GoDaddy is a scam

I have no proof of anything GoDaddy specifically does.

A while back I came across some of my archives that mentioned a BBS name that was popular in the past. Thinking it would be neat to own the domain name of the company that went out of business, I went to GoDaddy and checked. It was available awesome. Got distracted, came back an hour later and it was no longer available, but was at auction.

My first suspicion is nothing nefarious happened. I could have misread available vs auction, but I don't think so. I might have mistyped the domain name, but I don't think so. Something didn't feel right.

A few days later I checked another domain using whois through icaan. No resolution. Available. Pop over to GoDaddy and do the same thing ... check name is available. As a test, I wait an hour and come back to the name at auction.

I cannot explain what happened it except maybe GoDaddy's name check leaks or someone had the exact same name ideas when I had them. Again, this was years ago and am unsure if it still occurs.

For what is worth I've been using Namecheap.com for domain registration, for several years and have been satisfied. Never had any problems.

Cloudflare is also entering this business and looks promising.

Nothing new. I used to buy and sell (mostly buy) lots of domains and wrote a review of several registrars in 2014 placing Godaddy at the very last place recommending users to stay away. Here below is what I wrote then:

"Godaddy has improved slightly on their interface since last years review. However they still have large menus that are complicated to navigate through and seem to be using the same bait and switch methods as before. After finally finding a domain that you like you will receive several offers for email, hosting, etc before you can even get to the cart. All prices seem to have an asterisk or two telling you that their super low price is only valid if you pay for 2 years or more. Going from previous experience I feel as if Godaddy wants to lock me in to use their services for as long as possible or to simply get as much money out of me before I leave. Looking around for what Godaddy charges for renewals I found several red flags where users are getting charged “market prices” for their renewals. You can see a forum thread regarding how Godaddy charges way too much for renewals here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1365680). This post here (https://www.authormedia.com/6-reasons-authors-should-avoid-g...) even gives an additional 6 reasons why you should stay away from Godaddy."

https://archives.tenghamn.com/best/domain/registrar/2014/10/...

Moving away from GoDaddy was one of the most rewarding "online service" switches I've made. I used to cringe visiting GoDaddy when renewing domain names where I've had to carefully navigate my way through their Dark UX patterns which feels like I've ventured into the "Dark side of the Web" where you can't trust what you read and everything is designed to upsell scams out of you.

I've moved everything to Google Domains, at $12 /y for .com domains it's only a little more expensive than GoDaddy (with Coupons) but it has a straight-forward simple and minimalist UI where I can get everything I need to get done (e.g. dns config/renewing) quickly and easily.

It's an example of a UX-focused UI built for you by contrast I view GoDaddy's user-hostile UX was designed against your best interests.

FWIW, GoDaddy isn't the only site I've seen do this. I had the same issue a couple years ago when I tried to use Google Domains to find a domain for my website. At the time I was trying a few and found, to my delight, that nothingofvalue.com was available.

I started the process of purchasing it and then got scared when it came time to list my personal address for ownership. I stopped for about an hour to call my father to see if he would mind if I used his PO Box as the address. When I went back to redo/complete the registration, I was told the domain had been purchased by someone else.

For the next year or two, I checked it periodically, just to see if anyone had actually built a page of it. Nope. Just squatting.

I purchased nothingofvalue.org instead and have had it ever since. I also transferred the domain to Namecheap.

I remember I once searched for a domain name on Godaddy, and found that it was available. I waited a couple days before I decided on buying it, but next time I checked it was registered by Godaddy. If you wen to the address, you were directed to a website stating the domain has been "parked for your convenience", and you could buy it from them for now twice as much. I remember feeling so completely cheated I never did business with them again, and certainly never searched for available domains with them.

I've experienced sketchy practices from several domain brokers and hosting services. GoDaddy is just the most widely used amongst my friends and clients--making them a necessary evil in my life--luckily not at my expense.

Godaddy is for sure a scam.

They once charged me, if memory serves, $75 to resolve a complaint about one of my domains. They wouldn't tell me what the complaint was, who brought it, or how it was resolved. They just charged my card on file $75 for the "service".

I transferred my domains out and never looked back.

Going to get a little off-topic here, feel free to downvote if you feel it's out of place.

Many HN users presumably saw the public launch of sr.ht a few weeks ago. I've been thinking about directions that it could be expanded in the future, and the use-cases which fit best are both (1) things I need to do to maintain sr.ht anyway, and could make into a service available to users; (2) things which are annoying to do elsewhere. To this end I'm thinking about offering domain registration. Since users pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee for sr.ht, I can just sell domains at wholesale prices and take no margin. Then you get to use the nice UI and API and so on sr.ht offers for doing DNS and domain registration (DNS probably through just pushing zone files to a git repo).

Thoughts?

I spent two hours one time transferring all my domains (~10) to Google Domains. What a relief to be done with that company. There is not one honest step in the GoDaddy flow, you really have to keep your hand on your wallet.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, no interaction with the domains team though.

Their domain privacy service just blackholes any emails sent to it instead of forwarding them on.

Almost cost me a domain due to their scammy set-up - since the domain was listed as "Domains By Proxy" or something similar, GoDaddy argued that it wasn't actually mine (despite selling it to me, and selling the privacy service to me) and the request to transfer couldn't go ahead.

Thankfully Nominet were incredibly helpful (and seemingly well aware of GoDaddy's M.O.) and they managed to sort it for me.

Sadly, I've just checked their site and they list GoDaddy as a registrar to use them looking for a domain, which is a shame.

Couldn’t we reverse this on them? For example, get a list of available domains and reverse-scrape from various users to trick the algorithm into thinking the domains were valuable?

A few years ago, I typed in a domain I wanted and was surprised to see a link to Godaddy Auctions saying I could have it "Buy It Now"-style for $80. I've had miserable experiences with Godaddy so I really didn't want to do it, but I wanted the domain and figured they'd jack it up to $5,000 if I hit refresh. A few days went by with no registration details, and all I could find in my account was the receipt. I called them up and was told that somebody else already owns the domain, but, if they don't re-register it when it expires, and they don't re-register it during the 30 day grace period, then I'd have the pleasure of being able to own it. When I told the person that I could have just waited and registered it on my own without spending $80, she said that since it's a 5-letter domain, Godaddy would have put it on the market as a premium domain. Apparently, I got a bargain.

I transferred it out of Godaddy as quick as I could, and one of the first things I did at my current job was convince my boss to start transferring his 400+ domains out of Godaddy. He had no idea that the "premium domains" that they charge him $100/yr to "premium renew" aren't actually anything special, and other registrars don't do that.

Link to hacker news from... 7 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790

GoDaddy made me angry earlier this summer when it broke domain forwarding when they added shortlinks. All my URLs instantly broke. Customer support said it was by design.

To fix it, we made NavHere (https://navhere.com/) to be a simple domain forwarding service. Just a few weeks ago, GoDaddy announced they are going to fix their domain forwarding...

This was always accepted as a reality within the affiliate marketing communities, we knew never to use godaddy services to search for an available domain unless you purchased it immediately.

I heard many anecdotal stories as consequently I owned the #1 us organic position for "available domain" and primarily referred people to godaddy and namecheap.

edit I see a godaddy insider confirmed the practice

I have known a few people who think they are going to make millions selling domains. They had hundreds of domains, with auto renew. Set it and forget it. That has to got to be 50% of goDaddy revenue.

I moved over to Amazon Route 53. It's not terribly user friendly, but at least it's not GoDaddy.

Godaddy got a domain I searched and did not buy, and generally the user experience is like doing business with a scammer and penny pincher. On the other hand, they found a buyer for one of my domains for $5000. Kinda of a wash.

I just sold a domain on GoDaddy two weeks ago. Should I be afraid, that I won't get my money? I thought there was nothing to worry about, since it's such a big company....

Probably off-topic, but I've always wondered how malware authors register domains that are generated by Domain Generation Algorithms, without it being trackable back to them.

Are there any landmines to step on when transferring a domain? Seems like you pay a transfer cost but they extend you by 1 year. Easy as that? I'm ok with a bit of downtime.

Totally off topic but I must. Because of the the painful UI to the horrible marketing to the elephant killing paid for by the founder, I celebrate everything anti-Godaddy.

Couldn’t this be considered “front running”?

Can anyone be surprised at how worried I was when I learned that webfaction were being bought by GoDaddy?

I’m glad Godaddy is getting shamed. I hope they lose a ton of business over this.

I had a very similar experience back in 2007. Searched for the domain, was available (and super unique). Next day ready to buy and it was up for auction.

Nowadays I would only use Google. They have a reputation to worry about if they try and pull over these tactics, unlike Godaddy and similar shady companies.

It's not surprising a company founded by an elephant murderer turned out to be a scam.

https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...

I'm just an user, I'm not in the business of buying/selling domains.

Besides their shitty website, I never had a problem with GoDaddy.

I've been a customer of theirs for about 15 years.

Just sharing my experience.

Godaddy is a scam and a massive domain squatter.

I use domainr.com for this very reason.

What is godaddy supposed to have done wrong here? OP strangely enough doesn't seem to make any specific claims of wrongdoing.

I used godaddy in 2010-2011 for domains. no problem with them. ymmv

My understanding of GoDaddy over the last couple of decades is that they weren't always a bad player in the space. They are, supposedly still, the largest registrar. I don't see a future where that can ever stay true, however. I used to use them, but my final straw was their backing of SOPA in an incredibly heated time for Internet legislation which has reverberated into present day.

A lot of their market presence in the past had to do with their marketing, such as the Super Bowl commercials they ran, GoDaddy partner Danica Patrick, and some local philanthropy in Arizona, where their headquarters is.

Eventually, people found better deals with Gandi, Namecheap, and others, and their industry force evolved into one with far less impact.

Now the industry is evolving into one with no overhead with Cloudflare providing domains at-cost as companies provide value-added services which subsidize operating costs for providing domains to customers. This will ultimately put companies we've known in the past to be giants, and to this day are still publicly traded, in dire straits as they find new ways to stay relevant.

GoDaddy provides no high-value value-added services in comparison to other market leaders. So, for most who have moved on, there's no reason to go back. They are a now a middleman for no one other than small agencies or individual customers at best, who arguably do not provide any value for them either.

We'll see what happens to GoDaddys, Namecheaps, and Network Solutions when you can't charge people for domains anymore. What happened to TLS certificates will almost certainly happen to domains, too, albeit with ICANN fees remaining as the last overhead.

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18632988