Fuck network solutions and web.com

From: Kyle Giarratano
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 5:48 PM
To:
Subject: A resignation from web.com

To Whom it May Concern,

The following is my resignation letter from Web.com.  I felt compelled to write it because of the changes
that I have seen take place here over the last year and a half and because I believe I have the right to express my opinions.
first I want to say that I used to love this company and I used to have great pride when I came to work.
That all changed when the company decided that it values stock share price over everything else including our
customers, our company's reputation, and the happiness and success of our employees.

It all started 16 months ago when I came back from honeymoon to learn that the inbound call Queues had been
changed specifically to route sales calls away from the night shift and to either Canada or the sales team.
Okay I said to myself, not happy about it but there must've been a valid reason for it.  Overnight my paychecks
declined by almost 30 percent through no fault of my own.  I was still just as good a salesman, but the opportunities
I now had access to were a far cry from the old ones and I had to work twice as hard just for the luxury of making 30 percent less.

All was quiet for a few months until they announced they were changing our health insurance plan, and I like many employees here
was very worried about what was going to happen.  But I was put at ease by an email from our great CEO David Brown who said
TO ALL EMPLOYEES not to worry because web.com had worked EXTRA hard to ensure that they avoided a double digit increase in health
insurance premiums company wide.  So of course imagine my surprise when the new plan numbers are revealed and my health insurance
goes up by 44 percent.  Which if you do the math IS a bit more then  "avoiding the double digit increase other companies are facing".
So I sent an email to HR to clarify, and I got a blithe, empty response back that basically said "Oh that was for the company as a
whole we didn't mean it for individuals sorry for the misunderstanding" if that were the case why have the CEO tout it in an email
as a statistic we should all be proud of.  It seems to me the only logical answer was they were trying to put us at ease over the new costs
using what I found to be tantamount to a lie.  So now I’ve got to work a job that pays me 30 percent less AND takes out 44 percent MORE
in health costs then they had in the past.  Okay I said to myself its tough but the potential to earn is still there, you are good at it,
and really unless you are moving to a different state what other choices do you have?

Of course we all now that it didn't end there, to bring our stock price up further they had to get facilities costs down.  In order to do that
they had to cut anything they could get away with.  So there goes our forks, spoons, knives, there goes our paper plates and of course this week
they took away our discounted soft drinks and OUR MEDICINE CABINETS.  Great so now when someone is screaming in my ear for twenty minutes,
over some shady thing web.com did to them I can't even get some ibuprofen to take the edge off! At this point I said to myself "that's it
I'm not putting up with this anymore one more ridiculous thing they do that makes our jobs harder or makes it so we take home less money every two weeks
and I am done.

Of course we already know what happens here.  The new sales plan, the elimination of daily pay outs and of a fairly attainable bonus multiplier.
replaced with 3 different hoops to jump through AND still having to hit 80 percent to get anything. I won’t go over the specifics here as we are all
aware of what the real end game is.  It doesn't take a genius to say that under the new plan they will be able to use all the different requirements
to reduce the overall amount of payroll, which will make things harder for us and will help their stock price.  If you don't think so remember this,
under the current plan we have a daily AND period goal and all we have to hit is AHT and Quality to maximize our payout.  Under the new plan, we have
to hit sales goal, and quality goal, sell a difm, sell a my time, kill SA, AHT, AND First call resolution (which we can’t control!) all to get a capped payout
that has no daily goal benefits.

So now we've finally reached the point where I can't do it anymore.  I can't in good conscience continue to work for a company that exploits its
customers and its employees all for the betterment of stock price.  I've seen this before in a publicly traded company. I'd advise everyone
to look for a new job now because this isn't the end of the changes it's merely the beginning.  Don't be the one left holding the bag.

As an added bonus below I have listed every borderline unethical/shady/illegal thing I have ever caught web.com engaging in, that way if anyone
else here is having a crisis of conscience maybe this letter will help them make the decision that’s best for them and their family.

1.Selling web forwarding with premium dns in a monthly bundle cost when premium dns includes 301 and 302 redirects.
2.Customers once again can't disable auto renew within their own accounts.
3.We charge credit cards that have been expired for YEARS with unwanted auto renew.
4.We send a mass email to update their mailbox passwords that actually enrolls them into a monthly charge that’s free for one month so they don't notice.
5.We charge 299 for a domain redemption the registry charges 70.
6.We back order our customers own domains and resell them back to them for 125 or we callously sell them on the open domain market for thousands.
7.Made up domain reinstatement fees of 25.99 on top of 37.99 domain renewals well above the industry standard of 12.99.
8.Safelock being opt OUT before it was OPT in originally (only took multiple news stories and bad press to change it)
9.Tons of monthly reoccurring charges designed to be small to avoid detection and churn to drive monthly rev for stock price.
10..50 cent domains that morph into 34.99 AFTER the customer pays.
11.Account banners for ads designed to look like important action items which trick customers to sign up for deceptive reoccurring services.
12.Giving our customers a "free" .biz domain which instantly exposed their contact information without proactively giving them Private Reg.
13.Auto Grouping Value Added Services for renewal even when YOU SPECIFICALLY remove those services or uncheck them before renewing.
14.Turning on auto renew via an opt OUT link in an email instead of a via an opt IN and then charging the card 3 months before expiration.
15.No consistent auto renew rate. I’ve seen 37.99, 19.99, 15.99 and 24.99.
16.Top down selling and pricing designed to get the customer to spend the most they are willing to spend. "Won't pay 30 for a name how bout 15, no how bout 10?"
17.Manipulating our stock price using the NOGAAP accounting (which is where the monthly costs come in, book a ton of rev but hide the churn boom stock manipulation)
18.Renewal notices sent years in advance to trick customers into piling on years or adding services.
19.Not sending out ANY renewal notices and the customer having to pay reinstatement fees after their site goes down which is usually how they find out its expired.
20.Customer changes ADNS and is enrolled in site lock basic free or private registration free for one month and then charging every month after that.
21.Addign .biz and free web forwarding to a cx account for one year hoping cx will blindly pay for it next year.
22.After resetting a mailbox password they were force to reset, you can't decline the "free" email upgrade either you accept it and get charged next month
or you have to x out the whole window.



Thanks for reading I hope some of this was informative to some of you.


Regards,
Kyle Giarratano