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GoDaddy Unfairly Acquiring Domains

View Comments March 3, 2007 | Everton

Although I’ve purchased just about everyone of my domains from GoDaddy.com (except this one) I’m beginning to worry that maybe I’ve made a bad move in doing so, as every week I keep reading awful stories about how GoDaddy has treated its customers.

The latest story is about how GoDaddy took over ownership of the FamilyAlbum.com domain. Apparently the owner discovered that he no longer owned the domain, even though it hadn’t expired.

After a bit of investigative work the owner realised that what had happened was that GoDaddy had received a complaint about an invalid email address. What GoDaddy then did was to send an email to this invalid address asking the user to correct the invalid email address…..When no action was taken for obvious reasons then GoDaddy just went ahead and took over ownership of a very valuable domain name. Not nice.

I think when my current domains (I think I have about 15-20 now) expire I’m going to move them away from GoDaddy. To be honest I only used GoDaddy in the first place because the instructions that PowerVPS gave me on how to setup a new domain used GoDaddy as the example.

Have you come across any other nightmare stories featuring GoDaddy? Which registrar do you recommend?

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About Everton: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day. View posts.

  • Anyone have a GoDaddy account? I need to migrate my shared servers to a dedicated server and not sure how all of that works.
  • Yes, I have experienced what Thilak has mentioned. Search for a domain name. Think about it. Go to register and its gone!

    I would recommend Netfirms.com or enom.com
  • Mosey
    Whois.sc is your friend :D

    http://www.whois.sc/yourdomain.com
  • only 10 minutes?
  • I've just spent 10 minutes checking all my contact details are correct-good job I checked as this domain expires later this month and I hadn't set auto-renew!
  • Mosey
    I hear that Registerfly is quite terrible as well... am currently using Namecheap.
  • We haven't had any problems with them to date either, in the last 3 years we've dealt with them.

    Hmmm... with all the PR focus they have, something like this is devastating to their image. Sounds like somebody really screwed up, since this would be a really foolish "company policy" over there.

    After all, they have your billing address, billing email, billin phone number... you'd think they would at least try and contact you on all those (maybe even going to your site to message you) before causing a PR nightmare like this?

    Everton - here's a thought. Why don't you put the simple question to the man himself - Bob Parsons, GoDaddy CEO? Then you can post his answer here for all your readers.

    Bob has a radio show weekly and is very active on his blog threads, i.e. last I looked at it he really answers all the comments (no, not the spiteful stuff, but any questions). Here's the URL: http://www.bobparsons.com/

    Have an awesome day!
    Dan
  • I've not had a problem with GoDaddy so far but I'm going to be paying more attention to the search/parking issue Thilak has mentioned.
  • Thilak, there is nothing unlawful about your domain being parked even after you searched for it. In some ways you should have registered it the moment you found it available.

    However yes it is unethical.
  • Didn't I tell you about this earlier ;)

    Btw, how about transferring your domains to WZDomains; it's definitely more cost effective than most other registrars.
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