Yesterday, GoDaddy sent me an email saying the Whois information on JohnChow.com was invalid and needed to be corrected. The email stated I had five days to correct and respond to the problem.
Dear John Chow,
Please consider this message as official notification that the contact information provided for the domain name registration for johnchow.com appears to be invalid, or incomplete. Please update the information within 5 business days as per Section 3 of the Registration Agreement, which you agreed to at the time you registered your domain name. For your convenience, we have attached a copy of the current contact information listed for your domain name. If the update has not been accomplished within 5 business days, this can be grounds for cancellation of your domain name registration as per Section 6 of the Registration Agreement. Please respond to this email to confirm the changes have been made. Thank you for your cooperation.
Thank you,
GoDaddy.com, Inc.
You would think from reading the above email, I had five days to correct the problem. However, within a few hours of sending that email, GoDaddy disable my domain and redirected it to a page showing the following message.
I was on the road when all this happened and didn’t know that my domain was disable until I started receiving text messages from a bunch of readers. That’s when I logged into my account and found that email. My first thought was, “WTF! It said I had five days to correct this!”
Logging into my GoDaddy account, I found that indeed, the contact info for johnchow.com did had an error. The city of Richmond was missing the R. I corrected the error and responded to GoDaddy. However, their invalid whois team was gone for the day. That meant my blog would be down until they return the next day.
I tried contacting others at GoDaddy (other readers tried as well) but the response was that only the invalid whois team can undo a redirect and they don’t work 24/7. No one was able to provide an answer as to why my domain was shut down before the five day notice expired.
For shutting down my domain on the first day of a five day notice and causing my blog to be inaccessible for a full day, GoDaddy is on my shit list. Until I get a response on how this happened, I will never use GoDaddy again for any domain services and I don’t recommend anyone else use them.
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You should tell them that they owe you for 1 day of lost revenue for basically disabling your business.
lol!! They’ll never agree on that..
Don’t forget all of the emotional damages and incorrect information they feed you in the email. Ha. Glad to see the site back up.
So what domain registrar you are using now John?
- Felix
That sucks. Especially with a high profile blog like this you think they’d show some accommodation.
Funny how you’re attacking them while their being advertised heavily by shoemoney.
I use 1&1 for my domains. I never understood why no one preferred them.
Maybe they are not that popular my friend. I used namecheap for all my domains including my niche sites.
I learn namecheap from Yaro Starak and Gedion.
- Felix
All JohnChow.com readers should message @DrBobParsons on twitter. This was so wrong. Taking a domain down just for a missing R is ridiculous.
Actually, it’s idiculous!
“Actually, it’s idiculous,” said ob.
Yes, ve_y _idiculous indeed! I only have one domain name f_om them, the othe_s a_e f_om Monike_.
Like he reads tweets? Doubtful.
im agree with you
Yea, good luck with that! Worth a try but there is no way they would give in on that.
Will be interested to see what their response if….if they do respond!
im agree with you, im already have problemes but with hosting 24
Do you think that they will care about that ?
I have been warned by more than one internet marketer about GoDaddy doing evil things to people. I’m glad I paid attention to the warnings.
After having done this evil thing to you John I think that you should definitely never have anything to do with them.
That’s shitty.. GoDaddy shouldn’t have done that..
GoDaddy sucks, support is like hell !!!
I have to agree with the people supporting NameCheap, I have moved all my domains from Dreamhost and Godaddy to them and never had a single problem since!
can u send info on how to transfer domain to namecheap or some other server to: cldominator@yahoo.com
I agree. I haven’t had to call their support often, but I had to verify SSL information with them once and it was way more complicated than it needed to be.
I’ve never dealt with godaddy but have thought of transferring my domains there. Good thing I found out their support sucks.
Many people have had a really bad experience with them.
That’s a good enough reason to stay away from them as far as possible.
Ye, I hate their support as well. I’m thinking of switching domain name service company.
http://www.namecheap.com – 24/7 support, and you would never have this problem. Been a customer and fan since 2005.
I’ve used GoDaddy for ever, but earlier this year I started loading up on domains through NameCheap. They are great.
I second that notion. And they are having a trivia for free domains until late Christmas night. I highly recommend Namecheap, and I wish I came across them first.
why do you recommend namecheap? I hear that people are happy with them but they don’t elaborate further. Then again, people state that they’re happy with godaddy. So, I need to know.
Well, I like them because I’ve never had any problems, and when I’ve had questions, the customer support was excellent. I just transferred some domains for someone, and the process was seamless.
Namecheap Namecheap Namecheap since 2007.
Nothing left at Go Daddy, or anywhere else now.
Easy to use and quick too!
I agree! I am using them as well, the live support is very friendly and helpful.
Honestly i don’t recommend godaddy to my readers as well, since i have seen lots of people complain about them.
See this thread: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/godaddy-hosting-super-slow-is-it-me-or-them
Yep I tried to come here yesterday and saw the notice that it had been redirected. I thought I accidentally typed in the domain wrong so I tried a couple more times with the same result. That’s just ridiculous. But not surprising given all the horror stories I have heard for years about godaddy.
GoDaddy has always been good when things are going right but in crunch time they have very little to help you out. I moved out of them couple of years back for a crunch issue but I still have my domains with them but now thinking of moving out as well.
Who needs support when everything is going on just right? It’s like a good friend, a service in need is a good service indeed, or something like that.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Totally agree with you on this.
What Bullshit, that’s a whole lost day!
Very unfortunate. John was also on vacation.
Go with Netfirms.com, transfer your registration from GoDaddy to there. Their domain service is good, and they don’t disable/steal domains, or extort others like godaddy does.
Netfirms? No way.
GoDaddy sucks. Other smaller domain providers have way lot better support.
What small domain providers have good support?
That’s downright evil…
Dude, I am shocked that you use Godaddy at all. their hosting AND their customer service SUCKS ASS.
I used them for a while until I wised up to realize that the people who work there have their heads up their asses.
I was also using their shared hosting before I realized that the server I was on was hosting 2400 websites!
This company is AWFUL and no one should ever use them.
Sorry to hear that! It’s really frustrating to see the decline of customer service in America! BUT, I’m happy to see you taking a stand, and with your large audience, hopefully it hurts them where it counts.
I’m currently going through an ordeal with Ebay…I’ve reached the point where I’m closing down my account and will not use them anymore.
It is not the decline of customer service in America, it’s the absense of customer service in Godaddy.
Shocking! I think it is so important to have a good working relationship with the right people at your. Registrar, hosting company, and any other single point of failure in your business.
Thanks for sharing your experience John to benefit so many. Perhaps you’ll have more to tell in the future about this.
I don’t know their terms super well, but you may have legal recourse, have you considered that?
-Travis
This crap happened to me as well. I sometimes think it’s a way for them to grab traffic. Unfortunately I have “all” my domain names with them along with several hosted sites. ~Tim
Wow, that is an epic fail by GoDaddy. I wonder if that was a mistake or standard operating procedure for them. I’m a HostGator user myself. So far I haven’t had any problems.
Godaddy needs to answer, that was so wrong.
forgot to mention…I’m using inmotionhosting, and have used them for years for all of my sites, and many of my clients. They have been awesome! Anytime I’ve had an issue, it’s been resolved very quickly. Their uptime is great also! http://bit.ly/ar8aGt
Hey Tony… I use their side kick…webhostinghub and seem to be on their game… They probably work about the same as their parent co. inmotion…..I want to put up a blog (wordpress) but don’t know how to do it…have you ever put one up and is it a deal to remember……thanks Bruce
GoDaddy’s frequent ICANN emails make me think they are just working to refresh their marketing database.
I think a collective class action suit on violation of notice and use provisions of the current privacy laws might stop the practice… plus I would like a few free years of hosting.
Funny, I was wondering recently about those notices too since my domain had not even expired and was less than 4 months old. kept getting these notices that I needed to take some action and i was not sure what was up with that.
In my opinion there is no excuse for someone to do this the way it was done, period. I think they owe you a formal apology and at the very least be decent enough to say that they made a mistake. That should actually give them more credits as no one is perfect. The silence though is what bothers me as normally this is a negative sign.
So what are you using for your domain name then? Who would you recommend as a replacement for Godaddy?
Yep, that’s why I don’t use them any more. Their support sucks, they don’t understand what you are telling them. Try and have them fix an Apache problem, they don’t even know what Apache is. I like MediaTemple and use them for all my web hosting because they keep you informed of the status of problems, and actually know what the heck is going on inside their systems – when you talk to someone there, you don’t just get some lame off-shore person that only knows basic, first level information. I have started using 1and1 for remote servers as well. I vote with my money for those companies that actually know how to support their customers, versus those that are in business to have pretty women on their front pages and are so over-market driven they forgot how to solve problems or let you know about them.
Agree with Harshad,other smaller domain providers are doing really well,with 24/7 support.
I moved most out too. Now majority of my names are at moniker.
John,
If GoDaddy is on your shit list, why do you advertise them on your blog in a 125×125 ad?
Just curious…
Greg
They should replace you at least with 100 new domains with free renewal for 5 years. it’s cause for 1 day lost.
Wow! That makes no sense. That’s more unbelievable than the hosting companies that will suspend your website if you exceed 15% of CPU usage for more than a second.
Struggling with all these competing sites as they all seem to want to outdo the other, i am a great believer of liv and let live – the webs a big place!
Last Thursday, my trivia blog – http://www.myfivebest.com had a great day bringing in over 55,000 hits in one 24 hour period. GoDaddy decided I had too many hits, so they shut my blog down! We had to switch servers (more money), and they deleted my last database which meant I was missing over 80 of my posts! It took them 5 days to get everything back up and running and I still ended up coding php files and adding more than 100 pictures. It’s finally back up, but I am not happy with them right now!
I had similar issues as well couple of years back but I as soon as traffic spiked and I did not see good response from GoDaddy I switched off my Apache and moved to thePlanet with the backup. I was paying lot more but had no loss of any data or mental stress.
I’ve used GoDaddy for years; run all my sites off them and all my clients’ sites. I’ve had excellent customer service every time. My only complaint with them is that their site navigation is overly complicated and changes frequently.
I’ve used GoDaddy in the last 1.5 years and also hosted several other domains and blogs on them. I’ve also had great customer service. Not perfect anyway, but much better than others i used before..
I was shocked to see that ,I visited your blog and found down ..Thank god,It has been restored
Hmmm… maybe you want to take the godaddy ad out of your sponsor box?
Wow! You know that happened on one of my domains as well last week, my site’s domain name expired on the 18th and I renewed my domain name and even though I have a 5 day grace period, for some reason Godaddy kept redirecting my domain to the Godaddy splash page fork parked domains, that shit went on the whole day. Lost about 35,000 visitors for the day. I’m not even gonna talk about earnings. Up until this point I really liked GoDaddy, I host all my domains there.
Agreed. Most registrars or hosts are eager to keep ALL account holders happy. You’d think that’d be particularly true with a high-traffic site like yours… Hopefully they weren’t re-directing your traffic to a page filled with ads. That’d be particularly terrible.
I’ve heard bad things about GoDaddy before. Thats why I stopped using their services and switched to another company
Maybe they should reimburse you for a days lost wages I would be mad too. Give you a severance package! Hostgator all the way I have never had a problem with them and their customer support is second to none. Sorry to hear that John glad to see it did not last long.
FYI: Godaddy is even worst with hosting. Last month I switched to a dedicated server and I went thru hell for 5 days. I ended up cancelling, but lost $100 ror the first month and many many hours. Hate them. Not helpful at all, they blocked access to my own folders and wanted me to pay support to solve the issue they created in the first place.
I placed godaddy in my shit list months ago. They’re just like any other big company. They give no shit about customers they give a hell lotta shit about profit…
I’ve had problems a few years back with them so I went to namecheap and have been very happy with them. Best of luck!
That is right John. I never try to register domains at GoDaddy. So many problems, DNS issues, Separate Whois subscription and some more hidden charges.
Because of this reasons, myself started new domain selling business from Directi. Now reselling the domains and giving features like Whois protection and domain forwarding for free.
Try to register your domains such a good Domain Service Provider.
I’ve been using Godaddy for 10 years, and although I don’t agree with the owner’s personal philosophy or behavior I must say I’ve never had one issue with them. I host 4 websites on Godaddy and own over 35 domain names (all purchased through them). I’ve never had a website down and their customer service has always been excellent.
I too have received the information request change but never changed it on a few of my domains and nothing has ever happened with the domain or hosting.
Sorry to hear this happened with you.
Wow. What a load of BS. I’d better go check all the info on my domain. Have you heard anything back?
Hi John. Sounds bad.
I’ve been with GoDaddy for a long time, lots of domains, lots of hosting accounts, etc., and they have always treated me right.
I’ve also called their customer service line many times with idiot questions and they’ve always picked up the phone within a few minutes, taken as much time as I’ve needed, and been helpful.
Guess I’m not a good candidate to report any negative experiences with GoDaddy.
Brent
GoDaddy always has sucked and always will suck.
@Brian McVay, correct.
“lol!! They’ll never agree on that..”
@Abhik, That is why you bring a lawsuit for breach of contract. John has plenty of documentation of his earnings so it would be pretty easy to estimate consequential damages without it being speculative. When Ebay went down Meg Whitman estimated how much revenue they lost per minute and decided to invest in capital infrastructure that would provide 10x the amount needed for the highest traffic ever experienced. This is serious stuff, perhaps $10,000+ in damages plus any possible punitive, etc., and it appears that GoDaddy breached the Domain Name Registration Agreement without cause. If I were in John’s situation I would transfer any domains away from GoDaddy and then file a lawsuit against them.
Even the TSA can be sued. Do You Need To Profitably Sue A TSA Agent.
I use godaddy long time and dpnt have same problem like you. Redirecting its wrong from godaddy.
Also did you try to call on phone ? for fast response.
Thats really shitty! Please keep us posted with the outcome so us other godaddy users van decide what to do!
Good blog post though
Same things happened to us…slowly starting to move all hosting and all domains to our own host. Of course, once we moved 1 domain, GoDaddy started e-mailing and calling us with all kinds of questions and offers to help, yada, yada, yada…
It was time to renew my domain (60 days before) and before I could do it they took it off my previous payment (no permission). Then when I told them I was just moving the domain to someone else, more affordable and trustworthy they sent me a confirmation email telling I was losing all my free stuff, like hosting…they NEVER offered or told me about FREE anything. I hate these guys!
Not cool, really sorry to hear – I’ve over 170 domains with them so this is not very comforting.
But you still have a Godaddy banner in the sidebar
Godaddy has a whole history of bad service… dont use godday if you have affililiates working with you…just one spam complain and they will lock your account… just do a search on google and you will see
merry christmas to all!!
Jorge
UNBELIVABLE!!! Lesson learned, I don’t have any domains that are important to me at Godaddy anyway, but I will move the rest out during the course of the year. There is no excuse for this. Downtime due to domain registrar is not acceptable!!
Interesting how all the posters have a supportive opinion for you, whether they know about Godaddy support directly or NOT.
I have over 100 websites,and nowadays use GD exclusively for registration, I despise but have learned to avoid their grossly hyped oversell tactics.
As for support however, on the occasions I have needed it, it has been absolutely First Class and thankfully based in the USA and not some crappy outsourced call centre in a barely English speaking country.
Bob P may be an absolute richardcranium, but he does employ Americans.
My suggestion? quit your bitching, it was almost certainly something YOU did or didn’t do, and they fixed it….
Just because you’ve never had a problem with GoDaddy, it doesn’t mean that’s the case for everyone else. That sounds pretty stuck up really. “Oh, everyone must be lying because GoDaddy has been great to me!”
Why s it u olwez defend John everywer? U his bitch?
Wow, this is a big whine post. Get over it… they are a very respected company, but everyone makes some mistakes. Blasting this out to your list is pretty pathetic.
This is very showing as to how you treat people. Grow up.
This is not just a mistake. They do this all the time that’s why a post like this is needed.
They stole my domains told me I deleted them and then charged me to get them back.
Read up on this, they are not a respected company. They are a big company.
GoDaddy is S%#T, I’ve used them once and never again. I use Circle for all my sites, and there are numerous. GoDaddy’s support support and features are a total joke compared to anything Circle offers.
THAT explains why I couldn’t reach JohnChow.com yesterday. Sorry to hear about it, John.
I’ve only ever trusted GoDaddy for .ca domains. All mine are at Moniker now.
This is really unbelievable. I am using GoDaddy for sometime now and IMO they are good. But what they have done to you is very bad and it is not acceptable. Contact their support team and let them explain why this happened.
What is it with these big online corporations, they just seem to mess people around GoDaddy, eBay and PayPal is by far the worst. They must go to the board room in the morning, have a meeting on who they would like to upset for that day and be as unhelpful as possible to pee them off even more.
I have to say John, I’m surprised you still have GoDaddy sponsoring your blog. When it’s time to renew GoDaddys advertising you should put the prices up, this will compensate for loss of earnings or do a publicity stunt and sue them.
Wow, that’s pretty lame. I’ve used them for years and never had a problem, but it definitely shows I should keep a closer eye on my registration info! Would hate to be down, even for a day.
I used Godaddy for hosting for about 2 months and switched because of the lack of good support.
But in any case I would like to know what gives them the right to not honor their own email giving 5 days to correct the issue.
This is totally unacceptable. GoDaddy owes you a big appology and owes the rest of us an explanation.
I also bet you’d be able to prove in court how much money you lost due to GoDaddy intentionally and maliciously redirecting your domain name.
that was awefull…my blog was down with a similar situation for more than 2 days…
I agree completely that GoDaddy seems like a shady operator. They do a terrible job of customer relationship management and are generally very unpleasant to deal with. I’ve never been satisfied with any of my exchanges with them.
Welcome back
Never had any problems with GoDaddy support. Stopped using them because of all of the advertisements, sells, and marketing.
I’ve had many problems with GoDaddy. Rarely do they ever say it’s their fault either.
Just goes to show you that it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, it’s all about marketing and they’re good at it.
Godaddy sucks period. I use name and namecheap for my domains.
Same here mang, use for names cheap for my domains only. Their other services are complete rubbish.
Well, You have about 70+ PPL or 119k readers who agree and partition with you on this issue.
Indefinitely.
Who will you use instead of Godaddy for domains?
Switch to Moniker. I started boycotting Godaddy a long time ago, they are horrible, useless and incompetent.
This is pretty much the same way it goes down no matter what registrar you use. Just like all cell phone companies suck in one way or another, all domain registrars suck in one way or another.
The majority of the time what happens is someone reports you for having an invalid whois, otherwise registrars don’t even notice, unless you never ever do the yearly ICANN verification thing. You could of very well had some hater just out to get you.
All i’m trying to say is having GoDaddy on your shit list is maybe just the easy way out. You could have avoided all of it by just having a valid whois, right? It’s pretty routine for registars to email you about it, and disable your domain int he meantime. That’s sucky, but like I said… they all suck.
I can do one better than that.
Goddady sent me an email trying to renew one of my domains. I did not want to renew on that domain.
They wanted my new credit card on file. I did not put my new card on file. Because of this the rep actually said that I will lose all my domains even the ones I just bought and paid for a couple months earlier.
I could not believe this.
He then deleted all my (paid for) domains.
Now I must pay a fee to reinstate them.
I called back and spoke to someone else and
they told me that I was the one who deleted all my domains even the new ones.
I said why would I do that, and his response was that it happens all the time.
I still can’t believe this happened.
I paid for a service they deleted my domains and now want me to pay them even more for a product i already
paid for.
Beat that!
My GoDaddy account was hacked at one point and not only did they tell me that the account was NOT mine because the hacker changed the whois information, when I finally managed to convince the hacker to let me have the account back, they shut me down because I changed the whois info back to my REAL information. In order to get my sites back (about 25 at that time), I had to input false information! I no longer use them, but highly recommend NameCheap.
GoDaddy is a joke – they always have been. I started out there and quickly moved over to Namecheap.
I still have a few domains at GoDaddy but I’m moving them all over as they get close to expiration.
I had an issue with GoDaddy a long time ago and never went back.
Use Namecheap – I have 70+ domains there and no issues.
@Tony – is it eBay or Paypal you’re having issues with? I had a $70,000 issue with paypal this year… PayPal sucks.
@james
Godaddy.
They were my domain registrar till they stole my domains.
eBay owns PayPal, so they’re one in the same.
Did you support Wikileaks or something? That is without a doubt the shittiest service I have ever heard of from them.Their Invalid Whois Team does not work 24/7 so GoDaddy can not solve problems in short order.
I think you need to change providers. I am all GoDaddy and was going to upgrade to their dedicated servers but I think I will find an alternative as this is unacceptable service!
TMA
support is really bad with godaddy
That’s really WTF..
I always use name.com and hostgator combination for my sites..John, since you already use HG then you should really transfer your domain to something better…Go away from godaddy!
I can’t stand Godaddy either because their customer support is horrible. They never know the answer to any questions that you have and never seem to be able to fix any of your problems.
Now you’re catching on to GoDaddy? Wow. John I had to stop by the blog and drop you a comment on this one. I don’t get by here very often-last time was when you had 30k on the RSS.
But yeah, they got me too, “stole” a domain from me when they auto-renewed it AGAINST my wishes and held it for 6 months. Among other things I might add, but holding my site hostage was MY final straw-and maybe you’ve found yours.
Plus I showing people how to get an ACTUAL 1.99 .com 2 solid years ago, not their fake “sign up for this and that” bait and switch.
So close out man, let your domains expire from there and move them-that’s what I did, and by April I was done with them-forever. There is ZERO reason to be with them anymore.
ONCE they had a tiny savings on other registrars-that was s LONG time ago. But a lot of people with old domains, like mine from 1999, hang in there because it’s “an old friend” but it’s not. It’s an abusive spouse, get away now, and get a restraining order while you’re at it.
I despise GoDaddy. For more reasons than I can list. I’m waiting for HostGator to provide domain services, and I’m moving everything I have left at GD to HG.
John, I used to be an employee at Godaddy and have used them for hosting and domains as well. All of my experiences have been positive. However, there are some organization issues within. Certain departments are unreachable by the public as well as internally and only have an email address to correspond through.
Because of all the sponsoring and marketing they do, they are growing at an insane rate. They hire anywhere from 100 to 200 new employees a month and have a difficult time retaining them. With that comes a little disorganization and inexperience in matters of support.
That’s a bummer and yours is a rare case. You should have had the 5 days. I have my domains at Godaddy and host with Ipower and they have had their issues as well. It’s all part of the hosting world. You are bound to run into a tech error from time to time. Glad to see you are back up and running though.
That’s interesting David, thanks for the insight. Wow, 200 people a month?! Shows the power of good marketing I guess.
Oh man, don’t even get me started with iPower, haha. I don’t think you should just “live with it.” It’s a pain in the ass to migrate, but it made all the difference to me when I started using HostGator.
I too added godaddy to my shit list
Oh god, i never know godaddy has such bunch of problems with them,
Will try to stay away from them here on !!
John,
I understand you being upset, but unless you can prove that this is a systemic (as opposed to anecdotal) problem, I’d hold off calling for their head on a platter. Hardly a day goes by that each of us doesn’t get pissed at some big business, whether it’s Microsoft, AT&T, GE or whatever. Screaming “boycott” when one thing goes wrong is, in my opinion, just plain juvenile.
True, GoDaddy owes you an apology, but then, so does everyone else that’s ever wronged you. Wah.
If you can’t prove that the problem is systemic or are unwilling to spend the energy to find the proof, suck it up.
-Dan
First off…John…so sorry that happened. It’s bull@#$@ and kudos to you for holding their feet to the fire.
Dan, Frankly, you’re kind of a dick. John posts that a service essentially shut down his business for a day and stated he wasn’t happy about it and rightly slammed them.
So he’s ‘juvenile’ and he should ‘suck it up’? He has a perfectly legitimate gripe (to say the least) and I’m glad there’s people like John who have influence and can help hold these buinesses’ feet to the fire.
I think you need to get laid bro. You’ll feel better. Wah.
I had a problem with transferring a domain to a client, When I started investigating GoDaddy I was actually pretty horrified with all the stories I saw about the problems people are having with them. Check out nodaddy.com for most of those stories. Right after that I started switching my domains over to namecheap because my company had been using them for years and registers around 50 domains a week without any problems. I’ve transfered most of my domains there now but it has taken forever because GoDaddy seems to keep losing the transfer request emails and/or some other loophole gets me. Read that information on that site for all the ways they can stop you from transferring your domains or the many ways they like to shut down popular sites and put their revenue generating ads on. Hopefully with someone as popular as you getting hit maybe people will take more notice.
I think Go Daddy did us all a favor yesterday.
I can’t believe that. My domains are all in godaddy. I hope it won’t happen to me. I guess every company has its own downside sometimes.
Cheers!
John, that’s too bad to hear about your headache with this. I was missing JC dot com when it was offline for sure.
Yep. They suck big time. They didn’t auto-renew one of my domains and tried to extort $100 from me to get it back. I went to the BBB and RipOffReport and got it back. Their customer service is the worst I’ve ever tried to deal with. I’d rather talk to India than GoDaddy and that’s saying a lot.
Clearly, GoDaddy is evil and owned and operated by Kim Jong-il. And to him we say: http://bit.ly/eeDJLg
In your post it says you will not use GoDaddy again but you are still using GoDaddy since JohnChow.com is registered with them.
I am mostly wondering how this will impact your rankings on the SE’s and other ranking sites…. It was obviously down long enough for crawlers to make several passes so that will be reflected eventually I imagine.
I’m surprised you used GoDaddy. They are great for amateurs and small timers but for people that are serious about their online business there are much better companies which have better support than GoDaddy.
Hey, I didn’t mean to be a “dick” or look insensitive with my “suck it up” comment. John’s blog postings are usually very positive with lots of good information. So now he gets burned by GoDaddy, and now a rant posting. As if there aren’t already a plethora of rant blogs out there. I have no time for any of ‘em.
Just dump GoDaddy and get on with life. Eventually they’ll figure it out and either A) Change their ways, or B) Go out of business. In either case, it isn’t worth putting a rant on this fine blog site just ’cause they burned yet another customer.
Personally, I’m way ahead of John in that line. I got burned by GoDaddy years ago. Guess what? I dumped ‘em. End of story.
Dan
That’s great, but in the meantime, John’s readers are stuck scratching their heads going “wtf???”
And since John’s blog IS a business blog, it seems like it would be OK for him to say “hey, this is what happened”.
As for screaming “boycott”, I read the article. He simply said that he cannot recommend them to anybody. Which is a bit different.
So, considering how John’s blog is a mostly positive, upbeat blog, shouldn’t you allow him the occasional “I’m angry about xyz” post?
No offense, dude, but save the trolling for Slashdot.
If John’s blog really is a business site, I wouldn’t get “GoDaddy is on my Shit List” in my email in-basket. I found that title offensive and unprofessional.
Also, you can slice hairs over John’s wording, but with his undeniable influence over a large audience, his anti-GoDaddy rant has all the trappings of a call for boycott.
I’m not going to defend GoDaddy. I agree that they have acted unethical toward a lot of people, including John. So I totally understand his anger and frustration. It’s disappointing nevertheless to see him stoop to this level.
BTW: I’m not a troll or a dick. I simply disagree with the popular opinion of this particular posting. If that makes me a “dick” or a “troll”, then I can only observe that you have a fairly low threshold for such terms.
Dan
Dan,
“Just dump GoDaddy and get on with life.”
As a scientist who wears a suit and tie to work I find his title unoffensive. I rather prefer John’s tact and find it most appropriate given the circumstance. His article has had an impact on his readers. I for one am happy to have read this blog post, the comments, and conducted additional research on GoDaddy. The end result: GoDaddy will lose my business as I will now begin moving all of my domains to another Registrar over the next month. Why? John’s post helped to educate me and the additional information I found further supported my decision to not depend on GoDaddy.
-Sam
So then, as a scientist, you must be familiar with the “scientific method” of conducting an inquiry. Inquiries must be unbiased, objective and subject to full disclosure. Does John’s lone rant meet this criteria? It’s anecdotal at best and was never subject to thorough review. Furthermore, full disclosure of the events leading up to this little tragedy never entered the discussion. For example, did GoDaddy, like many other Service Providers, periodically send an email asking John to verify his contact information? Did John receive these notices and ignore them? Or did he not receive these notices because he’d already switched his email address? Scientific minds would want to know, yes?
While I don’t appreciate the cursing, I really do not like GoDaddy for all kinds of reasons. Switched all my (100+) domains to a different registrar so as not to support the skanky advertising.
Dear John; i have follow your advices since (more or less) 4 years… you are the best. I made money, a lot, just reading your blog. So, the time i realize you have a mistake in your whois, i told you. You can see, that 3 months ago, in your video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQNa8WnQ_sQ), where you receive a letter (real snail mail… not an email), i told you, and i quote: “you have to make an actualization on your who is data (it could be bad with the registry if you don´t)”.
You can check in the youtube video, the (only) comment.
Bye (i wish i coul help you better that day, so this shouln´t happen).
It sounds like user error to me and I don’t really get why you’re made at GoDaddy.
Next time, make sure the information is correct, and you can avoid these problems.
Taken from your post: “the contact info for johnchow.com did had an error”
I think the anger comes from them not giving him 5 business days like they said that they would…
They owe you big time and ask for money back.
Stay away from Dreamhost aka deahHost too.They are the worst.
They just shutdown your sites w/o informing you,
It is sad to hear these stories, we never used above mentioned company, and after this it seems that we are glad for not making such mistake
I started using Go-Daddy a few months ago and haven’t had any complains with their service.
Two times I had to ask some questions about some confirmation code for moving domains, and both times the technician gave me the impression that hadn t even read my message. Unfortuantely I live overseas, so phone is not an option for me.
I should have expected something like that from a company that tries to sell with boob ads and almost daily spam…
I m going to transfer somewhere else eventually…
Godaddy hosting sucks. I’m also transfering my domains to namecheap.
Wow that is bad! will go on my shit list as well!
hahaha
I’ve used GoDaddy in the past but not too much. They’re a bit on the shady side with their predatory marketing but I haven’t had too much issues.
I’m all about Namecheap.
By law and Icann, your domain whois must be correct and if found to be invalid at any time you can lose the domain altogether. Any registrar would have done this.
Also if your phone number is incorrect and someone looks up your whois and calls and gets a disconnected number, one complaint can cause the loss of the domain. Not GoDaddy’s fault but the email was misleading.
What you had was 5 days to retain the domain, it was going to be disabled immediately, it just took time to work it’s way thru the queue. Any registrar will disable any domain on the spot when the whois is found to be inaccurate.
Also the have started disabling sites immediately the first time a site does not pass monthly billing. No grace period. I stiil use them as my registrar, but I will never host anything but HTML pages there and certainly not WordPress.
I always thought godaddy was the best registrar. There are many complaints about them but since they are the biggest registrar it is understandable. But what they did to you seems suspicious enough . You should prolly double or even triple check why did this happen and make their reply public for all of us.
Thats crazy! Nice post about them, def never use them ever again.. :p
Yes friend, I tried to get in in your site and get message that you posted up. I thought: “Whao, John spend all his money in Holyday gift and can not paid his GoDDady renew contract”. Yes kidding friend. It was a bad move by GoDDady, now John Chow have them in his shit list, too bad for theirs…
But have heard good things and bad things about both Godaddy and Namecheap. I guess it will depend on personal taste.
ok,first,you sound like shit itself.
Godaddy has won so many awards for domain registration and customer service which would also convince me that there hosting must be pretty good. You are not better in telling the truth than 1billion people that supports them.
Again,you should learn that people are not above mistakes,so what ever they did,which i think might not even be there fault,you should not blab about it to the whole world. After all i bet you have been using them for a very long time which means you must have been satisfied over all those years.if not,you have the money,why haven’t you moved out since then.
You think you don’t have a problem,right?, well your emails suck,always promoting shits which doesn’t make sense just for the stupid money. you never have any good thing to talk about,always nothing useful. I think you need to subscribe to dailyblogtips.com’s newsletter and see what’s up. You are not even good with seo,man your links are crap.every company uses every possible method to show ads,so if you hate the ones they send to your male,it wont do you any harm to delete it.
My own opinion,i think you are paid to say this,always about the money right? You earn from there banner to promote them and also earn from there competitors to talk some stupid shity craps about them. John,am sorry,but that sucks. Yeah,you can tell people i said it,am a Nigerian,proudly Nigerian. Wish my blog is already up and running,you would have …….
Mr. Chow, please refer to our registration agreement in this matter. Your whois information was all invalid we sent mail to the registrant address and called the phone numbers provided. The five days was a grace period before we send a domain name to pending delete status which deletes your domain name from the sponsoring registry. We are required to take these actions pursuant to ICANN policy.
Feel free to follow up with us if you require further assistance.
shit list,. haha, did u already change of hosting?
i think that the best hosting is mediatemple
What happened to you, sucks…
at least Godaddy needs to give you an explanation…
Godaddy … pay buddy, you screwed it up.
sorry John. You should send all this posts to Mr.Bob Parsons
Ok,first,you sound like shit itself.
Godaddy has won so many awards for domain registration and customer service which would also convince me that there hosting must be pretty good. You are not better in telling the truth than 1billion people that supports them.
Again,you should learn that people are not above mistakes,so what ever they did,which i think might not even be there fault,you should not blab about it to the whole world. After all i bet you have been using them for a very long time which means you must have been satisfied over all those years.if not,you have the money,why haven’t you moved out since then.
You think you don’t have a problem,right?, well your emails suck,always promoting shits which doesn’t make sense just for the stupid money. you never have any good thing to talk about,always nothing useful. I think you need to subscribe to dailyblogtips.com’s newsletter and see what’s up. You are not even good with seo.every company uses every possible method to show ads,so if you hate the ones they send to your mail,it won’t do you any harm to delete it.
My own opinion,i think you are paid to say this,always about the money right? You earn from there banner to promote them and also earn from there competitors to talk some stupid shity craps about them. John,am sorry,but that sucks. Yeah,you can tell people i said it,am a Nigerian,proudly Nigerian. Wish my blog is already up and running,you would have …….
LOL John seriously? GoDaddy has no explaining to do, you messed up, they let you know, you fixed it, and then you had to wait patiently like anybody else. ICANN even requires you to check the whois and confirm it periodically, so if you fail to make sure your whois is correct then you can’t go and put GoDaddy down when they do what they are legally required to do.
It’s pretty sad that you make a big deal about it by emailing your list and making a blog post…
I don’t particularly prefer GoDaddy, but I’ve never had any problems with my 500+ domains regged with them. You can’t get pissed at them for your own mistake.
I’ve got nothing but love for Go Daddy. I have a resellers account with them and an Auction account. Customer service has been excellent.
Since they do have high hired help turnover, you may have gotten a bad customer support or experience.
I hope this does not happen to you again…I love your work John Chow..
Stay Cool….
Elon Bomani
http://elonbomani.com
GoDaddy’s customer service is inspired by the prisoner’s dilemma.
I left GOdaddy for hosting purposes due to a security flaw and no asnwer from them (customer service sucks and they charge even for what they can do even if it their own fault). My bad Experience with Godaddy;
http://bloggeruser.com/gossips/how-go-daddy-messed-up-with-blogger-user/383/
did to you seems suspicious enough . You should prolly double or even triple check why did this happen
GoDaddy has been on my shit list for 2 years, I’ve just added http://midphase.com as well for not being able to handle even the most minimal amounts of web traffic.
I agree with you. GoDaddy shits. Their interface is slow, isn’t clean and they send lots of spam to your mailbox
I’ve moved all my domains to gandi.net, no bullshit. I am very happy with their service.
Relax John, Worse things could happen. You could be losing your house to the likes of flooding that is now happening in California. You are still blessed with what you have and the world does not end becuase of a website companys screw up. Take a deep breath and move on.
Norm
INDEED! I dont even know How I am going to afford Christmas dinner, let alone my hosting for next month.
You act like a spoiled baby.
Ever since I started my online businesses, I have always been told by my fellow IMers to avoid GoDaddy like a plague. I am using Namecheap and do not have a major complaint about them.
GO DADDY SUCKS, They shut down one of my websites because I emailed a business and the business said I was spamming, without notice they shut it down, THEY SUCK! would never ever use or recommend them, I use www,cirtex,com which is very good
If that happened to a domain of high profile like yours John, then they can shut down any domain they like.
This sucks.
Customer service is very important they should Answer this quickly
I agree, Godaddy is crap. I used them exclusively until they pulled similar crap with me. Constant spamming. Calling me often to offer me domain this and that. I use ResellerClub.com.
Become a reseller and pay less, then be your own customer service!
Indeed, there are many problems with GoDaddy — especially if you are an experienced webmaster and/or you are serious about your sites.
Support seems to be copy and paste responses most of the time….
Domain privacy? No such thing. If their privacy unit, domains by proxy, receives a Cease and Desist order from any party, they will cancel your privacy with notice…
And their hosting?? Haha. Yah, right. If I want to make my sites slow as shit, if I want to have Mysql errors, if I want to have damaging limits placed on my WordPress usage, then I will go back to GoDaddy.
So sorry to learn about all this! But how come they did this to you? I guess those go Daddy people don’t have a clue of who you are, but they should! They really suck!
I quit Godaddy because they charged me for domain and hosting renewal when I unchecked the automatic renewal option. They refunded me the hosting, as I asked, but you only get one chance with my credit card number.
Wow … this is damaging … I wonder how GoDaddy is going to manage the damage control.
For some reasons, GoDaddy is probably the most popular domain registrar today. But I agree that th ere are some issues regarding GoDaddy domain.
I think it’s in their operational manual – shutting down on the first day of notice. I conclude that this might be a common policy for domain registrars and web hosting providers – shut down “threats” without a warning before.
I haven’t experience what you had, but it really sucks, especially if your web business is highly dependent on quality and continuity (well, I think ALL site owners want no interruptions in their sites!)
Maybe you should transfer to other domain registrar. I’m no longer registering new domain names via Godaddy. Name.com and Namecheap.com are great alternatives to GoDaddy.
I started with godaddy because they had a deal initially for free privacy etc. and a reasonable price… Well, for a company that’s supposed to be the best (I don’t concur) but probably the biggest, they SUCK.
When it came to renew domains, they upped the price considerably – even with coupon codes I could find on the internet.
And privacy? Ha! that’s extra… most registrars – at least the ones i use, don’t charge extra for that (netfirms comes to mind).
And good god, who the EFF designs their pages? It’s 10xs worse than facebook or myspace.
And just to try to get thru all the upsells of crap i don’t want or need to renew or buy a domain… Thank god I never went with hosting with them or i’d be really screwed.
That sucks for you John – probably cost u some money.
I have a few domains still stuck on godaddy until they are ready to renew but you can bet that i WON’T be keeping them on go-screw-your-daddy!
They should give you best answer if they don’t want lose many subscribers for the next. Thanks for the sharing..
Good to let me know, I had a shitty Godaddy service either.
I never used GODADDY because I always new they suck… their upsell is insulting and quite honestly for morons… or so they probaby think… a better and low cost service provider is name.com or netfirm.com or netfirms.com i cant recall exactly at this time… in any event stop making them richer and spread the wealth around by heading towards reasonable advertising services providers…
hi John, I heard about the bad experience about GoDaddy too from Yaro when I joined his coaching program. So starting from that I stopped using the service and move to namecheap and other domain register company.
Use namecheap.com!
Trust me, Name Cheap will not shut down your website like Godaddy will.
If Godaddy receives complaints about your website, they will sometimes shutdown peoples sites. Namecheap will not do this!
I would transfer your domain to Namecheap and point it from their to your DNS Servers.
You’ll be happy that you did!!
They cant manage what they did to John Chow… lets face it they deserve what ever they get of bad publicity. I remember I registered once a site http://www.bankclick.mobi and the dick heads there took my order and all was well and a little later while I was uploading and testing my site I discovered they had cancel my domains I had registered various) which was already paid and wrapped… thats when I really headed towards someplace else and realized they were dick head… their excuse I had to send them more personal info… a copy of my passport, or ID and SSN …WTF! Who needs that kind of trash… do you? http://www.blogavenue.mobi
Thank you John for sharing this ugly experience with others so we have a platform and let others know the truth.
I have been wary about a lot of complaints against GoDaddy. So I never touched their console no matter how good their offers are.
The same shit goes to Bulkregister after ENOM took over. To renew a domain, YOU HAVE TO EVERYTIME SUBMIT A COPY OF YOUR ID & CREDIT CARD.
Hey. The main reason I use PayPal is to keep my CC info private. Bulkregister still wants the info.
I did gave them the COPIES before, YET they still want the copies again. What the hell.
I think the main reason is to STEAL DOMAIN NAMES from people who gave-up on Bulkregister’s ridiculous terms.
Got fed-up and transfered all my domains to other places.
I tried GoDaddy once and then never went back to them. I registered a domain and they asked for scanned copy of my CC. After sending that, they asked for a scanned copy of some legal document. On sending they said the picture on the scanned copy is not proper… after that I said FO.
Yeah use namecheap!
My recommendation -
1. Internet.bs
2. NameCheap
3. Name
and last Godaddy ….
And save your money in buying domain and hosting by using web hosting coupons.
GD suppose to inform the error that occured first before shutting down you domain. One day of shutting down your blog already made you lost profit.
GoDaddy just sucks on so many levels…
I use both namecheap and godaddy. Namecheap is A LOT simpler to use and the support is great.
I am afraid, your shit List is increasing day by day……
Tired of hearing these stories about GoDaddy.
I just transferred all my sites over to Dynadot in support John.
I’ll keep using there .99 cent domain registrations, but will transfer them all out after that!
Hope your liking your new location John
Best wishes from Calgary
This is not the kind of publicity GoDaddy needs before it plans to promote .co domains in the Super Bowl. I have a handful of domains registered at GoDaddy, and I love their specials, but this kind of news makes me think twice about doing business with them.
John, do you have personal rivalry with anyone from GoDaddy??
unfortunately I have no private domain,I have blogspot.com only
I think you have to change your domain service sir for better result…you have changed your hosting,now the domain turns…
Go Daddy is the right place to work for hosting and I dont know how they did it.
Sorry to hear you had this problem John. It’s amazing that they were even able to catch the left out R in your city name. I have been using godaddy for many years without a problem. It sounds like some sort of fluke but I don’t blame you for being pissed off at them. I would write a letter to the President Bob Parsons explaining what happened as he may not be aware that his company has a procedural problem in this type of situation.
shame on Godaddy
the thing I don’t understand is why they would even care about this kind of whois issue to the point of damaging their customer relations, who the heck is in charge at Godaddy that allows this customer treatment within their organization??
I’m starting to think about moving my modest 90 domain portfolio over to namecheap
Wow, shame on me. That is 10 minutes of my life I am never going to get back thanks to your need to rant and rave like a child who thinks he is entitled.
So many people hurting, starving, suffering and you are whining about a little mishap that cost you ONE day. Big freaking deal.
There is alot going on in the world right now, including the soon to be tanked economy, and for all you are worth, your dollars will be useless. Worth pennies. So the day that you lost, and the time you spent away from your loved ones creating this blog post and sending it out to your subscribers is going to look pretty worthless to you in the end.
I have actually had quite a bit of respect for you until now, but your over reacting makes me rethink my motives for following you.
I can’t stand it when people say this.
Someone can’t complain about something because there are other people suffering? That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, especially since for all we know, John could be donating to charities in secret. He doesn’t have to tell you, me or anyone that.
Don’t be so quick to judge.
Agreed with you.
My gaming blog is running with a domain name from godaddy. Because of this incident, i may choose another domain server on my next domain.
I understand you make 500k yearly with this blog.That is 1,369 $ a day.Just ask gGodaddy to reunburest this money to you maybe an appoligie and move on,life is not perfect.I come from a communist country, after you live there part of your life ,USA is haven.
Fancy that , just over holidays, just goes to show you can never stay away from the computer for too long
That’s a real shit man!!!
You should ask them for compensation for an average of you 1day revenue with an apology… or just transfer your domain to namecheap. it has been voted the best domain reseller on lifehacker blog.
That’s a real shame for them for such a bad review on a popular blog like johnchow…
I have tens of domains at GoDaddy. After reading this, I immediately checked my account and thanks… got no problem…
I am currently considering of transferring to other company. 24/7 support is really important
I dont like godaddy
Not with GoDaddy, but with a hosting provider. I had my website redirected even though I had renewed. Eventually, after a couple of emails, we sorted the problem out within hours.
The thing with automation is that you still need a person to oversee that it is functioning. In my case, there was a communication breakdown between their WHMCS and payment processor.
Same here, I have encountered that with Godaddy and I can’t access my sites and my clients too. So after a month I transfered all of my domains and my clients to other registrar.
Besides their interface is not user friendly specially when transferring to other registrar.
to add more, I even emailed them 3 times and never got any answers !!
I once had a similar issue with GoDaddy. Even though i had enabled auto-renew on my domain, it did not auto renew and my PR dropped from 3 to 0. Damn.
The domain was in the niche and was doing good, but the PR drop resulted backward positions in search rankings and i lost a good deal of work there. Had to start from zero again after that.
Where can I see the complete SHIT-List?
It is not only godaddy that does this kind of thing unfort, I do use them for a few domains but I had similar experiences with other companaies too.
The ugly thing about this is not the actual accident but how they will talk to you after, it is like they try to make you feel that it was ‘your fault’ and not theirs! Incedible.
I like this post and I also do write when things get messed up from a supplier as this should not happen.
regrads from sunny malta!
all the world in snow and we are in the sun
Never needed to contact Godaddy support so far but otherwise I have had good experience with Godaddy. But after reading your post, I must say I need to be careful. Good to see that your blog is now up and running.
GO DADDY ROCKS … UNFORTUNATELY FOR you this incident might wanna make you throw rocks at them but i dont blame you.. have they faulted you before ? just curious
Mike Filsaime warned us years ago about using GoDaddy. He also had a horrific experience cost you thousands of dollars. I had an account which I forgot to renew. Well I contacted them asking if I could still renew it . The domain is an obscure name not a very high searched term but I never received a response. They are just too big don’t care about the little stuff and spend too much money advertising. I use Namecheap now which has been great, actually Mike recommended them. Now for my shameless link Sorry John.
Godaddy is completely shit.
I was using hosting services from them.
And I had great rankings for my PR5 site on my all keywords.
But because of downtimes and killing deadly slow speed I loose all of them.
Anyways, now transferring all my sites to Hostgator. Is there any other recommendations for hosting here ?
John … now you know which kind of posts get more and more comments … lollzzz
But I think they should understand the importance and value of domain by alexa and page rank.
May be they were looking for some kind of negative publicity.
either godaddy is making waaay too much money or they know they suck and that’s why they have ms patrick whore herself out everyyear and spend tons of money on lameass wannabe softcore porn superbowl commercials
Hello John,
Come over to Namecheap.com. We’ll take care of you the right way. We’ll transfer your domain for free and add an extra 10 yrs on top of it. I’m confident you won’t be dissapointed. Email me at CEO@NameCheap.com if there is anything at all that I can help you with.
Not surprised at all. GoDaddy is horrible. I would never use their domain registration or hosting services. What does surprise me is that they didn’t hold your domain for ransom. “For $250 you can correct the issue…”
I have an account with them, but never registed with them..
something just told me i go to Namecheep.
In the irony of all ironies, I read this blog post in an RSS-based email and guess whose ad appeared right at the end of John’s post?
John,
Sorry to hear about this!
I’ve had domains at GoDaddy since March 2001 and often migrate client domains there due to the excellent prices and detailed DNS control.
I get those notices too about the ICANN requiring data updates. I’ve ignored some for months and have over 30 domains at GoDaddy. They’ve never disabled my domains and not being able to get someone to reverse the change for you for HOURS?
See if someone at GoDaddy can do a followup on this for you. Something sounds fishy. Also, when in doubt, call back again and again.
Hey! You’re John Chow so I’m sure you were persistant! *smile*
iam using Godaddy too, when i first read it i thought someone sent you a fishing email to lead you to enter your credentials but as your domain was indeed redirected it means its legitimate. let us know what registar you choose next time.
Well, I will still trust Godaddy just that we need to remember one thing: Avoid throwing all eggs into one basket. Purchase your domains from a number of registrars and the risk should be well diversified.
I’m glad your site is back! I think they should pay you for the damages…
LOL, even I faced this situation once. I thought my blog was hacked, GoDaddy should have at least kept their logo near by.
Till now, I don’t know why they kept a sucking banner on my site telling some is wrong.
Regards,
S.Pradeep Kumar
HellBound Bloggers (HBB)
I have a bout 150 domains at Go Daddy. Never had any “REAL” trouble with them since 1998. Sounds like a one time mistake to me and hopefully you’ll get an explanation.
I wouldn’t go moving all of your stuff to a new company because if you search long enough you’ll find one of these rants for every company out there. If you find a company that gets it right 100% of the time guaranteed please let me know.
My two cents.
It’s for this reason that I keep my domain names and hosting with separate companies. Domains are with GoDaddy (but they bite) and I host with A Small Orange.
The problem is that GoDaddy has become so large that their customer service department hasn’t grown to match the company. They should have people available 24/7 to answer and solve problems over the phone. Customer service through e-mail is difficult when you have a client anxious for a solution.
Namecheap is better–by leaps and bounds.
I have tried clicking the Submit this comment to facebook but the link is not responding for me… I hope someone else was lucky as I believe we should spread the word as much as possible to the end of the universe and not stop until it is totally virus…
I haven’t used GoDaddy but was thinking about it as a few of my customers had asked about it. Thanks for blogging about this.
I transferred most of my domains from GoDaddy years ago. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend NameCheap either. I still have a handful of names there, but am gradually transferring the remaining ones away for the simple reason that NameCheap still does not offer automatic credit card billing for domain renewals. They offer it for their hosting plans. But for some reason, they will not offer it for domain renewals. They offer this really lame form of automatic renewals where you have to always make sure that you have enough money added to your account, so it can “automatically” renew your domain names. Since you have to remember to manually add money to your account all the time, I don’t see this as being much different than just remembering to pay for your domains when they come due. Also, last I checked, NameCheap still does not offer phone support. Although, their help desk support has usually been pretty good. I wish someone could convince NameCheap to offer “true” automatic credit card and/or PayPal billing for domain names when they come due. Otherwise, they are a solid registrar.
I’m probably gonna leave GoDaddy next year unless they can allow people to compress with GZIP properly and allow us to cache our images. I’ve searched SO much for workarounds for GoDaddy and even their support provides no substantial working advice!
i though Godaddy is great support.. but i’really sorry to hear your experience.. hope it wouldn’t happend to us… and great share and solution for your problem
GoDaddy is a wonderful company; your post, however, is junk.
Email from GD:
Your rant:
WTF! You did have five days to correct it. If that hadn’t been the case, then why is your blog still here?
The email said that if you don’t respond within 5 days, your registration will be cancelled.
Was your registration cancelled before the 5-day period? No, it was not! Otherwise, this stupid blog would have been in a limbo until you register the domain again.
Your domain was merely redirected. Is it the same thing? No, it’s not! (Can you understand simple english, or at least have a dictionary nearby?) The message said nothing about your domain being disabled, either. That’s just your illogical conclusion.
Your worthless domain was merely redirected due to an error on your part. The contact information has to be acurate and up to date. (Did we ask you to type it wrong? Do you even know how to type?) You are then given 5 days to correct the problem, (caused by you) or your registration will be cancelled. Where’s the problem?
GoDaddy is on your shit list? Why? Because you’re a moron?
To all commenters who blindly agreed with this noob who just got his new domain, y’all are not any less stupid. Did you even read everything and checked whether this noob’s argument is valid before singing along? Do y’all think that this luzer is the younger sister of Jesus Christ and is infallible? Well, as they say, “birds of the same feather fak together.”
I guess the proper terminology for a response to this comment would be “owned” ?
Yeah. The blog is so worthless that she felt the need to get on, give him traffic & then comment on it. This person was way too pissed for someone who thinks John’s blog is worthless. Lame.
Yeah. So worthless that I needed to comment on it to correct some logical lapses so that people won’t be misled–people like you who can’t think for themselves. Yes, the blog is shitty, and yes, I commented on it. There’s no inconsistency there. I did it for the readers, not for the blog. The fact that I commented on it doesn’t mean it’s not shitty. Can you wrap your head around that?
You got that right! I had totally 0wn3d this n00b. Totally!
Hi John could you tell us which domain service you recommend? COuld you write about this?
I think anyone will treat his/her domain provider if they bans like this after giving the time limit letter and not following the same.
Many time it happened to me. I am thinking of move all my domains from godaddy to some other registrar with good customer support.
John when you are going to publish your rest shit list.
Publish full list … would love to see that
So John you removed Go daddy 125 x 125 from your blog, interesting.
Are you going to do any edit of your earlier post regarding Go daddy recommendations ?
WTF?! Godaddy should consider the revenue loss, and the emotional damages that you got from their poor service.
Many recommend Namecheap in their comments. I had a domain expire and they immediately flipped my blog over to a landing page with CPA ads.
Then, after a few nasty emails I sent about Icann rules, I finally got my domain back but it cost me $200.00 to Namecheap plus the new domain registration fee.
Like most companies, when they get big customer service seems to go to shit!!!
People are people, but automated systems should have better checks and balances. I’m sorry you went through this John. I personally am not going to badmouth any companies, but, have had my share a poor experiences in the past. I applaud you for speaking your mind regardless. I am wondering who you will recommend here in the future. Mediatemple had just partnered [or acquired] Tucows a while back I believe, and they offer domains for $5 first year $15 after; Might be worth looking into. [No affiliate links in this post folks, just my thoughts].
I never really liked them.
If you can’t stand the heat of comments and have to screen them, then don’t post rants like this. Do you only want to hear your own voice, you immature n00b? Grow up! Dude, I’m on connection based right now. When I get back to CA, this blog is going down.
I’m very sorry that happened to you, John. I would imagine that losing that day may have cost you quite a bit, if you factor in leads, advertsing revenue, and potential new readers.
I use GoDaddy for all of my domains and personally, I’ve never had an issue, but I have heard of many horror stories. After reading about this, I will seriosuly be considering switching my domains over too Namecheap.
As for hosting, I started out with GoDaddy but switched to Hostgator after 2 months or so because there were just too many restrictions on GoDaddy hosting.
I had several scripts that kept encountering glitches at GoDaddy and when switches to Hostgator, they ran perfectly smooth.
I hope you have figured out a way to avoid problems like this in the future, and I always enjoy reading your posts.
I used them once a couple years ago,since then never again disspite what ive heard.
Just look at their marketing,T+A all over the place,If youve got to use that..Wheres the real meat in the backend of the product.
Godaddy :Sleazy and Easy…with a price to pay one day!
Hi Tom,
I had similar problems with them. Now GoDaddy keeps me sending emails where they ask me to update my data for all my domains every 2 months – this is really annoying.
Another problems with GoDaddy is that they normally ask me to renew domains even if there are 6 months before expiration date. What surprised me last time was that they didn’t send me such notice for .de and .co.uk domains (I had to call them and ask to for renewal – really annoying).
There were also another problems with GD but the list is too long to mention them in this comment.
Right now I’m switching to moniker.com – they have stable prices, no annoying emails about wrong data in whois DB, nice reports presenting how many domains exprire and when… this is what I need.
All the best to you John
/Tom
Now I’m thinking of having a new domain with them they offer $1.67 domain for this new year. should I take it?
I never liked Godaddy. They always try to push offers which i dont like. I use Namecheap for registering my domains now
That was not nice at all, of GoDaddy – whether small or big blog. Anyone deserved to get a notice.
Good to know that NameCheap’s got a great customer service.
I use Bluehost for my hosting… and never had any problems. But you probably use private hosting for JC.com.
My experience with GoDaddy… with clients websites and hosting… it’s just a pain in the old ars! I had the same problems with a site I was working on. It took a week for GoDaddy to get their poop straight… after 6 or 7 phone calls! Outrageous!
Fortunately I have not tried the Daddy service .. So I could not give further comment.And this problem would be a little disturbing our internet marketing activities
I only use Godaddy as my domain registrar and my hosting is separate cheaper yet reliable.
luckily for me that godaddy has never been on my list… With that kind of services, hopefully godaddy will go away soon
You know I have had my frustrations with godaddy.com as well they can really be a bunch of self serving mother sluggers.
I do know that if i had a site that was ranked with in 100,000 on alexa there is no way i would have it hosted with godady
This is crazy especially when you consider your rank john. u r under 10,000
you need to settle that bad bot away from us regulation and from folks who could care less such as godaddy.
I would suggest site sell of a friend that u know bc i am sure u do.
I have my favorite site @ http://www.homeownerdebthelp.com
hosted with site sell while my other ones are with godaddy..com
I also bought a Domain from Godaddy and suddenly few days back my domain was not working. When i ask them say that u has configured wrong. Though it was working fine few days ago.
I didn’t know that missing “R” in our contact info could be serious problems for GoDaddy. I think they should revise their policy since now GoDaddy get more trouble than what they did to you John.
It just missing “R”, give one full day and everyone can fix it immediately. Don’t have to redirect the website…
I had my website configured to pointing to a specific web host a while ago, and when I were to change it I was unsure if I had done everything right with the nameservers etc. o I sent a simple mail asking them to check if I had entered all information correctly. They simply responded with a link to their help page, TWICE!…
Hows that for customer service.
//Alexander.
Thanks John!
Great post!
I´ve just cancelled some GoDaddy subscriptions and ordered a couple domains from other domain and hosting companies.
I hate GoDaddy!