Driss-A-Blog

"Have you transferred any domains to another registrar in the past 2-3 months?"

Well, I had. I'd moved drissman.com and beitavot.com to PairNIC about two months ago.

"Where did you transfer them to?"

"PairNIC."

"Where from?"

"Network Solutions."

"Who are you calling on behalf of?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you as it would distort the survey results."

"A registrar, though?"

"Yes."

So he then asked questions about PairNIC. Is price more important than features? How satisfied am I with their support?

Then he turned to Network Solutions.

"Why did you leave Network Solutions?"

"Because I didn't trust them. Misleading advertisements. Expensive."

The whole thing almost came to a standstill in the middle of the questioning:

"When you initially registered your domain, did you feel that Network Solutions offered more value than other registrars?"

"I can't answer that question. I registered my domain back in 1998. There were no other registrars!"

"So is that a 'no'?"

"It's not a 'no'. It's an 'I can't answer that question since it's not applicable!'"

"I need a 'yes' or 'no'. Or a 'can't answer'."

"I'll decline to answer."

The one revealing question came about three-quarters of the way through. I'd just gone through Network Solutions's support, services, etc. and dropped "fair" and "poor" as an answer for every single aspect of their operations. The guy then asked:

"If Network Solutions/Verisign were to improve their services to match PairNIC's, would you consider returning?"

The answer was, of course, "most certainly not". But "Verisign"? All through the interview, they'd always said "Network Solutions". Not "Verisign".

The guy finally ran out of his questions, and verified my name and phone number.

"Can I ask you now on whose behalf are you calling?"

"No, I'm sorry, but I think that you can figure out from the questions who it is. Thank you."

Indeed.