Not enough info in this story to call out godaddy on this.
Sounds as if the domain was deleted and went into redemption. In redemption registrars are charged $40 plus the cost of registration (.com .net .org .info) to get the domain back. And they mark that up. If you don't pay for a domain it gets deleted. The registrar has no reason to delete a domain that isn't expired. Very hard to believe that godaddy would delete a domain unless explicitly told to do so. Hard to believe that a system that manages so many millions of domains did that either.
Generally Godaddy's TOS should spell out exactly when they delete a domain that hasn't been paid for. Usually there is almost always a grace period.
Regardless of what is being related here I wouldn't say from reading there is any reason godaddy decided to delete the domains if they weren't already passed expiration.
I think what happened here is a story is being related based on talking to someone at godaddy that doesn't understand what is going on with their deletion process. (That's the crime here a bad CSR is the story). That we do run into plenty.