OK, so I’ve had it with NameSecure.
A little “inside baseball” here… I own my own server, but co-locate the server at a hosting facility here in Dallas. I run my own services on it (www, mail, etc.) but do not run DNS (i.e. Bind) on it. Not out of the ordinary at all.
Until today at 9:30PM, I’ve had my DNS services hosted with a company called NameSecure (www.namesecure.com). For the past two years, they’ve been just fine. No hiccups, easy web interface to make changes, just peachy. In fact, they’ve worked so well for that, I even moved a handful of domains over to my account there, and paid up thru 2009 for their services.
A week or so ago, I agreed to host a personal site for a buddy of mine, and went over to NameSecure to add a new hostname to my business domain. When I committed the changes, I happened to notice that the page said that even though I had paid for the service, NameSecure was not the primary host for my DNS services for that domain. That was confusing in and of itself, but I knew something was up when after a couple of hours the new hostname wasn’t resolving. So I opened a support ticked saying essentially, “what’s up?”
Two days later, I receive a reply stating that NameSecure is not the Registrar of the domain. To which I replied: “I know, this has nothing to do with that, I simply wanted to update the parameters of the service I paid you to perform.” A little bit more lengthy than that, but you get the gist.
The next day I received a reply stating “We’re sorry you’re having problems with your mail service. We’re having technical difficulties, but we think the problem has been resolved already. Thanks.”
Geez. This has nothing to do with mail. And, no, the problem hasn’t been resolved. Another email off to support.
SIX days later I get a reply that states (I’m paraphrasing here) “Hmmm… seems like when you make changes, they’re not being pushed out to the rest of the Internet. Not sure what to do, so I’m going to escalate this to engineering.” Wow. What was your first clue? OK, escalation, that sounds good. Maybe someone with half a clue will take a look.
So that brings us up to today. Six additional days later. I get a message this morning at 7:35AM that my DNS zone files have been rebuilt and submitted to the zone controllers, which update on odd hours. This sounds good, I say to myself, and go on about my day.
About two hours later, I’m at a client’s office and I try to retrieve my email… only to find out that my powerbook can’t find the server. Hmmm… I drop out to the terminal and try to ping my box. No dice. I ping the IP address directly and it answers fine. I dig the domain for my server and see that now the nameservers aren’t serving any useful hosts for my domains. Great.
I immediately go to NameSecure’s website and attempt to locate a phone number. Nothing. My only means of communication with them is via a web support form. I fill out my support request, marking it as an emergency and shoot it into the ether. I then do a Google search for a phone number and turn up a 570 number. I call it and get a polite recording stating that they don’t take support calls any longer, followed by a click. Wonderful.
A couple hours pass and I haven’t heard word one from them. No call, and (of course) no email, since my server can’t be reached at this point. So I fire off web support ticket #2, this time using a gmail account as the return address. I get a email back from the system letting me know that someone will get to it as soon as possible, hopefully in the next 24 hours. Meanwhile, my server is unreachable.
By the end of the day, nothing word from NameSecure, so I fire one more urgent message at them, and then immediately locate a new DNS host. I had stuff going on tonight, so I couldn’t get back to the issue until I got home around 9:00, but 20 or so minutes later I had DNS hosting up and running at my new DNS host (DNSPark, and had Network Solutions pointing to their nameservers. By 11:00 everything is resolving perfectly and mail is starting to flow again.
And one click from their home page and I find not only a phone number, but a street address. Something tells me this is going to work out better. They even have a backup email service that takes over if your primary mail server is unreachable, queueing mail to be sent on down the line if your server temporarily goes down (or becomes unreachable).
Hopefully, if you tried to send me mail today, it’s queued up and will get to me eventually. If it bounced, please resend it.
And avoid NameSecure. My next step is to try to get my service fees back from them, but something tells me I’ll be unsuccessful.
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November 27th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Once upon a time, NameSecure support was quite good. The company stagnated though. Sorry to hear it make things so difficult for you.
November 27th, 2006 at 9:22 am
I agree, I went along for a long time with absolutely no problems, and even recommended them to friends and customers. But things seemed to go south quickly, and when you can’t even find an address or phone number on their site, and find out later that they purposely don’t have a phone number, you know something’s up.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I own the only recorded telephone number for NameSecure and can inform customers of theirs about the history and the way in which the company operates. NameSecure started in Moraga, CA a number of years ago and had a couple of guys who were very good at customer support and relations. One day the good fairy came knocking at their door, offering them huge sums of money to disappear. The company who bought them is a wll known comapny, called Verisign. However, it is Verisign’s Upper Management that has created a wall between another company wholly owned by Verisign, called Network Solutions. Verisign’s Upper Manangement has gone to great lengths to insure that none of their 24/7 Network Solution tech support teams avow any knowledge of their sister company. You see, quite simply, the Name Secure philosphy is, “if you want cheap domain name service, you get cheap support.” Everyone can understand that corporate equation, yes? They don’t bring in enough revenue selliing cheap domain names to afford the on-line personal technical support from a real human being. Instead, they outsource any support to a local firm who has about three technicians who oversee all the technical problems that arise.
Over the course of the last four years, I have answered hundreds of calls from frustrated NameSecure customers who have horror story after horror story. Because you can NEVER talk to anyone on the phone, if an emergency comes up, you are going to get screwed, plain and simple. I remember one organization in the panhandle of Oklahoma, where NameSecure notified them too late to renew and they lost their ten year domain to a Russian porn site within minutes. This was a medical aid company who flew services to people in remote areas. Can you imagine losing your ten year website overnight.
Here’s my advice to ANYONE involved with NameSecure…..GET OUT…as soon as you can. Go pay your money to Verisign on the other side of their wall, where you will get excellent support. You can also try sites like GoDaddy, but all I can tell you is get away from NameSecure. If you have a website that is critical to your business, you do not want to get caught by your management in one of NameSevure’s boondoggles. This is a company who does not have the welfare of your business in its corporate goals.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I am surprised to find the problem go way back to 2005.
I registered for a domain name with namesecure in December 2nd, 2007. It was
recommended by a so called internet marketing guru.
Guess what, 4 days had passed and no email. Order Status show blank page. Nothing.
Where is the summary page of what I registerd.
Then email came said registration successful (again a robot autoresponder). Again my Order
Status is still blank.
Searched through their website, no telephone nor email I sent complain ticket, and guess what,
again got back a robotic auto response.
My first registration for a domain name ended like that.
I hope they do not continue to charge me or renew without my knowledge.
Did you guys manage to get your money back from namesecure.com?
jj88
December 5th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Nope, never got a refund, and never got any correspondence with a real person. I still have several domains technically on namesecure, but I’ve since moved my primary DNS pointers off of them, so they’re not serving up to anyone. I still get the automated renewal notices though, as if nothing ever was wrong. Kinda makes me wonder if there’s a human involved at all
March 16th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I am having trouble with Namesecure as well. I want to cancel my recurring Web Hosting fee, and I cannot find a way to do it. They say it has to be done in written form, but they don’t provide an address. I’ve submitted two service requests and have received zero response. They are awful, and I’m going to have to contact my credit card company in order to get the recurring payments stopped. I have never experienced such horrible customer service.