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BEWARE OF THE GODADDY DOMAIN DUNGEON

March 28th, 2008 Posted in Bad Registrars, General Domain News

I have about 100 domains with Go Daddy. The amount varies because I buy and sell domains with people who have Go Daddy accounts. I’m not a big fan of Go Daddy for new domain registrations because their prices are much higher than other domainer-friendly registrars (what domainer wants to pay $10 a domain?) and transferring domains out of GD is a bitch.

If you don’t look closely at Godaddy’s webpages during the registration process, you could go through ten webpages of “extras” just to register a domain. I discussed this with Go Daddy over two years ago and they asked me to help them implement a work-around. I came up with a simple solution to bypass their upsell pages - add a checkbox that said “I’m an expert. Let me register my domains without the special offers”. They added this shortcut and it is still in use, but with different text. Look hard for it if you’re registering new domains with them. It will be in plain text at the bottom of the third page of the registration process and it will save you precious time.

As I wrote this article, I checked the “new domain registration” procedures at GD and was sent into several “identify your account” and “add registrant information” pages, even though I was logged into my account. Regardless that I had the radio button selecting my account number in which to register the domain, I still couldn’t proceed. It offered me the chance to “open a new account.” Ahem. I had to restart the process twice to figure out where I was, but that cumbersome glitch isn’t what I’m talking about now, so I’ll move on. However, as a bonus revelation, here’s an example of how ridiculous their upsell come-ons are:

During my test of the Go Daddy new domain registration process, I randomly typed in a bunch of letters to make the domain name “TSSDKSADFKASDFA.COM”

Their response on the next webpage was:

“STOP! You’ve found a great domain… Now protect your name, increase your traffic and more!”

Notice the “You’ve found a great domain…” My brain starts twitching and my skin gets itching when I deal with companies who tell me something I’m doing with them is “great” when I know it isn’t. For the record, I don’t advise anyone to attempt to buy “TSSDKSADFKASDFA.COM”. (psssst! It’s a crappy worthless domain! It’s not a “great domain” like Go Daddy tells you!”)

Anyway, here’s the meat of my blog article’s subject matter:

I wanted to update my information on a domain at Go Daddy that I had bought several months earlier from another domainer who pushed the domain to my GD account. I went through the process at the domain management section of the Godaddy website (which they partially modeled after the design Eric Rice and I created for Bulkregister back in 2005). After I made a few changes to the domain whois info, I clicked “okay” and got back an “error” message telling me I forgot to click on this checkbox:

“For security purposes I authorize the rejection of all transfer requests for all selected domain names for a period of 60 days from the date of this Registrant Name Change. I have read the Domain Name Change Registrant Agreement and agree to its terms for all selected domain names.”

WHAT?!!! I can’t sell my domain or transfer it out because I updated my whois info? So let me get this straight: If you go into your Go Daddy account and change the registrant name slightly, like shorten your name to an initial, or put in a different name for any reason, (Like adding “Jr., Dr., Sr. Mrs.,” etc.) Godaddy locks down that domain for 60 days. This is akin to holding your domain hostage. If you wonder why I would want to change my name in the “registrant” field, it’s not hard to come up with many reasons. Here’s mine: sometimes when sellers push or transfer domains to you, they don’t spell your name correctly, or get your whois info correct. The fact that if I want to correct the problem I will be putting my domain into a Go Daddy “kidnap” mode irritates the hell out of me.

Why would Gol’ dang Daddy do this? I thought about it for a few minutes, which is all it took. I realized there is a method to Go Dad’s madness (greediness). I believe they want to keep your domains at their registrar any way they can. They have enlisted the stupid “60 day transfer hold” requirement on newly purchased domains to extend to simple “changes” to the registrant information on your domain in order to add another hurdle for you to jump to transfer your domain from Go Dad. The only way to get around this if you’re selling the domain is: you must have your buyer be a Go Daddy customer. Then you can just push the domain to the buyer’s Go Dad account.

So the way this 60 day requirement works is — if you change even one character in your registrant field, or sell the domain to someone who updates their whois info, the domain is still at Go Dad for two more months and Bob Parsons is happy. It may not make the domain buyer happy, because they may want to have the domain they bought from you registered at another registrar, but who cares? Like I’ve said many times before - DOMAINERS ARE SLAVES TO REGISTRARS. Period. Off Topic Sidenote - Don’t forget to join the ICA!!!)

Look, I understand the moneymaking process. Godaddy is the richest and biggest registrar of them all. However, they didn’t get that way by catering to the domainer crowd. They didn’t jump out like Moniker and Fabulous and embrace domainers and work hard to make domain registration easy for domainers. Nope. Go Dad likes to produce sleazy Super Bowl commercials and upsell bombardment marketing to suck every penny possible out of noobie domain buyers and the general public. They have succeeded nicely. Something to consider is that a Super Bowl commercial costs millions of dollars even for 30 seconds. If GoDaddy can afford to throw their money away for a “hero spot” in the Super Bowl commercial line-up, where do you think that money is coming from?

Among most big domainers I know, GoDaddy is a joke. Except the joke really is on us, and Bob is laughing all the way to the bank. This latest domain kidnapping issue is just another trip-and-fall into a cactus patch for domainers trying to manage their domains. I don’t think Go Daddy will change this even if I brought it to their attention (which I’m doing now), because they know that domain investors don’t buy bulk domains at Go Daddy. We’re not their market reach. We’re not their cake. We’re just their icing. I believe most domainers end up at Godaddy because of domains they buy in the aftermarket.

For the record, if you buy 100 domains, you can get them for $7.69, according to their pricing schedule. However, you have to buy them all at the same time. Go Daddy charges me over $10 to renew my domains if I do so individually even though I have had over 100 domains with them.

Oh, and try to transfer a domain from Go Daddy. What a mess. Those of you who have Go Daddy accounts know what I’m talking about. Isn’t it sad we just float along, staying quiet, and giving the Beast more money than it deserves?

After seeing my first Godaddy television commercial several years ago, I got the feeling that Bob Parsons desperately wants to be like Hugh Hefner and he is buying his “coolness” with wannabee pimp Super Bowl TV ads dealing with sophomoric horn-dog humor, asking his customers if he should have the hooker that took down Governor Spitzer be the next “Godaddy Girl” and soiling poor Danica Patrick as a “celebrity endorsement.” I don’t know what to say about the “little person” dressed up as the GoDaddy icon. At the Bob Parson’s video blog, there’s no discussion about domain issues that affect domainers’ livelihoods, or discussion of charitable projects, just Bob having a good time trying to be a celebrity. In the entertainment biz, we call this a “vanity production”.

I look forward to hearing comments about Godaddy.com.