I also see namecheap being recommended a lot. Are they the go-to for domain name registration?
Also, I left because I thought their upsells and harassment were annoying.
The point of that list is to enumerate significant controversies involving GoDaddy, not just those where they look particularly bad.
Even today, I have one domain that I inherited that has been nearly impossible to transfer out, even after talking to support personnel. They keep blaming the receiving registrar even though all the evidence points to GoDaddy's system). I don't know if it's malice or incompetence, but it's kind of hard to tell the difference at this point and give then very real malice in their past, I'm disinclined to give them too much benefit of the doubt.
Lastly I can't prove it, but about 10 years ago or so I'm pretty sure they bought a domain name that I had been searching using their search tool but was on the fence about buying. When I finally did decide to buy it, it had been registered but was "available" to buy through GoDaddy at a nice markup. I saw online (at the time) several other anecdotes of the same thing.
For those wondering what I use now: hover.com has been great to me for many years. I do have an increasing number on Cloudflare as well.
Cloudflare offers domain registration now (not just transfers), and it's at cost, so I don't see a reason to not use it unless you need to set your own nameservers. That's a paid add-on with Cloudflare's registrar service.
They are not a company I would ever do business with on the basis of that alone.
I prefer Dynadot (US company). I’ve also heard good things about Gandi (French company). You can also transfer (but not register) domains to Cloudflare.
Some evidence, please.
But the GP's story is about identity verification; I don't see that as a particularly egregious "shenanigan".
Would maybe be defensible if they asked for actually verifiable information, like a dump of the cryptographically signed contents of your chipped passport (haha).