More GoDaddy nonsense
- By: John Andrews [privmsg] On 23rd Feb 2006
Okay I would normally not post about some bad customer service but since this seems to be a trend with Godaddy and it is important information for competitive webmasters.
I admit it - I lost a receipt. I moved last summer and I lost alot of old paperwork, but one of the things I lost was a Godaddy .US domain registration receipt. It is a domain I grabbed and have not yet used. For all I know it's another variant of johnandrews.us or something like that... I have not been able to determine that yet. GoDaddy refuses to tell me.
I initially bought GoDaddy Private Registration with the domain. Now I have been getting emails from Dmains By Proxy telling me that
...your registrar will be required to replace Domains By Proxy's(R) contact information with your personal contact information on your private .US domain name, making it publicly available in the WhoIs database. It also means that on that date, you will manage your .US domain name from within your registrar's management interface and no longer from within Domains By Proxy's(R) management interface...We suggest you review the contact information provided to Domains By Proxy for your private .US domain name, to ensure you are comfortable with this information being made public...To review your contact information, please log in to your Domains By Proxy(R) account.
The email does not mention the actual domain name. So I asked them what .US domain they were referencing, and they said they can't tell me. They told me to ask GoDaddy.
So I asked GoDaddy. GoDaddy told me that my domain was referenced in the email from Domains By proxy (it was not). I clarified that for them, and copied the communication from DBP:
You know, I like GoDaddy but this is absurd. If the email from DomainsByProxy referenced the domain name, would I have contacted them through their tech support, and would they have told me they could not tell me the domain, and suggested that I contact you? Come on, guys. You can do better than this. Here is a copy of the email I recieved...
And they replied, sorry. We can't tell you:
Dear Sir/Madam,Thank you for contacting Customer Support. I am sorry, we are not able to list the contents of your accounts. If you are able to specify which account you registered the domain in, or the specific domain names we can provide more information. I can tell you that the email you referenced applies to all .us domains, so this would affect all .us domains you have that are privately registered.
Thank you, Jason P.
For the record, neither the DomainsByProxy nor the GoDaddy login screens and "forgot my password/account number/etc" screens offer any option for entering your email address. If you don't know your customer number or domain name, you have no option but contact technical "support" as I did.
It is also worth noting that the original receipt printed from the GoDaddy registration page does not include the domain name (only the customer number and receipt number).
Those of us who predate GoDaddy know that email-based-auth is not completely secure, but we didn't build multi-billion dollar businesses around acceptance of that risk. GoDaddy did. I have one more "I just want to confirm you are shutting me out of my domain" email in at GoDaddy, but my Moniker account is already growing faster than my Godady account is shrinking.
Suggestions for GoDaddy:
- Be different. Incentivize your tech support to actually read the customer emails before replying. I know it's a new idea. I know it breaks the mold in the industry. But maybe you can try it. Maybe?
- What was that old saying about throwing stones and glass houses? I think it had something to do with arrogance, but maybe not. Anyway, since you like to use words like scam (home page link to opinion piece on Verisign) and playfully mock institutions for their lack of progressiveness (Superbowl ads etc), you might be a wee bit more careful with your own public relations efforts.
- Fix that glitch. You know, the one where you only offer email-based-auth for domain registrations, and then block email-based management of the domains? I completely agree that encryption is much better, but I don't have a big staff of technical people to put onto that job. Do you?
- Call me. That's right, you have my permission and I already gave you my number. if you ever have any concerns about my domains or the safety and security of your servers, and I can be of any assistance at all, I would be more than happy to take the call.
- Oh, and if you do call, please leave a callback number. Every time I get a call from GoDaddy it's the main number (no extension). Even when they leave a first name and ask me to call them back, they don't offer a number. I wouldn't mind if the number was a customer support number, but the general switchboard? (Note to self: start answering GoDaddy calls... they may not all be post-purchase upsell attempts like they have been in the past).
- What's with the earring? I was just wondering. It seems a bit off-putting, but maybe it's just me.
What's with the earring?
Must be just you, John - they are all the rage. I understand that 9 out of 10 TW readers have at least one.
More Trendy TWers
Have a nipple ring, maybe it's just me
Final straw
Okay, so I waited for a response to my one last "are you really telling me you can't tell me" request, and I just got it. I had written:
and Ben replied (a wee bit trimmed back):
So GoDaddy has confirmed that they won't tell me my domain name. They also have confirmed that even after the logical flaw in their process is spelled out clearly before them, and the customer is completely without any solution to his problem, they will not help. In my case, they have offered no other options at all. I am completely without any further assistance from GoDaddy on the matter of managing the domain I registered with them (until it expires I suppose...I am sure they will pursue me for money then).
I can't over look this one. I'm pulling several hundred domains across numerous accounts from GoDaddy.
Good for you I had a
Good for you I had a terrible time with them too they absolutely suck.
You need to call the presidents office to get any kind of customer service there.
With $180 million in annual
With $180 million in annual sales, I doubt GoDaddy care. They're doing enough things right to not care about stuff like this.
I moved all my domains elsewhere as soon as I started hearing stories of GoDaddy holding people's domains ransom. That was probably almost two years ago now.
Excuse me, this is crazy
Couldn't most of us web professionals put a dent in their pockets with a nice boycott?
I only have about 50 domains registered with them, others at other places, but I'm ready to make a mass exodus of GoDaddy after reading this last round of nonsense.
NetworkSolutions sure never played games like this when I had a domain that got somehow unhooked from my account once, they verified I was who I claimed to be, hooked it right back up.
People, it's obvious we can't move $180M away from them but I'll bet most of the readers of this thread could probably put a good sized 6-7 figure dent in their bottom line without too much effort.
And when you move your accounts, make sure you tell them BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE and BAD COMPANY POLICY, THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT AND WE'RE MOVING TO PROVE IT.
update... Moniker woes... GoDaddy coupons, privacy and PayPal
Like a good SEO I stagger my domain name registrations. If I want widget.com and widgit.com for the same market I register one on x/x/2006 and one on another day, sometimes with a different registrar. Today I needed a few new widdgits, and it was time to do it thru my own Moniker account.
Register Domains, search, found, available (!), Add2Cart.
Register Domains, search, found, available (!), Add2Cart.
Register Domains, search, found, available (!), Add2Cart.
Register Domains, search, found, available (!), Add2Cart.
now I click the cart icon to see a nice table of chosen domains. I decide to kill two of them, so I check the boxes and hit DELETE. I get a screen refresh, but the same list. Huh? Try again... same deal. Okay, perhaps a bone head programmer muffed up the form so I choose JUST ONE and hit delete. Voila - gone. Okay, I'm thinking, just a few deletes. but....no dice.. nothing else would delete.
"Exhausted" I take a break to check my email and of course I've got another Godaddy discount coupon. Hell no, I'm thinking. I kill FF and launch IE and try Moniker again. No problem this time, all the way to check out.
Damn, where the hell is the private reg option? Not here, not there. Oh, there it is, under "other products". Problem is, you can only add privacy to already registered domains. WTF?
I am so exhausted by now I just drop a few more domains and decide to only get the ones I don't care if I privatize. I'll put in not-as-accurate-as-it-could-be Whois data, register, and then go back and buy privacy and then make the whois data more accurate. Whatever. Where's the PayPal button? I'm ready to check out.
No PayPal option with Moniker.
Stretching my patience these boys are, but WTF go ahead and charge the credit card. SUBMIT.
After a very long pause my card was declined.
The card is good. I have no idea why it was rejected, but I will guess the billing info (part of Moniker's multi-part WhoIs data form) didn't match my personal home address. IT DOESN'T MATTER because this experience just sucks.
I provide excellent customer service on my ecommerce sites where I ask people to throw $47.73 of their pocket money at me, and I even provide a product. These registrars provide a virtual product and take $100 of my cash every few weeks on a rolling basis. No wonder GoDaddy sucks... they have no competition?
(for those who want to say "pick up the phone and call" -- no thanks. if I am going to call anyone to register domains, I will call my assistant.)
The last thing anybody wants
The last thing anybody wants to hear in the middle of a good godaddy rant is "Uuummm, I LIKE 'em." So, ummmm, I like 'em.
A godaddy rep-du-jour usually emails me around Nov-Dec looking for some year end renewal$. I give them my credit card and and let them to run naked through, no wait, that's another website ...I let them run up renewals for a few years. The price is right, everybody's happy.
I moved to godaddy because I was able to lockdown some domains that had had several attempts at fraudulent transfer at BIGname registrar (hint: starts with N) that were almost successful. BTW, I also had umpteen different accounts at BIGname that I had forgotten my passwords and such AND they were registered to different corporations (all of them mine). How did I manage to merge my mish-mash of accounts? Basically, I used a security flaw in their domain management software and transferred them to myself --CHANGING the registered owner in the process. This should have set off a few dozen alarms, but it didn't. So my lack of confidence wasn't misplaced.
I'm with Godaddy for exactly the reason you're bitching about them, I want someone who's anal-retentive as my registrar.
Holding on to that one for a
Holding on to that one for a while there RC, eh?
>Holding on to that one for
Holding on to that one for a while
Whyso, Aaron? Hell, if I chaffed every time someone has bitched about Godaddy in a forum I was in I'd have died of rug-burn long ago.
OR, are you referencing my disclosure of (technically) illicit domain transfers? I'm hoping the statute of limitations applies by now, hhh.