internic

I started dealing with "the Internic" (now 'Network Solutions') about ten years ago when I had to take care of the internet domain of my employer. I hated dealing with their clumsy text based email-in account management forms then, but nothing has really improved in all the years since.

I received a cryptic email from them today, and had to go see what they wanted. Usually I just punch in the URL (etherlabs.net, a for-now defunct techie collective) and see my account. But somehow my account had multiplied, and now I had three.

So I spent quite a bit of time updating the passwords for all three and then de-duplicating the accounts. Naturally, all of this had to happen via a combination of web-based forms and emails zipping back and forth. At the end of the I'd had something like 25 emails from them (no joke!) and gone through more forms than I really thought was necessary, but they assured me that all three accounts were now treated as one.

But then I followed up with a WHOIS lookup, and now there are two entries on the WHOIS, where before there was only one. Rrrrrr! What a nonsense organization. It must be a nightmare to work there.