Godaddy.com Reviews

Imagine that you bought a BMW dealer at a high price. Came home, riding a new machine. And after 2 weeks Dealer arrives, and while you're sleeping - takes car saying that you were sold it by mistake ! And now just a machine for the money you will not be able to buy! What is that fraud ? All experts say that so interesting domains GoDaddy steals from their customers and sell them more expensive to other people!

Is it possible to do? After all, for all of us Domain Registrar - it's like bank where we store our investment! And in this case, our bank robs us of our investment ... I will refer to lawyers in Europe and the U.S. I will not let this. 2 weeks GoDaddy took my 5 new domains! I strongly recommend to all - do not register new domains have GoDaddy! They are thieves!

I am a small business and a victim of bullying by a large company. I'm now stuck with 3 years of charges for a company that does not exist!!!! After I contacted the BBB, GO DADDY lied to them and stated that I refused to give them my ID. Why would I refuse that when I no longer own my business and do not want to be charged? PLEASE TAKE MY ADVICE. PASS THE WORD AND DO NOT USE GO DADDY. THEY WILL TAKE YOUR MONEY AND HANG YOU OUT TO DRY.

I've spent thousands with them and on this, with the assurance that the domain was mine and the clients I'd already attained would be making payment. Today the domain was removed from my account. I was told another person registered it at the exact moment I did. They failed to update their records and accurately provide domains and take payments. There were multiple failures across the board. No explanation was given as to how the owner was determined. Not only has my business suffered financial loss, but a loss of consumer confidence. Already, several lost clients refer to this as a 'fraud' I attempted. They've spread the word that I try to get payment for domains I don't even own.

This isn't just going to be okay. My family has suggested lawsuits and nonsense. It seems apparent that there is no way I can keep the domain. All advertising will be a loss to me and a gain to whoever got it. I requested what I think is reasonable considering the circumstances and the assurances I received: That they replace this with another gTLD of my choice that is in the landrush phase. But they refused! I was told - "That's tough. Do whatever you need to do."

ICANN, the organizational body that determines international policy for things like this on the internet, actually created a policy that prohibits a registrar from blocking transfers for making WHOIS updates. GoDaddy's response to this was to implement a so-called opt in policy, which means in order to change your WHOIS information, you had to agree to let your domain be locked from transfer for 60 days. I'll be transferring all my domains somewhere else and deleting my account completely as soon as possible.

Support-FAQ

A very serious loss of business that cost me thousands of dollars in money and reputation. I have been with eBay for 10 years, and every listing indicated to go to my website for more information. At times, I would produce over $5000.00 a month from sales. However, I am producing at most $100.00 a month, because no one could find my website in order to contact me or place orders. Plus, I lost 4 years of payments for the website--publishing, advertising, and relations with other larger companies. I am sure I have lost in total over $50,000.00 per year. This company makes no regards to their mistake. It is wrong to not inform a customer all the facts. I have owned www.jearbear.com for a lot of years and never thought it would come to this!

Now my customers are reading the advertising from Godaddy on my website not from me. I did request them to stop using my traffic; they do not respond. Also, they do not let me transfer this domain to any other registrant. I did pay to webs.com to transfer this domain name to them, but Godaddy does not release it and continue to display the advertising about them. This is ugly violation and I can not do anything. Please help! It is hard to calculate how many customers I lost. Minimum is one customer per day. This is $1950 per month. They did start to advertise their own business on my website from January 20, 2009 and continue. Please log on to ** and you will see.

Everyone knows about identity theft and cyber fraud. It would surprise me to meet anyone who has not read news stories about hackers infiltrating security networks and gaining personal information that can destroy someones credit history or even their reputation. I have always been wary of identity theft and trusted the companies I have conducted business with to be just as careful and secure with their investments.

This was until my trust with GoDaddy.com was destroyed on a Friday when I received notification on my Blackberry that my account status had changed over to a former business partner. I immediately called GoDaddy.com and discussed the account situation with Steve in customer service and Ryan in technical service and they rectified the situation by giving me control over the account again. I logged in and realized that my former business partner deleted the majority of my businesses. Luckily, I had everything backed up on my hard drive and was able to change everything back to normal within a few minutes. After I was done with this process, I logged out.

Unbeknownst to me and the customer service technician who initially gave me back control of my account, my former business partner was still logged in when I fixed everything he messed up. He waited for me to log off before destroying everything I fixed, including changing my user information to ensure that I could not log back on. The next day, I attempted to log on and, to my dismay, I realized that my profile had been hijacked yet again. I immediately called GoDaddy.com and explained the entire situation to the customer service department, hoping that they could easily resolve the situation just as they had the previous evening, but instead, they treated me with suspicion. They asked for various forms of identification to prove that I was the true owner of the account, which I completely understand and had no problem giving them. However, it became obvious that the specific information I gave them would not be enough to regain access to my account. In fact, they are now requiring me to fax copies of my drivers license and social security card to a random fax number.

I am utterly frustrated because I gave them information that no one else on the account can give, yet it is still not enough to regain access to my businesses. The information they want is starting to get very personal and I am beginning to feel uncomfortable handing personal information over to a company whose security is obviously very lax. I would like to know how my former business partner obtained my information and has access to my account when it is so difficult for me to prove my identity to GoDaddy.coms customer service department.

As of right now, I still have yet to gain access to my account. My business websites are no longer operating and I do not have domain access of my email accounts. I feel as if I was pick pocketed on the street and neither the police nor do my credit card companies believe that my wallet was stolen. I feel helpless and I do not want any one else to ever feel this way. You never truly know how good your business relationships are until you have a problem.

Websites (5) are down and no ecommerce can happen. Customers will go away. Could lose over $100,000 and possible go out of business while Godaddy does nothing & not on a timely urgent basis.

Not totally sure as to Godaddy's motivation. However, I am aware that they are sometimes offered several thousand dollars in a reservation style bidding process by organizations that want a domain name that isn't currently available. My non-profit organization has been without a website because of Godaddy. I have complained to ICANN and they refuse to get involed. I would like some help in getting a mediator to discuss the matter with the owners of Godaddy. I believe that I have been the victim of a fraud.

Per ICANN policies, this does not constitute a change of Registered Name Holder? They kept referring me to the Registration Agreement which they obviously hadn't read since that agreement has no provisions regarding this. The only reference to transfer policies that this agreement has states that once a domain name is registered with GoDaddy, it cannot be transferred to another registrar within 60 days. This does not apply because my domain name was registered 2 years ago. When after several emails from me, explaining them that the agreement does not provide them with legal grounds to block the transfer, they started to understand (barely) and pointed me to the Domain Transfer Agreement?

The Domain Transfer Agreement(?) is just another document that they didn't read. This agreement states in the first paragraph: This Agreement sets forth the terms and conditions of transferring a registered domain name from any other Registrar TO Go Daddy (as "Registrar") (their capitalization). Obviously, it doesn't apply since I want to transfer the domain FROM Go Daddy. Furthermore, even ignoring the stated scope of this agreement (which I don't), it has no provisions regarding locking the domain for the changes I made. Their support representatives (every time I email them there is a new technician? responding to the emails in a manner that shows that it is the first time they see the support ticket) send me strange interpretations on-the-go about one agreement or another and these interpretation vary and sometimes contradict themselves from one representative to another.

I can't understand why they hang with their teeth to my account since it should be clear for them by now that I will not renew with GoDaddy and they will not see one red cent from me. My view on all this is that what they are doing with my account is abusive and illegal. I just want them to release my domain and I don't want any prorate or any reimbursements from them.

I went to Who Is to find out info on the registrant and the phone number provided for the contact person was not valid. When I typed in MY domain, it says it is for sale by a private owner. It is impossible for someone in this entire universe to come up with my business name and register it thru the same domain service. Chances are 1 trillion to one! It is so obvious that Go Daddy took my biz name for themselves to try and profit further. I would like my business name back, GoDaddy.

In the 13+ years I've been working online, I have occasionally sent writing samples of various types to people who might possibly be interested in my work, always with a personally-generated note attached and assuring them that they were not on any lists unless they wanted to be. Until yesterday, I didn't believe that this would be considered as "spam." Apparently, I was wrong.

After I sent a note an this ezine writing sample to someone as an introduction, apparently that person was either having a bad day or decided to make sure I had one. They had enough extra time on their hands to report me to my service provider (Godaddy) as a spammer. Goddady immediately sent me a threatening email demanding "proof" that I wasn't a spammer. I told them the situation, gave them the information they demanded, and I thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't. Over the course of the day, after receiving three increasingly threatening emails (with no name or contact information on them) demanding this thing or that thing (which I dutifully provided, immediately), I assumed they would realize that I didn't spam anyone and that would be the end of it. It wasn't.

I awakened on Thursday morning early to find a curt email informing me that Godaddy had considered the matter and that (according to them) I was definitely a spammer. Furthermore, they had swiftly already pulled my web site, my domain, my blog, my forums, my email and everything else that I do electronically for the Advice Sisters. However, despite their supposed tough stance of spammer, for an "abuse fee" of $199, they would reinstate everything. Apparently, money washes a spammers "sins" (large or small) and you can use a credit card.

I spent nearly two hours (long distance, at my expense) on the phone with both the abuse manager and his supervisor (and I'd give you their names but who knows if I would be violating some other abuse policy - I still can't find it on their web site). During two of the most frustrating conversations I have ever had with strangers, I tried to convince them that I wasn't a spammer and asked specifically how my email was a "violation" worthy of the expense and chaos they had caused me. Here is what I did wrong:

According to Godaddy.com (my service provider), the fact that I sent even ONE EMAIL to ONE PERSON that was unsolicited, makes me a spammer. When I suggested that people send letters all the time to strangers for this thing or that, they said that the only "safe" way to send email is to ask for permission first, to actually send an email!!! When I countered that on a daily basis this was impractical, that anyone could still claim I had spammed them just to hurt me or because they were having a bad day, and that under their guidelines even the permission email could also be considered as spam and reported as such (for which I would be "punished" again), they simply said I should get an opt-in program and use it for every single contact I ever get from now on, and that I could either pay $199 immediately on my credit card, or move my site elsewhere. No amount of logic could get them to change their mind. I was charged guilty with no chance of proving myself innocent. These guys were just out to get my $199 and "teach me a lesson."

Well, I had just re-done major parts of my website, my blog, the forums, I published an Ezine, and of course, I'm waiting for invites for Fashion Week through my email, so I had no choice but to pay. But - that's not the end of the story. After I DID pay, the site wasn't immediately re-instated and countless people now assume the Advicesisters doesn't work and that my email address is incorrect. I spent another 1 1/2 hours long distance on the phone (at my expense and until my phone ran out of batteries and cut me off) trying to figure out why the site wasn't back up (which it wasn't, until Friday morning).

This has cost me a great deal in money, time and anxiety. I dislike spam as much as the next person, and I appreciate the fact that some service providers are "tough" on spam, but Godaddy has been just ridiculous! There is a difference between someone who sends millions of emails to lists of people they do not know, or obscene mail, and someone like me, who innocently sent a personal note with an ezine to someone I thought might want to see it and apparently, didn't. I am amazed that Godaddy.com wouldn't allow for the difference. I told them that I was going to let everyone know of my experience and the manager's response was "GREAT! Tell them so they know we are tough on crime."

Me, a criminal? I have never even gotten a ticket! Had I not just signed up with them for another couple of years of domain registration and if they weren't tied into everything I do online, I'd ditch them in a second. For now, all I can do is to tell my tale to all of you and urge you to check your service provider's spam policy - if you write anything, legit or not, the same thing could happen to you.

I spent much time attempting to find answers on the GoDaddy Frequently Asked Questions pages, however, the site is not updated and the answers were rarely helpful. GoDaddy has a SMTP relay for email. Because of a problem with it, I was not able to retrieve my email from Outlook Express. GoDaddy support was aware of the glitch, but was unable to fix it in a timely manner. I have escalated the 'pending change' problem with your email address, as that status should not be listed for more than 15-20 minutes after an update is made. Once I receive a response on that issue, I will contact you to let you know (received 2/3/04). By the time I received that email from support, I had transferred to IXWebhosting.

These are only some of the problems we experienced in our very short time of being hosted by GoDaddy. Because the site needed to be up and running, I was forced to switch gears and transferred to another host (IXWebhosting) within a week. I have had no problems with them at all. Their support personnel are well informed and had us up and running in a very short time. They do not require SMTP relay for their email. Armand and I were able to get email right away. No glitches. Professional and fast support. Great price. GoDaddy charged me for 1 year's worth of service. They credited me for 11 months, even though we transferred to IXWebhosting within the week. GoDaddy refuses to refund the $8.95 for the few days that they hosted the site. GoDaddy account was opened on 1/27/04; Site was supposed to go active 1/28/04; Transferred to IXWebhosting on 2/3/04. Closed GoDaddy account on 2/5/03.

GoDaddy ripped me off for $8.95 and lots of time and lost revenues. Since they have no guarantee, seems like a pretty good way to screw consumers. $8.95 here and there adds up. They refuse to update their support information on their site and refuse to hire competent, trained support staff. Most hosts give a money-back guarantee. GoDaddy doesn't. They take the consumers money and give back nothing. This practice needs to stop! Please feel free to contact me, should you have any questions. Thank you very much for your time.