Ultra DNS Can We Chat?

1. 
   dillsmack said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:38 am

   holy shit that’s stellar, “reply with a 1″

   wow.

   I remember these jerkoffs spamming me a while back, I thought they stopped.

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2. 
   Icheb said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:41 am

   Just sue the shit out of them.

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3. 
   myron mcdaniel said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:43 am

   too funny shoe.

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4. 
   T.M. Harris said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:44 am

   Why would a reputable company go as low as to spam their own customers? I thought that as an online business, the responsibility is to keep the customer and give them an enjoyable customer service experience.

   But nowadays, I guess everybody’s greedy for the dollar…

   Next time they email you, instead of using a 0 or a 1, reply with a ‘1,000,000″ for the amount you should sue them for.

   Good luck to you, and keep in touch.

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5. 
   Archos 605 said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am

   I imagine Steve Hoffman will be rather frustrated when his inbox is full of angry Shoemoney readers.

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6. 
   Dan said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:47 am

   Heh, this blogpost shouts “hypocrite”.

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7. 
   SonicReducer said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:52 am

   Maybe he will get the point now. I doubt it though.

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8. 
   Stephanie said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:52 am

   Ah, nothing like an obvious autoresponder. Bright guys, real bright.

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9. 
   Nick Sullivan said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:54 am

   Wow, what an asshole. Spam really pisses me off.

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10. 
    Blog Contests said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    Post us the replies (as I am sure you will)

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11. 
    Dave Dugdale said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    Fun to see Shoemoney let off some steam.

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12. 
    krillz said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    bot net dos attack or targeting their inbox from one of the spam nets….
    nah I won’t lower myself to their level.

    What you did should be enough to ruin their silly reputation, and the hate mails will be a sweet payback as well.

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13. 
    LeGo said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    way to put them on blast. they could make it more fun and say “for yes put 1+1 = ? and for no put 1 + 3 = ?” and have all the numbers be embeded curved images…

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14. 
    WordHugger said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    Submit that *** to the BBB.org

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15. 
    jim said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    0

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16. 
    mark said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    Neustar is a shitty company - they screwed over the .US TLD.

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17. 
    Robert Norton said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    You know what’s great about the VoIP business, you take a company like that, which is just a sheer annoyance and a waste of resources, and you notice that they have an automated answering system. So you open oh, maybe 23 active channels (as in calls) and just leave them sitting, even for hours. The effect? Fast busys when everyone else calls. Am I crazy? ;).

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18. 
    CPA Affiliates said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    WOW some sompanies just dont get it at all.

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19. 
    Men's Health Board said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    0

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20. 
    Men's Health Board said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    it also remind me when i was 10 and we were exchanging messages with girls like “Jeremy loves you. If you wanna be his girlfriend cross the box YES. [YES] [NO]“

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21. 
    David said on October 9th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    jeremy you are a fraud, how much in free (or paid) publicity did you just give these guys?

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22. 
    Men's Health Board said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

    it’s actually really bad publicity and there is no link to their sites, not even with a “nofollow” tag. and i really doubt that with a post like this anybody will spend not even a second to go check them out.

    i personally hate that company that send you those letter at home about your expiring domain that looks like from a public institution.

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23. 
    Mubin said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:18 pm

    How the heck does it do that?

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24. 
    Compare Credit Cards said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    Its surprising that they didnt care about your email. I am guessing the response was an autoresponder email.

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25. 
    Travel Notebook said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Even worse, at least twice a month I get a letter in the mail from some spam company telling me I need to pay $30 to renew one of my domain names. They make it look like a bill and try to scam people into paying. Ridiculous

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26. 
    Steve Hoffman* said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    For English, press one, Para espanol, oprima dos.

    * I have no idea who Steve Hoffman really is.

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27. 
    Nathan said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

    I looked at their site.. burned my eyes though :-[

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28. 
    seogeek said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    At least he didn’t say this:

    For English, press one, Para espanol, oprima dos.

    

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29. 
    Theo said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    Why are spammers keep on spamming.
    No one wants to do business with spammers.

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30. 
    Tim said on October 9th, 2007 at 1:52 pm

    Because too many people actually buy from them!

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31. 
    Software Projects said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    UltraDNS originally seemed like a good idea. But the more research we did into UltraDNS the more we learned this is not a company you’d want to deal with

    [Reply]
32. 
    Jonathan Miller said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    OMG - I feelyour pain Jeremy! I get at least 4 calls a month. On top of it they keep phoning my toll free lines - now I’m not a skinflint but it really gets to me becuase I’ve asked nicely forthem to stop.

    At Ad-Tech London their latest sales guy actually walked onto my exhibit stand and demanded to talk to me as his sales co-ordinator had scheduled a contact with me for him. Needless to say I was not impressed.
    Jon

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33. 
    Pogung177 said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    …who is STEVE HOFFMAN..? D*mn I’m so stupid..

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34. 
    Protestant said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    SPAM goes mobile. Welcome to the future!

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35. 
    Carl said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    if you check out their company site they look pretty legit, they have myspace, amazon, and oracle as their clients

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36. 
    King Jacob said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    What I want to know is are the words yes and no really that big that you have to replace them with numbers?

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37. 
    Farmer said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    I wonder if they are taking part in the “who can spam Schoemaker the most” contest.

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38. 
    B3NZ0 said on October 9th, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    Or in this companies case… please answer: 1+3 = ? for yes, or 2+2 = ? for no

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39. 
    Farmer said on October 9th, 2007 at 3:04 pm

    no comment

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40. 
    Jonathan Volk said on October 9th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    Crazy spammers. I wonder how much they make spamming people like this…

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41. 
    nickycakes said on October 9th, 2007 at 4:23 pm

    lol. owned.

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42. 
    Googlelady said on October 9th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    Wow shoe you are not the only one getting those stupids emails..

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43. 
    Googlelady said on October 9th, 2007 at 4:56 pm

    That will be just cool. Imagine more than 30,000 hate emails to your inbox that will ‘may’ stop them acting like this

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44. 
    blogstheme.com said on October 9th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

    Same thing happens to me with some small affiliate networks that I’ve joined.. long time ago.

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45. 
    Singapore Athletics said on October 9th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    uurggh never ending battle with spam

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46. 
    Archos 605 said on October 9th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    Nice try by Carl their… OUTED !

    However, Shoe, not sure you should be putting the email up there seeing as it specifically says: ” E-mail (required - never shown publicly)” on your comments form.

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47. 
    Blogging The Movie said on October 9th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    LMAO.. that was pretty hilarious..

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48. 
    krillz said on October 9th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    spammer, let him be treated like the rest of us receiving a bunch of crap each day in our mail box..

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49. 
    Modern Worker said on October 9th, 2007 at 6:16 pm

    LOL, can always count on Shoe to call people out. Good stuff!

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50. 
    max said on October 9th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    Hahaha… great article. That’s the way SPAM companies work anyways. They send you SPAM if you try to contact them. Seriously though, fu** them…

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51. 
    Justin Cook said on October 9th, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    Awww, you didn’t even give them a chance to rescind!

    But seriously though, what will this accomplish? Maybe you’ll just get on their do-not-call list, and they’ll spend their time and effort on the rest of us instead.

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52. 
    Neil said on October 9th, 2007 at 7:50 pm

    Brilliant!!!

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53. 
    wethead said on October 9th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    Shoe,

    I feel for you man, I really do, I used to have these jerks ( other guys ) do that to me all the time, It was soooo annoying it really was….

    Glad you exposed there ass

    Wethead

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54. 
    JeffPosaka said on October 9th, 2007 at 8:18 pm

    I wonder if anyone read your email. I hope so. But there is probably some high school student running their emails…

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55. 
    GL said on October 9th, 2007 at 9:50 pm

    CLASSIC!!!

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56. 
    Bulbboy said on October 9th, 2007 at 10:12 pm

    0+)+:=

    :0)

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57. 
    Bulbboy said on October 9th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

    Yes, Archos605, maybe you’re right, Shoemoney is bad because he’s giving out their ema…..hang on did they leave a comment anywhere? Or did they scrape his email form someplace else.

    Anyway are you forgetting they are spammers. They deserve to be publicy pelted with rotten tomatoes, tarred and feathered, and forced to watch endless reruns of Jerry Springer.

    I’m feeling generous today.
    =)

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58. 
    Theo said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    They got some extra publicity

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59. 
    lyricsreg said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    Ya think ? You can’t spam a spammer, spammers don’t read mails

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60. 
    lyricsreg said on October 9th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

    Not much, they just do it for fun

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61. 
    CatherineL said on October 10th, 2007 at 2:06 am

    Great response. We get spam and telesales calls all the time, and we’re always looking for new ways to piss them off.

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62. 
    maurizio said on October 10th, 2007 at 4:01 am

    Reply with 0 or 1 ? Is it an email you received 15 years ago or they have dumb programmers there?
    

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63. 
    Farmer said on October 10th, 2007 at 7:28 am

    Do you like me? Check “1″ or “0″

    Thanks.

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64. 
    Gecko Tales said on October 10th, 2007 at 7:31 am

    The Can Spam act works as well as our illegal immigration laws. I once worked at a company that had a lawyer as a CEO. We would send out emails to people on our list (they signed up) but he would make us put a disclaimer in the bottom of the email about the CANN SPAM ACT. He made us misspell it on purpose so that it would leave a loophole. I quit that job.

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65. 
    Justin Cook said on October 10th, 2007 at 9:12 am

    lol. owned.

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66. 
    Jeff said on October 10th, 2007 at 9:31 am

    I know Steve Hoffman….he wanted the marketing department to come up with an application to help target the porn industry with spam. He’s easily one of the worst in their Brisbane, CA office.

    UltraDNS (Neustar owned, but still UltraDNS in spirit) sales people do some unbelievably sleazy things.
    - promise a 30 day out in the sales proposal but leave it out of the contract (and the legal department WILL NOT honor the proposal)

    - tell people that they have a demo account, but they don’t..it’s a contract

    - misrepresent the services (there is NO SUCH THING as ‘geo load balancing’…it’s directional dns and it’s something different

    I could go on and on, but Neustar Ultra Services has lots of problems…many legal…all bad (oh and Amazon?…thinking of dropping them..)

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67. 
    Jeff said on October 10th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    One more thing (kind of funny).
    Rodney Joffe (one of the founders of UltraDNS and now a Senior VP for Neustar) is pushing for a law that would forbid SPAM text messaging. What set him off? He kept getting text messages during the opera while in Phoenix!
    Hmm..I would say…start including some names in your responses to sales

    Rodney Joffe (rodney.joffe@neustar.com) (Sr VP and Chief Technologist)
    Jeff Ganek (jeff.ganek@neustar.com) (CEO of Neustar)
    Ben Petro (ben.petro@neustar.com) (Sr VP - NeuStar Ultra Services)

    Have fun!

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68. 
    Jeff Hogston said on October 10th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    I could you tell you so many stories….
    NeuStar Ultra Services…really sleazy from the inside….out.
    Also, don’t worry about me….I’m protected.

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69. 
    JoeTech.com said on October 10th, 2007 at 11:18 am

    Why do some “companies” insist on making themselves look stupid and then proving it when they try to cover their tracks? I’ll remember that company in my “do not use all all costs” list. Thanks for the heads up.

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70. 
    Tracy Robinson said on October 10th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    0 wait, was 0 good or bad, haha just kidding, this seems totally bogus and why as a company if you were scraping information, not run that information through a database to weed out multiple instances of the same email, or the same address, etc. but then again large companies, won’t say their name but their initials are m$, don’t bother doing that and send multiple coupons out

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71. 
    Theo said on October 10th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    You could file charges against these scumbags for stalking you.

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72. 
    Harrisburg Web Design said on October 10th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    One of the funniest posts I’ve read in a long time. Shoe has guts to spare, that’s for sure.

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73. 
    Brian said on October 10th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    If I were you I’d expect the spam to increase. I think DNS’s business plan has a whole chapter dedicated to “How to piss people off”. That is, if they have a business plan, or strategy beyond that one chapter.

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74. 
    Martain said on October 10th, 2007 at 7:31 pm

    I wI have about 100 domains and I need a dns service as well. I currently use Dnsmadeeasy, but I wanted a second managed dns provider.

    I visited http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/products/enhanced_dns.html but i could not get an idea on pricing. I hope its reasonable.

    Shoemoney any tips on pricing or how to add domains with akamai etc? Thank great post!

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75. 
    Jeff said on October 10th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    You don’t actually ask me…but I would suggest keeping your DNS providers on equal level…so if you use Akamai, you should only use Akamai (or have them as you primary and point DNSMadeEasy to them AXFR’s / IXFR’s). The reason is there tends to be a lag (despite how DNS is designed) when a resource record is updated.

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76. 
    max said on October 10th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

    At least you got the word out. Maybe it will cause a BUZZ among bloggers and bring down that SPAM company.

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77. 
    Five Dollar Wiki said on October 10th, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    That IS true. This is called BUZZ marketing, creating controversy to drive traffic.
    Maybe Shoemaker is using “reverse-psychology” to promote the company…well that’s kinda fetchin’ deep… :p

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78. 
    Five Dollar Wiki said on October 10th, 2007 at 11:30 pm

    That does suck… :p

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79. 
    Five Dollar Wiki said on October 10th, 2007 at 11:31 pm

    Tight! Let’s all send in 10 emails each to his inbox!

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80. 
    Five Dollar Wiki said on October 10th, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    But then again, we’d only help him create a BUZZ for his SPAM company. Maybe we should just mind our own business and spend our precious time on something else like making a money making wiki… :p

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81. 
    ritchie said on October 11th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    I’ve been spammed by the as well, nice posting. Kind of on point.

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82. 
    Stealth said on October 11th, 2007 at 10:20 am

    If shoe hates ‘em then I do too.

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83. 
    Derek said on October 11th, 2007 at 10:41 am

    Too bad about the timing on this. Would have been much more interesting to have outed them, say, during DefCon or something

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84. 
    Protestant said on October 11th, 2007 at 11:04 am

    BUSTED!!!!!!!!!

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85. 
    Robby said on October 11th, 2007 at 11:35 am

    lol that was hilarious

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86. 
    Theo said on October 11th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    It’s their core business, pissing people off..

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87. 
    The Dino said on October 11th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    Well lets start some fight…

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88. 
    Midgethooker said on October 11th, 2007 at 2:15 pm

    It’s like when a candidate tries to phone a talk show anonymously to promote himself in the third person.

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89. 
    The Avenger said on October 11th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

    The problem with NeuStar is that they see the money running dry for their core business (NANPA clearinghouse) so they are trying to branch out. When they bought UltraDNS (April 2006), they saw them as a cash-cow, but to continue to bring in the money….they need to get sleazier and sleazier. I was talking to a friend at Divx Tech last night, and he tells me that at one point, UltraDNS lost all their DNS records. UltraDNS were doing some sort of maintenance and as a result….all Divx site went down (summer of 2005).
    Talk to any company that have had them…..their billing will quintuple for no apparent reason, and UltraDNS’s service department will only say “the billing is correct…maybe it’s you!”.

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90. 
    Joeychgo said on October 12th, 2007 at 7:50 am

    Couldnt agree more.

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91. 
    Joeychgo said on October 15th, 2007 at 7:26 am

    after looking into it - I have found the same thing

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92. 
    gambit32 said on October 15th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    Somehow I managed years ago to get some free secondary DNS from them by signing up at some worthless Linux conference in NYC, and they havent bothered me once… You’d think if they were going to hassle anyone, it would be someone who has been leeching their services for nearly 9 years without coughing up a penny.

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93. 
    Instant Community said on October 16th, 2007 at 2:09 am

    Quite impressed by this situation…. DNS ultra bullshit

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94. 
    The Avenger said on October 17th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    Well…they have alot of people that have the secondary service and it’s either free…or minimal monthly (with no overage). Their salesman are told to concentrate on bringing in new service or re-acquire people that left. Strictly speaking, you have free service so what can they possible offer you if you don’t need extra features (that frequentsly fail).

    Hey - maybe someone out there who has the free service and doesn’t need it can secretly transfer it to someone (for a small exchange of the king’s coin).

    I don’t need it, but maybe someone else.

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95. 
    Neon said on October 20th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

    i hate these whois email spammers. i have hundreds of domains using the same whois email… then they just mine the domains and send the same email hundred times to the same receiver. probably they have too much resource to spam.

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96. 
    The Avenger said on October 22nd, 2007 at 9:12 am

    Is it a coincidence that UltraDNS (Neustar Ultra Services) runs the databases for INFO - ORG - CO.UK (and other ccTLD’s) …Afilias and PIR are the authorities, but Ultradns runs the databases……AND…Neustar is the authority (and runs the DB) for US and others? Is there any reason they wouldn’t have direct access to the WHOIS information (ie - a simple SELECT query)?

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97. 
    safesurfer said on October 27th, 2007 at 8:12 am

    I always hated it to receive this offline spam for domain renewal - Now that I use whoisguard this problem seems to have solved itself for the better.

    [Reply]

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