without my refund. Frank the consummate salesman that he is, made me think about switching my web hosting over to Network Solutions. While I would receive 2GB more disk space, there are currently more benefits with Yahoo!.

So, let me leave you with this valuable lesson. When you purchase services over the Internet, be aware that you may not receive a refund regardless if you use them or not.

Me vs. NetSol & Yahoo!

Some things are best left alone as I discovered the hard way today and it all stems from the switch to Blog*Spot. Let me give you a little history on the subject. I purchased my domain name, justjason.com, from Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) then the Small Business web-hosting package from Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com). Yahoo! completely tied justjason.com to the web-hosting package, as they naturally should. This is where Blogger (www.blogger.com) would be publishing my blog.

Fast-forward to present day where you find me wanting to convert my blog to Blog*Spot. Blog*Spot is the service that Blogger uses to host peoples blogs for free. I mentioned some of the reasons in a previous post entitled Welcome . . . again. Now all I needed to do was point justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address and everything would be fine.

I visit Network Solution's website and purchase a service that will forward justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address. The service costs $12 a year and I currently use the service for my three other URLs which all point to files hosted on Yahoo!. I'm very hesitant because DNS (domain name server) settings need to be changed in order for the forwarding to work, and anytime setting changes need to take place it all becomes very complicated very fast.

Against my better judgment, I purchase the service and point justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address. A few hours later I check my website and everything that could have gone wrong did. Not only did my website not come up, but none of my websites did and none of my Mom's websites did. All the connections that connected my domain and my web host were broken, completely interrupting service.

So why did everything go down if the only change was to justjason.com? As I mentioned earlier, Yahoo tied justjason.com to my web-hosting package. This means that all graphics and html pages hosted by Yahoo! had the justjason.com domain attached. Since Network Solutions changed the DNS settings for justjason.com it was no longer pointing to any of my files on Yahoo, therefore nothing was being displayed.

I manually change the DNS settings on Network Solutions back to Yahoo!, but then decide to call Yahoo! and have them reset the DNS settings as well. I call Network Solutions and cancel the web forwarding service. I hope that sometime within the next three days everything will be back to normal.