I would like to preface this post by saying that I very much regret having to write it. Those who know me are aware that I am not prone to complaining, and particularly not in a public forum. However in the interests of saving other people from going through the same thing as me, here goes:

On 21st November 2002 I signed up for the then newly launched NerdGrab service which at the time was at nerdgrab.nerdname.com The service promised to attempt to grab dropping names on your behalf and was launched by a fellow WHT member.

I was initially a little disturbed to find that the site used a shared SSL certificate, however as a newly launched service I was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt. The order went through ok, but I was horrified to find that the emailed order confirmation contained my name, address, credit card number and expiry date in full!! I went back to check the order form and realised that it actually POSTed to a plain http URL. More fool me for not checking, but still - that doesn't excuse emailing credit card details.

One of the welcome emails that I received claimed a success rate of 99.8% for this service. They failed to grab the name that I ordered, however I was pretty much expecting that as it was a very competitive drop (pyd.com). I am also aware of another high profile name that they failed to grab (ad.net) so for them to claim 99.8% success they must have grabbed at least 998 names successfully. Despite several challenges on the DNForum site the owners have never once posted a name that they've actually grabbed successfully.

Today the story got even better though. I was doing my accounts this morning and realised that there was a $60 discrepancy between the running balance in my books and the balance showing in my bank account. I called my bank to check and there were a number of authorizations outstanding for $12.00 with the merchant showing as "DOMAIN REGISTRATION, VANCOUVER WA". I did some searching and found out that Dotster's billing appears this way on customers' cards. And guess who's a Dotster reseller? Uh huh. NameNerd/NerdGrab.

I made contact with Erik and Tony at NerdGrab who naturally denied all knowledge of these transactions. I checked with Dotster to see what was going on, and 3 domains had all been registered using my credit card but with the registrant appearing as Erik Stafford. This included, believe it or not, the registration for the name NerdGrab.com on the same day that I placed my order!! Can you believe the nerve of these people? Using a customer's credit card details to register their own business domain????

I'll mention in passing that the TOS displayed on the NerdGrab.com website are ripped directly from the SnapNames.com website with a few bits cut out and a search/replace done with the company name. I guess given everything outlined above that this is no big surprise. I've let SnapNames know anyway though and I believe their legal dept are looking into it.

Because of this affair I have had to cancel my credit card, and will therefore have to go through the attendant frustrations including notifying suppliers, amending details for recurring payments etc etc. Dotster have been very good and are reversing all the charges, and I'm in the process of filing a report with the Sacramento, CA police dept. Is it even worth mentioning that the address contained in the registrant records for NerdGrab.com and NameNerd.com doesn't exist according to MapQuest and Yahoo Maps? Probably not.

Anyway, I hope that anyone considering doing business with these people will take everything I've written into account before doing so. Although it looks like you won't get chance anyway, their sites are mysteriously down ;)

I would also strongly urge anyone who has done business with NameNerd or NerdGrab to get a copy of their credit card statement ASAP and verify every transaction. If they did it to me, they probably did it to others too.

[EDIT: Final paragraph removed as I let my temper get the better of me in a rather undesirable manner]

Simon.

sounds like they tried to mess with the wrong person, I'm glad you caught it before any more damage was done and I believe you were right to warn other, but you know, there always 2 sides to a story :argue:

their domains have been sold already... :eek4:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=93367

Thanks for the heads up. I've warned the buyer.

Best wishes,
Simon.

wow these guys really aren't bright. A potential good service turning into trash right away because the owner had to cheat its' own customers. Very sad.

Aqhost, theres a dotster rep that hangs out on another forum. If you need the link and his nick pm me or im me.

Actually.... Dont mind if i a comment i contacted Dotster this morning when i came in apparently what happened was they charged you for 3 domains that i registered and they are going to refund your credit card and bill the charges to our visa. Aswell you e-mailed me this morning prior to coming in the office and said there were six charges the Dotster billing dept. said there were 2 and the third one was your service fee. In anycase they are refunding your card for the two charges.

I discussed the issue with Simon via phone and e-mail his first claim to me via e-mail was false he indicated he had 6 charges on his card from dotster. I checked it out apparently only 3 are on his card 1) was a service fee which he approved and 2) others were mistakes on dotsters system in which i register 2 domains for clients last night and his billing info was still in the system and unfortunately there billing system if awful.

If anyone would like to see a a screenshot of our credit card transactions i would be more then happy to provide them to anyone who so request them.

My claim to you was not false at all, or perhaps now my bank is lying? A charge and an authorization are two different things, and apart from the three actual charges there were more authorizations against my card in the amount of $12.00 that had not actually become charges yet.

Somehow, given your track record and the way in which you hurried to shut down and sell both NameNerd.com and NerdGrab.com this afternoon, your blaming it on a Dotster billing mistake doesn't quite ring true. Furthermore Dotster say that my card was used for 3 registrations by you, on different days, none of which were authorized by me. Are they lying too?

Feel free to speak to Rondi in the billing dept, she's fully aware of what's gone on.

Simon.

P.S. Got nothing to say about the stolen TOS, false WHOIS info, unsubstantiated claims of success etc?

WHT could almost become pay-per-view! Keep us posted AQHost, interested in the outcome of this one.

Keep us posted AQHost, interested in the outcome of this one.

I second that!

:eek: Some stories here are almost beyond belief and several in the past month about fraudulent use of credit cards :eek:

Maybe Namenerd guys would put up another online business, and it's up to us to discern what would it be.

Example is the www.Automatedlinks.com which is a scam then the owner put up another site called www.***************.com . I based this example here http://www.affiliate-talk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=255

Oh oh, it's banned the url is banned in WHT, well that's F R E ELANCE FORUMS . COM

AQHost - I hope this issue gets straightened out for you! Nothing infuriates me more than people who scam and steal from honest customers!!!

The following question doesn't have anything to do with the issue itself, but I think it's worth asking it.

How do you know a transaction is being made with a shared SSL certificate?

I would like to know so that I'm aware of this next time I conduct business on the Internet. I suspect others may be interested too.

Best of luck and regards,

Jessica

Originally posted by Jessicam
AQHost - I hope this issue gets straightened out for you! Nothing infuriates me more than people who scam and steal from honest customers!!!

The following question doesn't have anything to do with the issue itself, but I think it's worth asking it.

How do you know a transaction is being made with a shared SSL certificate?

I would like to know so that I'm aware of this next time I conduct business on the Internet. I suspect others may be interested too.

Best of luck and regards,

Jessica

Instead of thatsitesdomain.com/billme.htm you get someothersite.com/~thatsite/billme.htm ;)

Originally posted by Jessicam
How do you know a transaction is being made with a shared SSL certificate?

I would like to know so that I'm aware of this next time I conduct business on the Internet. I suspect others may be interested too.

Hi Jessica,

Thank-you for your wishes. Everything seems to have been pretty much sorted out now: the charges have been refunded to my card by Dotster, I've notified (I think) everyone to whom I make regular payments, and a new card is on its way to me. No harm done.

Unfortunately the Sacramento PD were unable to proceed with any action as I didn't have a physical address for the people concerned - the address in WHOIS for their various domain names doesn't exist. I guess I'm going to have to add a crosscheck between WHOIS and MapQuest before I do business with people online now :rolleyes:

On the upside they've lost whatever business they had, and more importantly they've totally lost their credibility with a huge number of people on various forums. Doubtless they'll be back like our old friend Timmah though.

Regarding the shared certificate, what Zoomer said is correct. Alternatively you may get a pop-up message that warns you "The name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site".

Best wishes,
Simon.

This guy is a fraud he is all over another forum site that he has ripped peopl off. Also his tos aggreement which was stolen from another company because he left the companys name in the agreement.

Thanks AQHost and Zoomer for the info. Doesn't 2CheckOut work that way though? I tend to trust 2CheckOut for online transactions.

AQHost - Is there anything else the police can do? I mean, I'd hate to see them opening up another 'business' and rip people off all over again.

:(

Jessica

Look at this thread...http://www.webmasterforum.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=2674#post2674

:eek:

Hi Jessica,

The Sacramento police say they can't do anything without an address, and I'm on the other side of the country which makes trying to track them down personally even harder. I'm surprised the police don't have access to something as basic as the voter's register, but still.

2Checkout don't work that way as you get sent to a page that's actually on 2Checkout's servers. A shared cert would be for example if you were hosted by ABC.com and used their cert for transactions on XYZ.com.

Best wishes,
Simon.

Simon: Have you tried doing a name/number lookup on anywho? Or if you've got telephone numbers, you could also do a reverse lookup....


*remembers the days of Shang*

Tried it. A lookup by name and area is probably pointless since I doubt they gave the correct city in their WHOIS info anyway. They were always very careful never to list any phone numbers on their sites or in their WHOIS info, and they didn't leave a return number when they left voicemail for me. Go figure.

I'm sure karma will sort them out anyway. I've seen enough a**holes get their just desserts in my lifetime to know that.

Best wishes,
Simon.

and they didn't leave a return number when they left voicemail for me. Go figure.


Caller id? or call the phone company for a log of received calls...;)

Well they called me on the toll-free number, so I'll see the logged number when the bill arrives. I'd imagine it will be either unlisted or a cellphone though :rolleyes:

you never know...remember, all criminals make a mistake...

Originally posted by AQHost
Well they called me on the toll-free number, so I'll see the logged number when the bill arrives. I'd imagine it will be either unlisted or a cellphone though :rolleyes:

Hope they didn't buy the phone with your CC :D

Originally posted by NN-Erik
... I checked it out apparently only 3 are on his card . . .

That's like calling the victim a liar because you only cheated him a couple of times, and not as many times as he told us.

Simon,

I e-mailed Dotster twice and the case was the 1st charge was for the service you purchase which was from November. Then there were two charges which where either my error or dotsters when we were registering two domains you got billed for them because your information was set on the nerdgrab account.

As for calling this rondi individual in the billing dept. i have tried to contact dotster via phone they have a anwsering machine ill try again monday. But my e-mail response was they refunded you card... and there were 3 charges 1) was for the nerdgrab backorder service. 2) you did not authorize and were due to my error or dotsters system i recall removing your information at your request that night i registered two domains and it billed you. But i did in fact put my visa card information in the billing system at this point i am clueless all i ever have gotten from dotster was we know about the problem and we are working on it.

If you would like feel free to e-mail me at scaerik@hotmail.com .

Simon,
I am not the kind to fraud anyone i was ripped off $200 by a guy who hosted us for two weeks named Anthony who ran a company called BLWS. If you have lost money let me know ill send you cash i have told Dotster the same i didnt inted for you to get charged i register domains daily my info was set for billing this is a mess i apoligize as i realize i made some mistakes as far as the e-mail and all. I tried to offer a honest service and great support. This mistake is drawing me out i dont have time for it due to college and work... if there is anything i can do let me know..