So, this morning we woke up to discover that the domain name for IBP had expired (on 8/30, no less; that it worked until yesterday was a grace period). Visits to the site redirected to Network Solutions. Oops. Turns out, the owner of record was the founding artistic director — who left in 2001, and whose email presumably hasn’t worked since. Double Ooops.

After consulting with the managing director, we — in our dual capacity as Head Nerd and President — got on the phone to NetSol to see if we couldn’t get this taken care of. Sure enough, we could, even if we’re not on the domain record already. Great!

Heathen: “So, what’s your annual rate for domains now?”

Them: “$34.95, but it drops to $19.95 if you buy five years, which is a much better deal!”

Heathen: (paraphrased) “OMGWTF!!!!!!!1!!!1!!!!!”

Er, right. NetSol — perhaps the 2nd least favorite network company, behind Verisign — is still charging NEARLY FORTY BUCKS A YEAR for basic registrations. To put this in perspective, the official Heathen registrar, GoDaddy, charges $8.95 for single year registrations, with discounts for multiyear. NetSol is charging over 350% of the prevailing OpenSRS rate, with no value add.

When we picked our jaw up off the floor, we managed to ask how they could possibly justify this, and also about the process involved in transferring the domains to another, more reasonable, less evil registrar. This was, apparently, the keyword, and presently we were on the phone with someone in Customer Care — presumably, the prior department was “Customer Assrape” — who offered us $8.75 a year. When asked how they could possibly justify the higher rates, especially when they back off so quickly, we got a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. However, the upshot is that Infernal Bridegroom’s .com and .org registrations are now fixed. And next summer, when we get close to the expiry again, we’re totally moving these over to an OpenSRS registrar that doesn’t try to fuck us.