11 ms·

GoDaddy deletes my domains and charges me to restore them

223 points by azifali 14y ago

adjin 14y ago
I once lost a domain for clicking by accident the 'delete' button. I sent them an email asking then to undelete the domain since it was an accident, got no response. I don't know why a feature to delete your domain was so easily accessible.
treitnauer 14y ago
GoDaddy's dashboard might be bloated which can be confusing but I doubt they deliberately delete domains after removing the credit card info from your account (as long as a domain hasn't reached the expiration date of course). As the GoDaddy representative correctly mentioned, it is the registries who are to blame for any restore fees. It's bad enough that you as a customer lost domains so Verisign, PIR, Afilias or any other gTLD registry shouldn't ask for anything else but the normal renewal fee.
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  GoDaddy do all kinds of things you wouldn't expect, and often they're just one of many frequent snafus. I had a domain go dead for months because they weren't pushing changes to the underlying registry, and they had no idea what was going on. They didn't fix the issue until I'd called dozens of times. Their staff are poorly trained and it appears as though they're prone to lying to get people with complex issues off the phone as quickly as possible. They're a horrific company and you'd be surprised how badly things can go wrong and how little recourse you have.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Yep. A while back they sent me an email saying one of my domains, one not even registered with them, was listed for auction. It turned out it was all a scam to get me to sign up for some sort of protection or monitoring service. And the sales rep was obviously an experienced scammer, not just some hapless phone operator. He eventually swore at me and hung up. If those guys were on fire, I wouldn't piss on them to put it out. And as far as I'm concerned, anybody who works there is complicit in a (possibly technically legal) criminal enterprise.
- azifali 14y ago
  I cannot believe it is the registry issue because a) I renewed the domain before expiry. Before that I had unlocked it for transfer but did not complete it since I realized that this might take a couple of days b) Godaddy charged me for the domain renewal which effectively confirmed me as the owner for another year. c) After 2 days, godaddy abruptly cancels the domain and transfers it to the registry even though my ownership is confirmed for the next one year. It doesn't sound like any body else is here to blame except Godaddy. From what I understand, they either a) Did this because I initiated the transfer or b) I removed all credit cards from the system because I did not want renewals to happen without notice.
  - treitnauer 14y ago
    Just saying that GoDaddy can't do anything about the restore fees imposed by the registries. If they screwed up it should be carried out at the firm's expense but I highly doubt they would delete a domain without being explicitly told so.
    - azifali 14y ago
      I think the delete domain behaviour is linked to the deletion of the credit card..that is not acceptable is what I have been saying. Looks like someone else has also had the same experience....(in comments)
- Osiris 14y ago
  GoDaddy's dashboard might be bloated which can be confusing but I doubt they deliberately delete domains after removing the credit card info from your account The bulk of GoDaddy revenue comes from renewals and it's cheaper and easier to keep a customer as opposed to acquiring a new one. It's much more likely that there's a bug in the code or some other non-malicious technical problem that's involved here.
- nitinag 14y ago
  Registrar here (Misk.com). Wanted to share some information on the restore fees discussion. Yes, registries charge hefty restore fees. Using .com as an example (since it can be different for each extension), there is a renewal grace period that can last up to 45 days (we delete at 40 days). Once the name is deleted, the name goes into redemption for 30 days after that. This is where the high fees are hit due to the registry. The thing to note is that some registrars no longer delete names after the renewal grace period ends and pass the name into an auction system. Hence the name never goes into the real redemption period. In those cases the name is still in the renewal grace period and charging higher redemption fees is a business decision by that company. You can tell if this is the case if after a registrar's redemption period, anything happens to the name except becoming available to register by the public (after a 5 day pending delete at the registry). The real redemption period is 30 days and is reflected in the whois record. Domains should still be renewed before expiration since things could change at any level and there is no reason to risk it. Here are the expiration policies I could find for GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Misk.com (us): http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/608/what-is-your-process-for-handling-expired-domain-names http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/608/what-is-your-pro... http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/242/35/what-is-domain-redemption-status http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/... https://www.misk.com/kb/domain-expiration-policy https://www.misk.com/kb/domain-expiration-policy
heretic529 14y ago
this guy is retarded
jessaustin 14y ago
Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by avarice. This is just like Goldman Sachs, deliberately confusing the customer and then making money off that confusion. When GoDaddy did this to me I let the (somewhat unimportant, fortunately) domain lapse and bought it back with Hover.
- azifali 14y ago
  Thank you for that advice. I will remember that...I will be moving my domains to Hover or namecheap soon.
  - binceipt 14y ago
    namecheap is a lot better. I am also moving to namecheap as well for all my domain which is hosting by fucking gomummy
  - fakeer 14y ago
    Looks like you have many domains. My unsolicited advise - do not keep them all in one place and NameCheap is not the only better one. I am from India and use BigRock(Indian) and Name.com. No problems till now. Choose at least 2-3 and distribute. Keep a track. I am sure you have made calendar entries to track their renewals &c, or maybe there's some automated service for that(would love to know, if there's one).
    - Indyan 14y ago
      I agree. NameCheap is a good option though. They have been leveraging GoDaddy's fuckups to gain new customers. Their social media antics have got them a lot of socially savvy customers. So they know that, if they stray, they will be flayed publicly, and all the goodwill will vanish quickly. Another registrar I will recommend is Dynadot, simply because I have used them for several years without any hassle, and they have a live support that's actually helpful.
paulftw 14y ago
would it be legal, if the author paid them whatever they wanted, transferred the domain out of godaddy's control and then requested a CC chargeback with the bank? Banks usually side with the customer.
- niggler 14y ago
  Godaddy would fight the chargeback. It's not like CC companies always side with customers -- the company gets a chance to make an argument. What most likely would happen is Godaddy would point to some line in the ToS and then point to you agreeing to it.
  - dpcan 14y ago
    I believe you are correct. I tried to do a chargeback once because the company refused to believe me, and there was no way into my account where my credit card was stored and they would keep charging it year after year. And they wouldn't just delete my card from their records. I tried a Chargeback, but the credit card denied it after the "big" company argued it. So, I ended up changing he number of my credit card, and they ended up canceling my account for non-payment/renewal.
    - sc00ter 14y ago
      I had a similar experience with a monthly recurring billing, and the helpful lady at the credit card company suggested getting my credit card reissued with a new number (effectively by marking it as lost / stolen). Unfortunately pre-authorised recurring payments are not interrupted by this method. They will continue to show up on your statement against the old card number until you either pursued them to stop, or cancel your credit card entirely.
      - niggler 14y ago
        "pre-authorised recurring payments are not interrupted by this method. " That depends on the nature of the authorization. The easiest way is to just terminate the card
newhouseb 14y ago
I had the same thing happen - I tried to turn off auto-renew by deleting my payment details and somehow managed (through godaddy's misleading interface) to cancel all of my domains effective immediately. I lost something like 30 domains in the process and support refused to re-instate them for anything less than something like $3000. This is old news, but you shouldn't be giving these guys your money.
- azifali 14y ago
  Wow..never realized that this actually happens. How come no one has dragged them to court on this? Deleting credit card != waiving off the service that has been paid in advance for the next year(s).
  - fakeer 14y ago
    You can be the first to drag to the courts. By the way, what's the current status? Any improvement? Or did they restore your domain back to you?
  - newhouseb 14y ago
    If I recall correctly (although this was a couple years ago, my memory has faded) I think when you deleted a card it took you to a list of domains to configure for auto renew and it wasn't clear if you were canceling auto-renew (now that you had no billing info) or if you were canceling the domains entirely. For added confusion, clicking a button when anything was checked didn't do anything immediately (because of some background DB batching) and so as a normal user you would assume that things weren't sticking and you would click another button to see if it worked... by the time the UI refreshed, you had killed all your domains.
Fizzadar 14y ago
Godaddy are one of the most incompetent companies I've ever had the misery of dealing with. Their web interface, customer service and general customer experience are all awful. I've always moved my domains away as soon as possible (I've only never had domains with them when purchased from another member).
kbar13 14y ago
godaddy really blows. they seriously do make things a lot harder for the customer so that they are -forced- to stay with godaddy. And their retarded overhyped ads don't help either; why are they putting up trash ads at ridiculous rates?
- niggler 14y ago
  You are talking about the ad -> success The worst thing for a company is if the ad is completely ignored.
- artursapek 14y ago
  Any company with the resources GoDaddy has, if it had good management, would have an order of magnitude better user interface. Instead, these assholes burn their cash on advertising and an army of customer service reps who get paid to stonewall over a simple issue for half an hour. I can't believe anybody still does business with GoDaddy, especially HN regulars who read a story like this every month.
binceipt 14y ago
did you cry ?
- azifali 14y ago
  Lol :-) nope...because most of my domains were still working..except the one that was close to expiry.
3327 14y ago
Well, I am sure someone thought this but you should not be using a mainstream service like godaddy in the first place. You could be right/wrong but because they are huge they will never care. There are lots of small domain name services try them and good luck.
mmanfrin 14y ago
I'm sorry to be callous, but at this point I feel little pity for someone still buying domains through GoDaddy. It is a terrible company with terrible policies, terrible management, and a horribly misogynistic marketing team. Why are you continuing to pay them rent on your domains?
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  You're not being callous at all. There are some companies that are known to frequently mistreat customers and have harmful policies. Any halfway savvy user (which OP appears to be) should know this and it's unfortunate when they get burned. It's even more unfortunate when a less technically literate person gets screwed by GoDaddy. Having said this, I'm super happy OP wrote this. We should not forget that yesterday's GoDaddy is the same as today's GoDaddy. I really feel for OP, and I know how it's easy to feel as though bad stuff only happens to other people, but my hope is that posts like this will continue and the beast will starve. I suspect that GoDaddy will begin to employ the same tactics Nigerian scammers do in order to weed out the savvy customers with blogs, and will try to ensnare technically illiterate people with credit cards.
  - azifali 14y ago
    I tried to unlock and transfer the domain first..see the note at the bottom.. Since it was going to take a while (couple of days) and since the domain was going to expire in two days..I decided to renew the domain anyway with godaddy.com to try transfer it later.
    - kintamanimatt 14y ago
      This should have been fine and unsurprisingly, GoDaddy appears to be at fault. I hope you never give them a penny ever again and fingers crossed I can toast to GoDaddy losing another customer!
- Vecrios 14y ago
  What other companies would you recommend then?
sahaskatta 14y ago
I've used everyone from 1and1, GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, and eNom as registrars. Most of these guys have cluttered slow interfaces which are painful to use. I've most recently become a fan of Hover.com ( https://hover.com/hH8tN94H https://hover.com/hH8tN94H ). NameCheap.com, Name.com, and Gandi.net are also decent alternatives.
- timerickson 14y ago
  Was the affiliate link really necessary?
  - Firehed 14y ago
    Is it unreasonable? I'd recommend Hover too, and also would have used my affiliate link. If I didn't have one I'd still happily recommend them, but if it doesn't cost you anything why shouldn't I get a cut? That's kind of the point of affiliate codes.
- kintamanimatt 14y ago
  I wish they supported .io domains!
  - 2mur 14y ago
    I recommend iwantmyname.com They're on HN, and have good support. Have several .io through them.
    - pkhamre 14y ago
      Thanks! Been looking for this address after I saw it here on HN a few weeks ago.
danbmil99 14y ago
We have to weigh this kind of thing against the fact that if you do business with GoDaddy, there's a good chance an internationally famous supermodel will suck mouth with you for 30 seconds on national television.
- azifali 14y ago
  :-)
kens 14y ago
Last weekend my domain was up for auto-renewal with GoDaddy but my credit card had expired so they switched the domain over to a GoDaddy landing page. I wasn't exactly pleased to see my blog replaced with ads. Fortunately there's an ICANN renewal grace period, so I didn't lose the domain and was able to switch it over to Namecheap.
- larrys 14y ago
  "Fortunately there's an ICANN renewal grace period" Renewal grace period isn't an ICANN thing it's a registrar thing. We're a registrar. ICANN doesn't specify what we give as a grace period at all at least in terms of anything that would cause a violation in our contract. They do ask us to specify the days that we will allow in a grace period but I've never seen any feedback at all as far as any restraints on what that time period should be.
  - vidyesh 14y ago
    I might be wrong ( since you are a registrar ) I accidentally let my domain name expire. How do I get it back? You may be able to get it back for 30 days after it has been deleted by the registrar. This period is called the Redemption Grace Period. Only your original registrar can perform this service. The registrar is allowed to charge you a fee to restore your name during the Redemption Grace Period. https://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/faqs https://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/faqs
    - larrys 14y ago
      We are talking about two different things. You are referring to "redemption" and I am referring to a grace period. Redemption comes after the domain is deleted which is after a any grace period.
josephwesley 14y ago
I've never spent money with GoDaddy (and never will), but everyone I know who has done business with them has gone on to regret it.
- helloamar 14y ago
  i back that
crdoconnor 14y ago
Use a registrar that isn't run by assholes: Name.com, Gandi.net, Namecheap.com
- freejack 14y ago
  name.com and name cheap are both backed by enom. name.com is explicitly owned by enom and namecheap is an enom reseller. Not saying that enom is an asshole, just that its a good idea to know who you are really dealing with. Both of these shops have to abide by enom's policies.
  - itsprofitbaron 14y ago
    FWIW Namecheap are no longer an ENom reseller, they have been an ICANN accredited registrar since 2009. (I remember when Namecheap had to come to an agreement over the domain ownership between themselves and ENom when they were moving from reseller to ICANN registrar)
    - jackalope 14y ago
      An email concerning my most recent transfer to NameCheap included the following line: eNom, Inc. has received a request from [Me] on 22 Jan 2013 to become the new registrar of record. The subject was: Domain Transfer Request for [Domain] The message included links at transfer-approval.com for verifying the transfer. The whois information for namecheap.com shows NameCheap, Inc as the registrant, but eNom as the registrar (which may mean nothing at all). So, there appears to continue to be a link between Namecheap and ENom, but it might be limited to NameCheap using eNom services and/or not updating account information to display the right info. It's easy to be a customer of NameCheap and assume they are a reseller or that eNom is the parent. If that's not the case, they have some work to do to clarify things. That said, I'm a happy customer.
      - itsprofitbaron 14y ago
        I just spoke to someone at Namecheap and it looks like they didn't resolve the agreement issue over who owns the domains as despite becoming and ICANN accredited registrar they're still operating as an eNom reseller. I guess they don't want to end up like Registerfly (a former eNom reseller, who got ICANN accreditation - which was eventually terminated) when eNom terminated their relationship with them, eNom gave Registerfly customers the ability to instantly push their domains into an eNom account through verifying and acting on the email sent to them including a free transfer so there was no fees to the customers. Registerfly ended up losing the majority of their customers (through that and a ton of poor business decisions etc) & Godaddy ended up buying the remaining domains in Registerfly's portfolio [1] - it didn't acquire the company as ICANN was taking legal action against Registerfly for its continued noncompliance of the court ordered injunction. [1] http://blog.icann.org/2007/05/registerfly-update-29-may-2007-godaddy-takes-over-names-from-registerfly/ http://blog.icann.org/2007/05/registerfly-update-29-may-2007...
larrys 14y ago
Registrar here. In other words competitor to Godaddy. Not enough info in this story to call out godaddy on this. Sounds as if the domain was deleted and went into redemption. In redemption registrars are charged $40 plus the cost of registration (.com .net .org .info) to get the domain back. And they mark that up. If you don't pay for a domain it gets deleted. The registrar has no reason to delete a domain that isn't expired. Very hard to believe that godaddy would delete a domain unless explicitly told to do so. Hard to believe that a system that manages so many millions of domains did that either. Generally Godaddy's TOS should spell out exactly when they delete a domain that hasn't been paid for. Usually there is almost always a grace period. Regardless of what is being related here I wouldn't say from reading there is any reason godaddy decided to delete the domains if they weren't already passed expiration. I think what happened here is a story is being related based on talking to someone at godaddy that doesn't understand what is going on with their deletion process. (That's the crime here a bad CSR is the story). That we do run into plenty.
- azifali 14y ago
  I paid to renew the domain $29.00 since it was a .co domain. GoDaddy deleted the domain AFTER the renewal was done, simply because I removed the credit card information from them so that I can manually renew the credit card. Also - the $29 was charged, domain was renewed..and then cancelled 2 days later without permission. Sounds weird..more coming up. Godaddy didn't really refund but kept the money even after I supposedly have cancelled all the domains in their account..
- robert-wallis 14y ago
  What about the security angle? The registrar should log these transactions with the IP address and probably the UA string so they can tell the customer what computer they were using when they did it. And if it wasn't them, then investigate how their password was stolen or security was breached. Does your registrar log information like this?
  - azifali 14y ago
    GoDaddy is apparently too big to do this OR they don't have access to this data readily.
vidyesh 14y ago
This is unique, usually GoDaddy by default makes the payment recurring without your permission. I was forced to stay another year just because at the time of registering one of the domains with them, they had made it as a recurring payment in my PayPal. Ofcourse, I learned my lesson the 2nd year when everything got auto renewed ( with the unwanted extra perks ) so as soon as that happened I removed GoDaddy from my PayPal Subscriptions list. And tried to move out quickly from there. But generally even after expiry you have the 30 days of grace period and during that period its still is yours. Happened to one of my domains at namecheap, I missed the renewal date and it went into the grace period but I was able to renew it in that grace period without any difficulty. I hope you get your issue resolved efficiently.
helloamar 14y ago
if you book a domain through google apps it registers with godaddy, there is no option to change the nameserver via google apps nor godaddy allocates any account for it, thats not fair
dmak 14y ago
And that is why I use GoMommy.
tharri 14y ago
I've had 300+ domains with GoDaddy for over 10 years now and I've never had a problem with them.
chrisacky 14y ago
In chess, you would call this a two-pronged attack (And you are forked either way). Not many people know this, but you pay 30% more for domain renewals if they are set to auto-renew. 1) First of all you charge people 30% more for auto-renew. See a discussion here: http://chrisacky.com/images/godaddy_bull.png http://chrisacky.com/images/godaddy_bull.png 2) Now, with the customers feeling outraged that they are being charged more, they cancel the auto-renew, and they get to put on an even larger charge. It is a horrendous dark-pattern that first of all exploits a customers continued goodwill by keeping up auto-renew, and then secondly, from trying to save money, GoDaddy exploit users who are trying to make their money stretch just a little futher.
- ludwigvan 14y ago
  Well, I am not a fan of GoDaddy, and have transferred all my domains somewhere else last week, but in their defense, 30% might be a convenience fee, which is justifiable.
  - benburleson 14y ago
    Computers were invented to do things like auto-renew. There is absolutely no reason to charge 30% for the "convenience" of auto-renew.
    - tjr 14y ago
      A couple of years ago I was talking to a retired programmer who used to work for AT&T. He told me that many of the telephone options that people paid extra for cost AT&T effectively nothing; it was just a matter of setting some variables in the software.
    - tjic 14y ago
      People don't (and shouldn't) charge based on what it costs them to provide a service - they can (and should) charge based on what value they deliver to a customer. That said, I believe in building long-term value for a customer and I do that by not charging exorbitant fees, but it's a reasonable and potentially moral decision to charge people a 30% fee in return for "never having to worry about it".
Osiris 14y ago
GoDaddy employee here. I don't work on the shopping cart, but I can say that we're under "new management" (new CEO started in January) and there's currently a huge push to completely revamp the GoDaddy homepage as well as the shopping cart and other pages. Management is under no illusions that the old/current system is far too convoluted so the company is pushing through some pretty dramatic changes. Unfortunately, there's a lot of code to change so the changes are going to take some time to get deployed to customers. As far as this particular incident, I can also confirm that if you have auto-renewal turned off, when the domain expires there's a cost to GoDaddy to get that domain back. I was on a support call during orientation when someone had something similar happen. Their CC had expired so the domain didn't auto-renew and someone else purchased the domain after the grace-period. The only thing that customer service could do was offer (a paid) service to try to put them in contact with the new domain owner (also used GoDaddy to purchase it) and assist in transferring the domain back. If you want, feel free to email me exactly what steps caused the problem and I'll forward that on to QA for that group to try to reproduce and perhaps resolve the issue.
- larrys 14y ago
  (I own a registrar) "As far as this particular incident, I can also confirm that if you have auto-renewal turned off, when the domain expires there's a cost to GoDaddy to get that domain back." Specifically "when a domain expires". A deletion and an expiration are two different things. A domain name (with respect to .com .net .org .info) is automatically renewed at the registry level (Verisign/Afilias/PIR) upon "expiration". The registrar (godaddy) then has to issue an explicit "delete" command in order to get the money that they automatically pay (and have to have in an account at the registries) to credit their account. And they have 45 days to do so. After that they are out the money that it costs them for the domain. Consequently the following is true: 1) When a domain expires there is no cost to godaddy to get the domain back. 2) When a domain is deleted (and goes into "redemption") there is a cost to godaddy to get the domain back. 3) Godaddy doesn't need to delete the domain (and save the reg fee ) until 45 days past "expiration". As a matter of course most registrars (including us) don't wait until the last minute (system glitch might cause not deleting domains that customer didn't pay for). 4) If "auto renewal" is "turned off" I don't see what that has to do with the time/date the domain is deleted at all. That's just a method of payment.
da_n 14y ago
Normally I would try to be fair to the registrar, after all we are only hearing one side of the story, but it is very hard to defend a piece of shit company like GoDaddy and frankly I don't have much sympathy for anyone who continued to pay them to screw them over (removing card on file or not). The time to have moved away from those scumbags was when they came out in support of SOPA. There are very few companies that I reserve a place in internet hell, GoDaddy are one of them, they seem to be proud of being utter assholes. I am a happy customer of hover.com, simple prices and includes whois privacy. Great control panel and zero problems over 2 years. Great service ad definitely not assholes.
- mctx 14y ago
  I'll throw another vote in for Hover, their site is much nicer to navigate and service were recently very helpful to fix an issue involving email delay (that turned out to be caused by my ISP).
elliottkember 14y ago
123-reg pull this kind of stunt all the time. I recently had a 2-month debacle where I nearly lost my domain due to their terrible systems.
adnam 14y ago
GoDaddy? You were warned. No sympathy.
detay 14y ago
I moved all my domains to namecheap for a similar reason.
- orn 14y ago
  Same here, they are great !
pixeledanny 14y ago
I used to have my domains on GoDaddy but I switch to Bluehost after a year. I recommend it to everyone. Great customer service. Bluehost.com
jwarren 14y ago
I had a similar experience with one of my client's domains on hostpapa.com. They have needless levels of complexity in who you can communicate with, who can actually action any changes, and everything reply seems to be delayed by a day or more. This means that simple conversations and requests can take several days to complete. They also started conjuring up previously unmentioned fees at one point, which had to be paid to one or other completely separate departments. In the end, the domain went into redemption through them dicking about with forwarding emails back and forth and opening new tickets, and my client (through stubbornness as much as anything) refused to pay the $95 to release it. It was eventually snapped up by a domain squatter when it expired, and I fear it shall remain there forever, since I doubt anyone will pay $1.5k for a relatively obscure name.
brass9 14y ago
GoDaddy? No sympathy. You deserved this...
heldrida 14y ago
I had to use GoDaddy once, it was a terrible experience. I use name.com and never had issues! The interface is very clean and the service is cheap. Good luck!
Shubzinator 14y ago
Name Cheap it is.
arbuge 14y ago
Recently switched away from GoDaddy when they raised their renewal rate on .com domains to $14.99/year. 33% more than most other registrars. No thanks.
RKearney 14y ago
GoDaddy, along with every other registrar, is grossly overpriced. I have a few dozen domains and I've never spent more than $3 a year on them. Just do a search for $0.25 domains or similar and you'll find coupon codes for registrars even worse than GoDaddy (read: Network Solutions or Register.com) offering 1 year .com for $0.25-$0.99. After 9 months or so, transfer to a registrar that's having a transfer sale. For $1.99 or however much they charge, you'll be able to transfer your domain name and have it renewed for another year. Sure it's more work, but it's much cheaper.
seivan 14y ago
Do people know what other companies GoDaddy owns, so you can avoid them? I know Outright is one of them.
brown9-2 14y ago
This is a tangent, but are domains really considered "private property"? Are there other types of property where ownership can expire?
- IWentToTheWoods 14y ago
  There seems to be some case law that suggests that domain names are at least similar to property, but I imagine that in most cases the user agreement strips most of that away in the registrar's favor. Here's a slightly outdated article that provides a good introduction to some of the legal issues: http://www.domainhandbook.com/property.html http://www.domainhandbook.com/property.html (IANAL)
chaostheory 14y ago
This reminds me of that guy lamenting over staying with Yahoo as a domain registrar. Since the writer was a techie in Silicon Valley, I don't pity him. GoDaddy being a crappy domain registrar has been known for years now. It's not some new secret, nor is it super expensive just to transfer your domains before they expire (if you really value them that much - I've transferred domains where I still had five years left). Since he mentions trying to transfer his domain to namecheap, I feel that the writer is really just a victim of a combination of both laziness and being too cheap. Still, I'm glad someone is still relaying the warning about GoDaddy. > I cannot believe that this day and age, someone could be so cheap with their own long term customers. There's a reason GoDaddy offers the cheapest deals.
michaelrkn 14y ago
Try badger.com - it's the only non-shitty registrar I've ever used.
- mcintyre1994 14y ago
  Never heard of that one. Out of interest which others have you tried? I hear good things about some others quite often, so I'm just wondering. :)
omi 14y ago
First of all, why is anyone still with them? Have the years of bad service not taught people a lesson? Don't go with the cheapest service available. I learned that lesson hard (not with domains, but other services)
murtali 14y ago
thank god I picked namecheap - been a happy customer since middle school (~9 years)

223 points by azifali 14y ago

adjin 14y ago

I once lost a domain for clicking by accident the 'delete' button. I sent them an email asking then to undelete the domain since it was an accident, got no response. I don't know why a feature to delete your domain was so easily accessible.

treitnauer 14y ago

GoDaddy's dashboard might be bloated which can be confusing but I doubt they deliberately delete domains after removing the credit card info from your account (as long as a domain hasn't reached the expiration date of course). As the GoDaddy representative correctly mentioned, it is the registries who are to blame for any restore fees. It's bad enough that you as a customer lost domains so Verisign, PIR, Afilias or any other gTLD registry shouldn't ask for anything else but the normal renewal fee.

kintamanimatt 14y ago
GoDaddy do all kinds of things you wouldn't expect, and often they're just one of many frequent snafus. I had a domain go dead for months because they weren't pushing changes to the underlying registry, and they had no idea what was going on. They didn't fix the issue until I'd called dozens of times. Their staff are poorly trained and it appears as though they're prone to lying to get people with complex issues off the phone as quickly as possible. They're a horrific company and you'd be surprised how badly things can go wrong and how little recourse you have.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Yep. A while back they sent me an email saying one of my domains, one not even registered with them, was listed for auction. It turned out it was all a scam to get me to sign up for some sort of protection or monitoring service. And the sales rep was obviously an experienced scammer, not just some hapless phone operator. He eventually swore at me and hung up. If those guys were on fire, I wouldn't piss on them to put it out. And as far as I'm concerned, anybody who works there is complicit in a (possibly technically legal) criminal enterprise.
azifali 14y ago
I cannot believe it is the registry issue because a) I renewed the domain before expiry. Before that I had unlocked it for transfer but did not complete it since I realized that this might take a couple of days b) Godaddy charged me for the domain renewal which effectively confirmed me as the owner for another year. c) After 2 days, godaddy abruptly cancels the domain and transfers it to the registry even though my ownership is confirmed for the next one year. It doesn't sound like any body else is here to blame except Godaddy. From what I understand, they either a) Did this because I initiated the transfer or b) I removed all credit cards from the system because I did not want renewals to happen without notice.
- treitnauer 14y ago
  Just saying that GoDaddy can't do anything about the restore fees imposed by the registries. If they screwed up it should be carried out at the firm's expense but I highly doubt they would delete a domain without being explicitly told so.
  - azifali 14y ago
    I think the delete domain behaviour is linked to the deletion of the credit card..that is not acceptable is what I have been saying. Looks like someone else has also had the same experience....(in comments)
Osiris 14y ago
GoDaddy's dashboard might be bloated which can be confusing but I doubt they deliberately delete domains after removing the credit card info from your account The bulk of GoDaddy revenue comes from renewals and it's cheaper and easier to keep a customer as opposed to acquiring a new one. It's much more likely that there's a bug in the code or some other non-malicious technical problem that's involved here.
nitinag 14y ago
Registrar here (Misk.com). Wanted to share some information on the restore fees discussion. Yes, registries charge hefty restore fees. Using .com as an example (since it can be different for each extension), there is a renewal grace period that can last up to 45 days (we delete at 40 days). Once the name is deleted, the name goes into redemption for 30 days after that. This is where the high fees are hit due to the registry. The thing to note is that some registrars no longer delete names after the renewal grace period ends and pass the name into an auction system. Hence the name never goes into the real redemption period. In those cases the name is still in the renewal grace period and charging higher redemption fees is a business decision by that company. You can tell if this is the case if after a registrar's redemption period, anything happens to the name except becoming available to register by the public (after a 5 day pending delete at the registry). The real redemption period is 30 days and is reflected in the whois record. Domains should still be renewed before expiration since things could change at any level and there is no reason to risk it. Here are the expiration policies I could find for GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Misk.com (us): http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/608/what-is-your-process-for-handling-expired-domain-names http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/608/what-is-your-pro... http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/242/35/what-is-domain-redemption-status http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/... https://www.misk.com/kb/domain-expiration-policy https://www.misk.com/kb/domain-expiration-policy

heretic529 14y ago

this guy is retarded

jessaustin 14y ago

Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by avarice. This is just like Goldman Sachs, deliberately confusing the customer and then making money off that confusion. When GoDaddy did this to me I let the (somewhat unimportant, fortunately) domain lapse and bought it back with Hover.

azifali 14y ago
Thank you for that advice. I will remember that...I will be moving my domains to Hover or namecheap soon.
- binceipt 14y ago
  namecheap is a lot better. I am also moving to namecheap as well for all my domain which is hosting by fucking gomummy
- fakeer 14y ago
  Looks like you have many domains. My unsolicited advise - do not keep them all in one place and NameCheap is not the only better one. I am from India and use BigRock(Indian) and Name.com. No problems till now. Choose at least 2-3 and distribute. Keep a track. I am sure you have made calendar entries to track their renewals &c, or maybe there's some automated service for that(would love to know, if there's one).
  - Indyan 14y ago
    I agree. NameCheap is a good option though. They have been leveraging GoDaddy's fuckups to gain new customers. Their social media antics have got them a lot of socially savvy customers. So they know that, if they stray, they will be flayed publicly, and all the goodwill will vanish quickly. Another registrar I will recommend is Dynadot, simply because I have used them for several years without any hassle, and they have a live support that's actually helpful.

paulftw 14y ago

would it be legal, if the author paid them whatever they wanted, transferred the domain out of godaddy's control and then requested a CC chargeback with the bank? Banks usually side with the customer.

niggler 14y ago
Godaddy would fight the chargeback. It's not like CC companies always side with customers -- the company gets a chance to make an argument. What most likely would happen is Godaddy would point to some line in the ToS and then point to you agreeing to it.
- dpcan 14y ago
  I believe you are correct. I tried to do a chargeback once because the company refused to believe me, and there was no way into my account where my credit card was stored and they would keep charging it year after year. And they wouldn't just delete my card from their records. I tried a Chargeback, but the credit card denied it after the "big" company argued it. So, I ended up changing he number of my credit card, and they ended up canceling my account for non-payment/renewal.
  - sc00ter 14y ago
    I had a similar experience with a monthly recurring billing, and the helpful lady at the credit card company suggested getting my credit card reissued with a new number (effectively by marking it as lost / stolen). Unfortunately pre-authorised recurring payments are not interrupted by this method. They will continue to show up on your statement against the old card number until you either pursued them to stop, or cancel your credit card entirely.
    - niggler 14y ago
      "pre-authorised recurring payments are not interrupted by this method. " That depends on the nature of the authorization. The easiest way is to just terminate the card

newhouseb 14y ago

I had the same thing happen - I tried to turn off auto-renew by deleting my payment details and somehow managed (through godaddy's misleading interface) to cancel all of my domains effective immediately. I lost something like 30 domains in the process and support refused to re-instate them for anything less than something like $3000. This is old news, but you shouldn't be giving these guys your money.

azifali 14y ago
Wow..never realized that this actually happens. How come no one has dragged them to court on this? Deleting credit card != waiving off the service that has been paid in advance for the next year(s).
- fakeer 14y ago
  You can be the first to drag to the courts. By the way, what's the current status? Any improvement? Or did they restore your domain back to you?
- newhouseb 14y ago
  If I recall correctly (although this was a couple years ago, my memory has faded) I think when you deleted a card it took you to a list of domains to configure for auto renew and it wasn't clear if you were canceling auto-renew (now that you had no billing info) or if you were canceling the domains entirely. For added confusion, clicking a button when anything was checked didn't do anything immediately (because of some background DB batching) and so as a normal user you would assume that things weren't sticking and you would click another button to see if it worked... by the time the UI refreshed, you had killed all your domains.

Fizzadar 14y ago

Godaddy are one of the most incompetent companies I've ever had the misery of dealing with. Their web interface, customer service and general customer experience are all awful. I've always moved my domains away as soon as possible (I've only never had domains with them when purchased from another member).

kbar13 14y ago

godaddy really blows. they seriously do make things a lot harder for the customer so that they are -forced- to stay with godaddy. And their retarded overhyped ads don't help either; why are they putting up trash ads at ridiculous rates?

niggler 14y ago
You are talking about the ad -> success The worst thing for a company is if the ad is completely ignored.
artursapek 14y ago
Any company with the resources GoDaddy has, if it had good management, would have an order of magnitude better user interface. Instead, these assholes burn their cash on advertising and an army of customer service reps who get paid to stonewall over a simple issue for half an hour. I can't believe anybody still does business with GoDaddy, especially HN regulars who read a story like this every month.

binceipt 14y ago

did you cry ?

azifali 14y ago
Lol :-) nope...because most of my domains were still working..except the one that was close to expiry.

3327 14y ago

Well, I am sure someone thought this but you should not be using a mainstream service like godaddy in the first place. You could be right/wrong but because they are huge they will never care. There are lots of small domain name services try them and good luck.

mmanfrin 14y ago

I'm sorry to be callous, but at this point I feel little pity for someone still buying domains through GoDaddy. It is a terrible company with terrible policies, terrible management, and a horribly misogynistic marketing team. Why are you continuing to pay them rent on your domains?

kintamanimatt 14y ago
You're not being callous at all. There are some companies that are known to frequently mistreat customers and have harmful policies. Any halfway savvy user (which OP appears to be) should know this and it's unfortunate when they get burned. It's even more unfortunate when a less technically literate person gets screwed by GoDaddy. Having said this, I'm super happy OP wrote this. We should not forget that yesterday's GoDaddy is the same as today's GoDaddy. I really feel for OP, and I know how it's easy to feel as though bad stuff only happens to other people, but my hope is that posts like this will continue and the beast will starve. I suspect that GoDaddy will begin to employ the same tactics Nigerian scammers do in order to weed out the savvy customers with blogs, and will try to ensnare technically illiterate people with credit cards.
- azifali 14y ago
  I tried to unlock and transfer the domain first..see the note at the bottom.. Since it was going to take a while (couple of days) and since the domain was going to expire in two days..I decided to renew the domain anyway with godaddy.com to try transfer it later.
  - kintamanimatt 14y ago
    This should have been fine and unsurprisingly, GoDaddy appears to be at fault. I hope you never give them a penny ever again and fingers crossed I can toast to GoDaddy losing another customer!
Vecrios 14y ago
What other companies would you recommend then?

sahaskatta 14y ago

I've used everyone from 1and1, GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, and eNom as registrars. Most of these guys have cluttered slow interfaces which are painful to use. I've most recently become a fan of Hover.com ( https://hover.com/hH8tN94H https://hover.com/hH8tN94H ). NameCheap.com, Name.com, and Gandi.net are also decent alternatives.

timerickson 14y ago
Was the affiliate link really necessary?
- Firehed 14y ago
  Is it unreasonable? I'd recommend Hover too, and also would have used my affiliate link. If I didn't have one I'd still happily recommend them, but if it doesn't cost you anything why shouldn't I get a cut? That's kind of the point of affiliate codes.
kintamanimatt 14y ago
I wish they supported .io domains!
- 2mur 14y ago
  I recommend iwantmyname.com They're on HN, and have good support. Have several .io through them.
  - pkhamre 14y ago
    Thanks! Been looking for this address after I saw it here on HN a few weeks ago.

danbmil99 14y ago

We have to weigh this kind of thing against the fact that if you do business with GoDaddy, there's a good chance an internationally famous supermodel will suck mouth with you for 30 seconds on national television.

azifali 14y ago
:-)

kens 14y ago

Last weekend my domain was up for auto-renewal with GoDaddy but my credit card had expired so they switched the domain over to a GoDaddy landing page. I wasn't exactly pleased to see my blog replaced with ads. Fortunately there's an ICANN renewal grace period, so I didn't lose the domain and was able to switch it over to Namecheap.

larrys 14y ago
"Fortunately there's an ICANN renewal grace period" Renewal grace period isn't an ICANN thing it's a registrar thing. We're a registrar. ICANN doesn't specify what we give as a grace period at all at least in terms of anything that would cause a violation in our contract. They do ask us to specify the days that we will allow in a grace period but I've never seen any feedback at all as far as any restraints on what that time period should be.
- vidyesh 14y ago
  I might be wrong ( since you are a registrar ) I accidentally let my domain name expire. How do I get it back? You may be able to get it back for 30 days after it has been deleted by the registrar. This period is called the Redemption Grace Period. Only your original registrar can perform this service. The registrar is allowed to charge you a fee to restore your name during the Redemption Grace Period. https://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/faqs https://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/faqs
  - larrys 14y ago
    We are talking about two different things. You are referring to "redemption" and I am referring to a grace period. Redemption comes after the domain is deleted which is after a any grace period.

josephwesley 14y ago

I've never spent money with GoDaddy (and never will), but everyone I know who has done business with them has gone on to regret it.

helloamar 14y ago
i back that

crdoconnor 14y ago

Use a registrar that isn't run by assholes: Name.com, Gandi.net, Namecheap.com

freejack 14y ago
name.com and name cheap are both backed by enom. name.com is explicitly owned by enom and namecheap is an enom reseller. Not saying that enom is an asshole, just that its a good idea to know who you are really dealing with. Both of these shops have to abide by enom's policies.
- itsprofitbaron 14y ago
  FWIW Namecheap are no longer an ENom reseller, they have been an ICANN accredited registrar since 2009. (I remember when Namecheap had to come to an agreement over the domain ownership between themselves and ENom when they were moving from reseller to ICANN registrar)
  - jackalope 14y ago
    An email concerning my most recent transfer to NameCheap included the following line: eNom, Inc. has received a request from [Me] on 22 Jan 2013 to become the new registrar of record. The subject was: Domain Transfer Request for [Domain] The message included links at transfer-approval.com for verifying the transfer. The whois information for namecheap.com shows NameCheap, Inc as the registrant, but eNom as the registrar (which may mean nothing at all). So, there appears to continue to be a link between Namecheap and ENom, but it might be limited to NameCheap using eNom services and/or not updating account information to display the right info. It's easy to be a customer of NameCheap and assume they are a reseller or that eNom is the parent. If that's not the case, they have some work to do to clarify things. That said, I'm a happy customer.
    - itsprofitbaron 14y ago
      I just spoke to someone at Namecheap and it looks like they didn't resolve the agreement issue over who owns the domains as despite becoming and ICANN accredited registrar they're still operating as an eNom reseller. I guess they don't want to end up like Registerfly (a former eNom reseller, who got ICANN accreditation - which was eventually terminated) when eNom terminated their relationship with them, eNom gave Registerfly customers the ability to instantly push their domains into an eNom account through verifying and acting on the email sent to them including a free transfer so there was no fees to the customers. Registerfly ended up losing the majority of their customers (through that and a ton of poor business decisions etc) & Godaddy ended up buying the remaining domains in Registerfly's portfolio [1] - it didn't acquire the company as ICANN was taking legal action against Registerfly for its continued noncompliance of the court ordered injunction. [1] http://blog.icann.org/2007/05/registerfly-update-29-may-2007-godaddy-takes-over-names-from-registerfly/ http://blog.icann.org/2007/05/registerfly-update-29-may-2007...

larrys 14y ago

Registrar here. In other words competitor to Godaddy. Not enough info in this story to call out godaddy on this. Sounds as if the domain was deleted and went into redemption. In redemption registrars are charged $40 plus the cost of registration (.com .net .org .info) to get the domain back. And they mark that up. If you don't pay for a domain it gets deleted. The registrar has no reason to delete a domain that isn't expired. Very hard to believe that godaddy would delete a domain unless explicitly told to do so. Hard to believe that a system that manages so many millions of domains did that either. Generally Godaddy's TOS should spell out exactly when they delete a domain that hasn't been paid for. Usually there is almost always a grace period. Regardless of what is being related here I wouldn't say from reading there is any reason godaddy decided to delete the domains if they weren't already passed expiration. I think what happened here is a story is being related based on talking to someone at godaddy that doesn't understand what is going on with their deletion process. (That's the crime here a bad CSR is the story). That we do run into plenty.

azifali 14y ago
I paid to renew the domain $29.00 since it was a .co domain. GoDaddy deleted the domain AFTER the renewal was done, simply because I removed the credit card information from them so that I can manually renew the credit card. Also - the $29 was charged, domain was renewed..and then cancelled 2 days later without permission. Sounds weird..more coming up. Godaddy didn't really refund but kept the money even after I supposedly have cancelled all the domains in their account..
robert-wallis 14y ago
What about the security angle? The registrar should log these transactions with the IP address and probably the UA string so they can tell the customer what computer they were using when they did it. And if it wasn't them, then investigate how their password was stolen or security was breached. Does your registrar log information like this?
- azifali 14y ago
  GoDaddy is apparently too big to do this OR they don't have access to this data readily.

vidyesh 14y ago

This is unique, usually GoDaddy by default makes the payment recurring without your permission. I was forced to stay another year just because at the time of registering one of the domains with them, they had made it as a recurring payment in my PayPal. Ofcourse, I learned my lesson the 2nd year when everything got auto renewed ( with the unwanted extra perks ) so as soon as that happened I removed GoDaddy from my PayPal Subscriptions list. And tried to move out quickly from there. But generally even after expiry you have the 30 days of grace period and during that period its still is yours. Happened to one of my domains at namecheap, I missed the renewal date and it went into the grace period but I was able to renew it in that grace period without any difficulty. I hope you get your issue resolved efficiently.

helloamar 14y ago

if you book a domain through google apps it registers with godaddy, there is no option to change the nameserver via google apps nor godaddy allocates any account for it, thats not fair

dmak 14y ago

And that is why I use GoMommy.

tharri 14y ago

I've had 300+ domains with GoDaddy for over 10 years now and I've never had a problem with them.

chrisacky 14y ago

In chess, you would call this a two-pronged attack (And you are forked either way). Not many people know this, but you pay 30% more for domain renewals if they are set to auto-renew. 1) First of all you charge people 30% more for auto-renew. See a discussion here: http://chrisacky.com/images/godaddy_bull.png http://chrisacky.com/images/godaddy_bull.png 2) Now, with the customers feeling outraged that they are being charged more, they cancel the auto-renew, and they get to put on an even larger charge. It is a horrendous dark-pattern that first of all exploits a customers continued goodwill by keeping up auto-renew, and then secondly, from trying to save money, GoDaddy exploit users who are trying to make their money stretch just a little futher.

ludwigvan 14y ago
Well, I am not a fan of GoDaddy, and have transferred all my domains somewhere else last week, but in their defense, 30% might be a convenience fee, which is justifiable.
- benburleson 14y ago
  Computers were invented to do things like auto-renew. There is absolutely no reason to charge 30% for the "convenience" of auto-renew.
  - tjr 14y ago
    A couple of years ago I was talking to a retired programmer who used to work for AT&T. He told me that many of the telephone options that people paid extra for cost AT&T effectively nothing; it was just a matter of setting some variables in the software.
  - tjic 14y ago
    People don't (and shouldn't) charge based on what it costs them to provide a service - they can (and should) charge based on what value they deliver to a customer. That said, I believe in building long-term value for a customer and I do that by not charging exorbitant fees, but it's a reasonable and potentially moral decision to charge people a 30% fee in return for "never having to worry about it".

Osiris 14y ago

GoDaddy employee here. I don't work on the shopping cart, but I can say that we're under "new management" (new CEO started in January) and there's currently a huge push to completely revamp the GoDaddy homepage as well as the shopping cart and other pages. Management is under no illusions that the old/current system is far too convoluted so the company is pushing through some pretty dramatic changes. Unfortunately, there's a lot of code to change so the changes are going to take some time to get deployed to customers. As far as this particular incident, I can also confirm that if you have auto-renewal turned off, when the domain expires there's a cost to GoDaddy to get that domain back. I was on a support call during orientation when someone had something similar happen. Their CC had expired so the domain didn't auto-renew and someone else purchased the domain after the grace-period. The only thing that customer service could do was offer (a paid) service to try to put them in contact with the new domain owner (also used GoDaddy to purchase it) and assist in transferring the domain back. If you want, feel free to email me exactly what steps caused the problem and I'll forward that on to QA for that group to try to reproduce and perhaps resolve the issue.

larrys 14y ago
(I own a registrar) "As far as this particular incident, I can also confirm that if you have auto-renewal turned off, when the domain expires there's a cost to GoDaddy to get that domain back." Specifically "when a domain expires". A deletion and an expiration are two different things. A domain name (with respect to .com .net .org .info) is automatically renewed at the registry level (Verisign/Afilias/PIR) upon "expiration". The registrar (godaddy) then has to issue an explicit "delete" command in order to get the money that they automatically pay (and have to have in an account at the registries) to credit their account. And they have 45 days to do so. After that they are out the money that it costs them for the domain. Consequently the following is true: 1) When a domain expires there is no cost to godaddy to get the domain back. 2) When a domain is deleted (and goes into "redemption") there is a cost to godaddy to get the domain back. 3) Godaddy doesn't need to delete the domain (and save the reg fee ) until 45 days past "expiration". As a matter of course most registrars (including us) don't wait until the last minute (system glitch might cause not deleting domains that customer didn't pay for). 4) If "auto renewal" is "turned off" I don't see what that has to do with the time/date the domain is deleted at all. That's just a method of payment.

da_n 14y ago

Normally I would try to be fair to the registrar, after all we are only hearing one side of the story, but it is very hard to defend a piece of shit company like GoDaddy and frankly I don't have much sympathy for anyone who continued to pay them to screw them over (removing card on file or not). The time to have moved away from those scumbags was when they came out in support of SOPA. There are very few companies that I reserve a place in internet hell, GoDaddy are one of them, they seem to be proud of being utter assholes. I am a happy customer of hover.com, simple prices and includes whois privacy. Great control panel and zero problems over 2 years. Great service ad definitely not assholes.

mctx 14y ago
I'll throw another vote in for Hover, their site is much nicer to navigate and service were recently very helpful to fix an issue involving email delay (that turned out to be caused by my ISP).

elliottkember 14y ago

123-reg pull this kind of stunt all the time. I recently had a 2-month debacle where I nearly lost my domain due to their terrible systems.

adnam 14y ago

GoDaddy? You were warned. No sympathy.

detay 14y ago

I moved all my domains to namecheap for a similar reason.

orn 14y ago
Same here, they are great !

pixeledanny 14y ago

I used to have my domains on GoDaddy but I switch to Bluehost after a year. I recommend it to everyone. Great customer service. Bluehost.com

jwarren 14y ago

I had a similar experience with one of my client's domains on hostpapa.com. They have needless levels of complexity in who you can communicate with, who can actually action any changes, and everything reply seems to be delayed by a day or more. This means that simple conversations and requests can take several days to complete. They also started conjuring up previously unmentioned fees at one point, which had to be paid to one or other completely separate departments. In the end, the domain went into redemption through them dicking about with forwarding emails back and forth and opening new tickets, and my client (through stubbornness as much as anything) refused to pay the $95 to release it. It was eventually snapped up by a domain squatter when it expired, and I fear it shall remain there forever, since I doubt anyone will pay $1.5k for a relatively obscure name.

brass9 14y ago

GoDaddy? No sympathy. You deserved this...

heldrida 14y ago

I had to use GoDaddy once, it was a terrible experience. I use name.com and never had issues! The interface is very clean and the service is cheap. Good luck!

Shubzinator 14y ago

Name Cheap it is.

arbuge 14y ago

Recently switched away from GoDaddy when they raised their renewal rate on .com domains to $14.99/year. 33% more than most other registrars. No thanks.

RKearney 14y ago

GoDaddy, along with every other registrar, is grossly overpriced. I have a few dozen domains and I've never spent more than $3 a year on them. Just do a search for $0.25 domains or similar and you'll find coupon codes for registrars even worse than GoDaddy (read: Network Solutions or Register.com) offering 1 year .com for $0.25-$0.99. After 9 months or so, transfer to a registrar that's having a transfer sale. For $1.99 or however much they charge, you'll be able to transfer your domain name and have it renewed for another year. Sure it's more work, but it's much cheaper.

seivan 14y ago

Do people know what other companies GoDaddy owns, so you can avoid them? I know Outright is one of them.

brown9-2 14y ago

This is a tangent, but are domains really considered "private property"? Are there other types of property where ownership can expire?

IWentToTheWoods 14y ago
There seems to be some case law that suggests that domain names are at least similar to property, but I imagine that in most cases the user agreement strips most of that away in the registrar's favor. Here's a slightly outdated article that provides a good introduction to some of the legal issues: http://www.domainhandbook.com/property.html http://www.domainhandbook.com/property.html (IANAL)

chaostheory 14y ago

This reminds me of that guy lamenting over staying with Yahoo as a domain registrar. Since the writer was a techie in Silicon Valley, I don't pity him. GoDaddy being a crappy domain registrar has been known for years now. It's not some new secret, nor is it super expensive just to transfer your domains before they expire (if you really value them that much - I've transferred domains where I still had five years left). Since he mentions trying to transfer his domain to namecheap, I feel that the writer is really just a victim of a combination of both laziness and being too cheap. Still, I'm glad someone is still relaying the warning about GoDaddy. > I cannot believe that this day and age, someone could be so cheap with their own long term customers. There's a reason GoDaddy offers the cheapest deals.

michaelrkn 14y ago

Try badger.com - it's the only non-shitty registrar I've ever used.

mcintyre1994 14y ago
Never heard of that one. Out of interest which others have you tried? I hear good things about some others quite often, so I'm just wondering. :)

omi 14y ago

First of all, why is anyone still with them? Have the years of bad service not taught people a lesson? Don't go with the cheapest service available. I learned that lesson hard (not with domains, but other services)

murtali 14y ago

thank god I picked namecheap - been a happy customer since middle school (~9 years)