Godaddy.com Reviews

On December of 2014, they charged my credit card $75 dollars for services that I never signed up for. I called the company and questioned their charges. They apologized for their mistake, but refused to reimburse the money. They stated that I had passed the designated time period. Because of my persistence, they agreed to place some of the charges as store credit, but only to be used with my specific account, which I had already closed.

The reason I am writing to you is because something must be done about this kind of fraudulent business practices. I feel cheated, violated, and I have little course of action without your help. I am already going to report this to my credit card company. I hope that their fraud department can assist me to get my money back. Thank you for your concern!

If I need to tell negative - you can check out how many positive I have told in the past about Godaddy. For the past few days and months service is really poor and worst. We cannot talk to any management. There is person Nikki boss, Tyler - he does not care to respond nor calls back even though I wrote few emails. This is extremely disappointing and frustrating for customers. This is not the way to work. Federal agency should look or send 20/20 or 60 minutes or Under cover boss to see the truth. They are not honest or ethical.

Update: Even the Supervisor was unhelpful... Sounded like he was thinking out loud... Wasted approx 20 minutes of my time, and ultimately resolved nothing. On top of that...he mentioned that one solution might be to start a new account in which I would lose hours of my work... When I asked him if he planned on compensating me with a free upgrade to make rebuilding the website faster and easier...he refused. Their attitude seems to be... "Oh well, your loss."

Worst customer service I have ever had. I have prepaid for my hosting and email and domain 2 years in advance and unless I pay $298 they will not restore my site.

Once I received an unsolicited phone call, asking for any questions that I may have. I asked whether I can install an CMS application such as Joomla without affecting the current website which was developed by an outside vendor. After repeating my question several times the answer Godaddy rep gave was, 'yes'. Once I have done that the index file and database was erased, I ended up paying $150 to Godaddy to restore the site to its most previous version.

Godaddy is not responsible for security though the site rests in its servers. They push you to buy expensive 3rd party applications to secure the site. I declined the offer and a few months after that our site was hacked. I cannot understand who wants to hack "**"! Once I found out our site is not working I requested to pay the fee of $150 again to restore the site only to learn that their current back up policy is only one (1) month. The entire site that we paid over $1000 to build has been lost. Different versions of CMS such as Joomla, Wordpress don't work properly with Godaddy servers. You may end up losing access to update the site as an admin. The alternative is updating to a newer version for a fee and a different plan. If you have existing files GoDaddy charges extra fees to migrate those.

GoDaddy is all about fees; there is serious lack of concern about customers or customer service. They don't care what happen to your site as long as they can collect fees. My recommendation is, it is better to pay extra and get a good hosting service rather than pay less and get stranded with Godaddy as had happened to me right now!

When I asked if they could waive the fee - no surprise, the answer was no. So I cancelled a service I wasn't using, not knowing it would cancel the entire site but, I was still charged for the personal site. And now, GoDaddy wants to charge me to restore what is hours and hours of work. And content that I cannot replace. How is this good customer service? Why would they charge a long time customer this fee, without exception? Likely because the company knows how difficult it will be to do the work over. It's completely horrible. And clearly shows how little they actually value their customers.

4. Up-sell policy and constant ads.

Having been a Godaddy customer for 15+ years, I have been pretty supportive to Godaddy and think this is a great company to battle against those domain name Giants. I have been so supportive that I even introduced many friends to use Godaddy. However, after today's experience, I am not so sure if I am going to continue my support. I have a server down. I called and asked for help. The tech simply said that you (Godaddy) are pretty much hands off on virtual private servers. This shouldn't happen as the 2nd sentence of a customer support phone call. It's very obvious that the tech was just trying to close the phone conversation and move on.

All I asked was that the server reboot time was too long, much longer than usual and wan to call and see if there is something I need to look into. I am not pleased with this experience. And I strongly believe that your tech should have handled this case better. In the past 15+ years, I averagely called Godaddy less than once per year and I am pretty much on myself. Please help me to continue my support to Godaddy by adjusting your service culture. I am looking forward to the old Godaddy spirit back. Your support line has a longer than normal queue. You are not accepting any email support request. As a result, a customer will have to wait in the queue for their problems, urgent or not. I am not sure if I overlooked any other means of support request. But, this will make those customers with less-than-urgent problem having to wait in the queue. This is a sign of lack of support.

I tried to create my matching domain name email address ** all over again but they no longer give you a free account, not it appears they charge you $3.99 a month. Why didn't godaddy just call me or email me and tell me that I couldn't have my lifetime free email account anymore? It would be like holding me hostage so to speak but I would have paid it because I wouldn't of wanted to lose years of saved client communications and other important information. So then I checked on my Godaddy account where it says ‘billing’, ‘messages sent from Godaddy’ and it showed on their own website that they NEVER sent me anything into regards to cancelling my email that matches my domain name. I have 5 domains with Godaddy, all of them current and paid through 2015. They just straight up decided to cancel my free email that matched my domain so I would be forced to pay money now, the problem is they literally cancelled all of my saved data.

I still can't believe it, that they would do this to a small business owner that spends a lot of money with them. I've now paid the one year price at ($3.99 month) to buy my email back but it takes 24 hours to create the "brand new" email address and I've lost all my data and they simply don't care. This is a horrible way to do business and I want an explanation. I have financial damages that I will not even be able to even quantitate. I had credit card authorizations stored, I had client communications that if I have a client try and do a dispute with their credit card over a charge, I had email proof that they were the ones who authorized the charge, I had all of my advertising receipts saved to an email folder, I had many folders such as this. I want to sue Godaddy for how they've handled themselves, this is so wrong. They are messing with my livelihood over $3.99 per month, WOW.

We have been chasing up with customer services in India since then but no luck. Initially, Godaddy executives were in denial mode and were not agreeing that there is an issue at GoDaddy end. They keep on insisting that there is a code issue and we have done something wrong and deployed the wrong code. They asked us for USD 150 per website, if we wish to recover the websites. But after our insistence and spending more than 4 hours, Godaddy executive named Mr. George agreed that there is an issue at Godaddy servers and administration team is working on it. Even he mentioned, that same issue is being reported by other customers as well.

Godaddy able to recover few websites till midnight of 11/17 but in the morning servers are being hacked again. When we called Godaddy, Mr. Manjeet ** mentioned that godaddy has done whatever they can do and they cannot help us anymore. When asked if there is any escalation path or can we contact his supervisor he said, escalation path or escalation email id doesn't exist and he cannot provide his supervisors id. He said that he cannot help us.. And that's it!

Its very sad and disheartening to see that executives of MNC company behave like government employees. They don't understand what issue customer is facing and they cannot even help customers to resolve it. We have been chasing down by our customers repeatedly and its more than 18 hours that our websites are down.

They said they would refund the money for the domain name but all the money that I had spent with a developer to make this specific site is not their problem. They weren't even sorry for the time I lost. I basically received the response from the supervisors that I was SOL... I have spent quite a bit of money with GODADDY... and they really don't care at all about customer service or making things right... not to mention they fraudulently sell domains that aren't available and charge your credit card. They simply do not care about their customers.

Shame on "Godaddy" for not hiring the right parties to act on your behalf as to what you should and should not expect from them. They are only an informational website builder. That is bulk of what they provide. Then the guy says that they can host the site for me for free. Well, Hello!!!!! I paid for 3 years idiot, what you are doing is nothing that I can't get from nowhere else. Michael Jackson could have hosted the dam site in his coffin for that matter. Godaddy is a rip off unless you just want them to host a site you had built somewhere else.

When I preview my work, it is not at all the same as what the builder shows. After all of this, my account still says I have no significant issues. I have many issues, including that I still don't have a site for my business. I have taken videos of me attempting to edit my work using their builder, I have photos that show how it looks in the builder & in the preview & I have copies of the conversations I've had with their less-than-helpful rage-inducing "support" staff (if there are others trying to get their money back, I'd like to be connected with them).

I put some domains for sale about 3 months ago. Some domains then expired without being sold. Before the new TLD names it probably would have sold easily, but the new extension have made the .com domains worth much less than they were before. I was busy doing other things so put it down to losing money, but I couldn’t afford to renew them so felt it was a loss but I was not throwing good money after bad.

They are very quick to ask for money and remind when it is expiring, and in their mail to me on the 15th July they say "Your products will not renew automatically. Renew them now to ensure they remain active and in your name! To cancel, disregard this email. Remember, cancelled domain names may be released for anyone to register. All related data website files, emails, databases, etc. will be removed from our server and will not be subject to recovery."

I assumed from that mail the domain would lapse and it would then just go and be available for others to buy. ... Nope. By their own words they say if I do nothing the domain will expire. What they DON'T tell you is it doesn't.... Then 3 weeks after it had expired I got a mail saying the domain had been sold, and as I didn’t have the right to sell it they froze my account! They also tried to bill me $80 for the honor! I was on the phone immediately, and even the guy helping me agreed it should expire when the domain expires, but selling is one department, and buying is another, apparently, and they don't talk with each other.... What sort of crazy system is that? Useless.

For me to renew it then sell it to the person would actually COST me money! I cannot access the domain now, and I don't have the access with my account frozen, so Godaddy are off my Christmas card list now, and I will be taking my business elsewhere.. I suggested the buyer waits for it to be re-listed and buy it cheaply there..

They wanted for me to send business documents and photo identification (which they did not ask for to open the account), in order to close the account. I have sent many requests in writing for them to stop charging my bank and I sent a copy of my identification. Now, I am letting the bank handle it by initiating the Stop Payment/Unauthorized Debit procedures so that my card cannot be charged and I can be refunded for anything that they have charged after I requested termination. I will never do business with them again.

My account was canceled, refund the money and they took the domain for themselves. I cannot register it in another registrar, nor even give a time to release it to registration. So I lose my domain and nobody cares. Good bless America. It's life. When we deal with crooks we always lose something.

I asked for a supervisor, and got a rude, unprofessional woman who identified herself as the Customer Service Supervisor, who proceeded to blackmail me by saying that if I cancelled the GoDaddy site builder, she would charge my credit card on file for the FULL non-discounted hosting rate, deleting the discounted rate I purchased for 3 years! I reiterated to Ms. ** that not only was she engaging in blackmail, but also unfair business practices, and that I have not authorized her to charge my credit card, nor was there anything in the hosting agreement that indicated this was a process of GoDaddy! She then sarcastically said, "I'm here to help you in any way I can..." I have reported this to GoDaddy and am awaiting a response. I would hope that a manager will treat this issue as serious as it is and, if they are recording the customer service calls, they will undoubtedly know how customers are being treated by their representatives.

Wait, it gets worse, they said, an additional problem is they cannot reach me via email. REALLLLLY, I said. The email they have on file belonged to the dot com, which Godaddy locked down. Each time they email us, they should have received a "non-deliverable" response CAUSED literally by their own company-GO DADDY. Ah, poor daddy must be loosing his wits. We have updated the email twice, over the telephone. We have yet to receive a correspondence.

I read the terms of service. If I had read in TOS that we would only be allowed 1000 email relays, I would not have wasted my time migrating data files from Singlehop. You have cost me a lot of time, money and reputation with my customers. And I refuse to jump through Godaddy's hoops. Either you provide the service or you don't, can't just assign a limit without first giving the customer an option of deciding whether or not the service is for them before taking their money. Shame on Godaddy! Before leasing a server with Godaddy, I read the terms of service extensively. I found no where in the terms of service where it states the number of emails one can send from their server. Godaddy makes up rules as they go along.

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.