GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users

First, GoDaddy is a garbage company and I would avoid using them. It is very hard to purchase a domain without agreeing to some other high-margin, bs-service add-on. The dark patterns are off the charts.

That said, you did let your domain expire. This is really tough to do unless you're not getting admin reminders (I think you get 3 before it expires?). If your domain is important or valauble why would you save a piddly few bucks and wait until it's near expiry? Buy multiple years or auto renew. This is not a "brilliant new scam"; registrars and 3rd parties have been doing it since we all used verisign.

Also, how do you know it was purchased by GoDaddy? How can you tell the differnce between someone else registering and parking it with them?

ICANN doesn’t enforce its rules with GoDaddy because they’re too big. I had this conversation with Vint Cerf about their shenanigans several years ago when he was the chairman. Something that’s a grey area is 0 hope. Some things never change. Don’t do business with GD.

Not sure if still a thing, but years ago some registrars would register an available domain as you searched for it. They could do this instantly, at zero or near-zero costs, and then release it later if the purchase did not go through.

In other words, be careful which tool you use to search for the availability of domains.

I'm not surprised. GoDaddy supported the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Is the public still not convinced GoDaddy is an evil and shady company? When someone mentions them I always advise them to transfer their domain/hosting elsewhere.

When given the choice, don’t do business with companies with a history of treating people like garbage—be those people their customers, employees, or innocent bystanders.

I’d no sooner recommend new business use GoDaddy than Wells Fargo.

I have had a personal experience and have also read others where I added a domain to my cart, then came back a few hours later to buy it and it was “sold” and godaddy wanted premium price after.

Anecdotally, this type of behavior seemed to be the norm in the late 90s / early 2000s.

I remember having a domain my parents' had registered for their business. My parents forgot to pay the bill on it one year, and the registrar (don't remember which) bought it up, and wanted some huge "fee" in the hundreds of dollar range before giving it back.

It's akin to the overdraft fees banks charge: charging ridiculous prices for a "service" the customer didn't even ask for.

Others have mentioned that GoDaddy will park domains that users have searched for or added to cart.

Does this cost them money to do? Or do they get to buy domains at near zero cost by virtue of being a registrar?

I wonder if it's possible to penalize them for this behavior with bots to perform searches of useless word permutations and adding them to the cart at scale. It would probably be too easy to identify and filter the traffic, but just musing out loud.

The entire domain name market is populated by rent seekers by definition. And GoDaddy has a long history of bad behaviour. Not surprising in the least.

I don't really trust GoDaddy, but there's no evidence there that GoDaddy purchased the domain in question. It's just parked with them.

This has happened to like ten years ago. Had a domain with my last name and after it expired, someone bought it and kept it for a year. The last name is absolutely uncommon and there are about ten people world wide who have it. It's also not a name for another thing or anything. I always wondered why someone would even spend money on it.

One more suggestion. Never ever search any domain you want to buy on GoDaddy. If you search something and the domain name is available and you did not buy it, then good luck getting that domain at a normal price in the future. GoDaddy generally buys it and then parks it with asking price of x100 to x1000 range.

So the author didn't set their domain on auto renew, ignored all warning emails and let it expire. Then someone (probably a bot) bought it and put it back up for sale, for an amount more than the author is willing to pay. And somehow this is all GoDaddy's fault? Where is the "scam" exactly?

I really hate GoDaddy, I try to avoid them personally, but they do have a good DNS collaboration (sharing access to another account) that I wish others would mimic. Cloudflare requires you have Enterprise to have the exact same features.

I hate godaddy, they renewed my hosting without my consent, and the price went from around 15-20$ a year, to a $400 charge!!! ANd THEY REFUSED TO GIVE THE MONEY BACK WHEN I CALLED THEM. THEY ARE THE WORST.