In a nutshell, Network Solutions is preventing consumers from shopping on price.

Try this yourself. Go to http://www.networksolutions.com. Do you see the price of a one-year registration anywhere? (No. All you see are some prices for package deals and hosting contracts.) Enter a name you know doesn't exist into the lookup box, and see how many pages of upsells you have to wade through before you get to the price. (I counted five.) On the fifth page, assuming you haven't purchased any upsells along the way, the check out cart finally shows you the cost of a five-year registration for $99.95. Change that default selection to one year, and you see the price is $34.99.

Too much? Yes, I agree. (In fact, I would have gone to another registrar one or two pages into that awful customer experience.)

So now let's jump over to a registrar with a better price. You can pretty much pick any registrar in the world, as NSI is at the top rung of the price ladder.

The name you want isn't available. It's now exclusively available through NSI at that wonderful price of $34.99/year.

As soon as the lookup occurred on the Network Solutions website, NSI reserved the name under its own registration. They hadn't told you the price before you looked it up, but now you can only get the name you wanted from NSI at the above-market price set by NSI.

Don't accept the line about this being a new service for the protection of consumers. This service is meant to capture consumers who are shopping around.