sair.am's blog

This post describes is to put in words from my experience of using the services and dealing with the customer care of net4.in . Looks like I am not the only one on the web finding this. There are many others(Please google them up).

In short: Do not take the domain registration service from net4.in unless someone offers you few thousands of rupees and if you are not planning to use the domain till it expires.

Here’s the deal or I’d say the workflow:

1. If you want to change your personal details of your domain. You need to do the following
   1. fill in the form. when you receive the email , be glad that it worked.
   2. wait for few days and realize that you were betrayed by what you actually saw
   3. try filling up the form again
   4. try verifying after few hours (this time the page says that the details will be updated in few hours instead of a day)
   5. Get frustrated and call the customer care  who would keep you on hold for few minutes(say 2 complete minutes before the some other random person picks up the call)
   6. You tell them what you want to change, and they suggest you that you need to do it from the UI. They suggest you to try it again “correctly”. What the f**k can go wrong which sends a confirmation email every time you try changing something, that too, in a small frigging UI which has total of 10 input boxes ?
   7. They suggest you to raise a trouble ticket so that someone who is technical can look into it.
   8. My point: What is the point of CustomerService if they cannot raise a ticket for the customer and if a ticket has only two fields , question and answer. The ticket systems I saw have atleast threading systems .
2. Then, you get the idea of not dealing the crap there is loads which you are right now not trying to deal with from this registrar.
   1. so, you ask the customer care guy on the call for a new authorization code
   2. they ask you the motivation behind it and you explain them since they politely ask the same question every time you try ask them for the auth code. so, you tell it to them and they say, ‘okay’ . please use the UI on the website. F.U.
   3. You generate a request on 26th Mar and you get an email saying you would get it within 48 hours, and you feel so frigging happy about it (In many and most of the registrar UIs, this is a self service link provided to you on their control panel).
   4. 3 days pass and you talk to the customer service . All they say is “Sorry sir, our ‘SALES’ team is off on the weekends, your query can only be answered on Monday”. seriously – wtf ? They do not even say its 48 fking business hours and I know that services are supposed to be 24×7 critical for websites and registrars.
   5. I call them up every day from 29th through 31st asking them about the code. Then, you get a mail after 4 days with – here’s your frigging idiotic request’s output – N4AU234567234567 (which looks suspicious and you can’t frigging do anything about it since it’s the same number repeating once prefixed by Net4 and AU=authorization code) . Note: An auth code can be any longer between 6 and 16 characters(probably ascii).
   6. Then, you realize after paying the money for the transfer that it is a invalid registration code that was provided, and they say that they have provided you with something which is correct from their end. – What the bloody f**k is this. Who the hell are you trying to win over this. Do you want your customers to wait over the phone which increases your way of saying ‘we have provided 2000 hours of support in a single day’ . I do not know the numbers of how many people are put on hold for out of the 2000 hours of ’so called’ support provided.
   7. You would held up on phone for more than an hour and then your frustration blows out against net4( the frigging company who took your peace and your idea of a good registrar away from you).
   8. Call up your new registrar and ask them if they can do anything about it. He says – “net4 is seriously bullshit, we have faced similar issues with customers asking us what to do about them” and you would be given two awesome email ids . They can be found at nixi and registry.in . Use email id legal instead of info at nixi. Try calling the phone numbers found in registry.in or nixi.in. Those are the people who can really help you get out the state you are in. CC a small email along with ccing legal of net4.in and this time they’d call you . SERIOUSLY, THEY WOULD CALL YOU. YOU WOULD HAVE WASTED HOURS ON YOUR PHONE TRYING TO CALL PEOPLE AND GET THE RIGHT PERSON TO CALL YOU. Once, you say the magic word ‘legal’, they’d call you and yeah I forgot, say that you should have received the auth code on email (which is one of the most insecure way which no one relies on earth, and other registrars would have it as a violation of security if they sent an auth code via email) and will put you on hold for 5 continuous minutes(no, they won’t suggest that they will call you back) after suggesting you check your junk folder.
   9. “Sir, you will get your authorization code in the next 15 minutes” . What the bloody fuck. I wanted them to get it to me from the past 8000 minutes and I get the call saying 15 minutes. IT IS JUST A WAY TO AVOID WORK AND TRY TO KEEP CUSTOMERS ON YOUR BACK. I guess their “so called famous ” registrars do not know what normal people are going through.
3. To end this post , I will give you a small suggestion. GET THE HECK OUT OF NET4 . IF YOU HAVE A DOMAIN MANAGED BY NET4, GET OUT . I AM A PERSON WHO WORKS FOR A COMPANY WHICH IS OBSESSED WITH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND I HAVE DEVELOPED THE WAY TO SEE IF SOMETHING ACTUALLY WORKS FOR THE BETTER OF A CUSTOMER OR NOT. PEOPLE, I KNOW HOW YOU SHOULD KEEP YOUR CUSTOMER HAPPY SO THAT HE RETURNS BACK TO YOU EXPECTING BETTER SERVICE . You might think it is safe today, think about tomorrow , when you actually get a problem. Get to a registrar who has things on a self service UI and returns your support questions in few minutes than in few weeks. I went on with mitsu.in . Their support and UI are good and right now they have deals to grab a .in domain for 99 INR . ( I have no idea how that actually works. guess, it is a trade secret  )

External links : The email which was sent to the legal team