Within 48 hours of having posted “Frak GoDaddy: How to Win Enemies and Irritate People“, GoDaddy rep, GoDaddy Guy, who vigilantly monitors and responds to blogs and social media has posted a response to the points I raised. But is that enough to clarify and remedy the issues I faced?

I appreciate any company who’s taking efforts to monitor their brand on the busy social web landscape and craft replies explaining the situation. Obviously, customers like myself may not be aware of everything that takes place behind the scene.

As a customer, have I felt I have been taken care of?

GoDaddyGuy says:

We understand that domain names are unique and can therefore be highly valuable to our customers. To prevent customers from unintentionally losing a domain name, we reach out by email several times, starting 90 days before and continuing past expiration.

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Obviously, if I have been receiving email reminders that my domain is expiring and I don’t do anything about it. Then I whine and complain after the fact, I’ve obviously no case.

Here’s a screencapture  of GoDaddy emails I’ve received:

Since 15 May 2009, I’ve received 21 emails from GoDaddy, announcing “Last Minute Deals”, “Spring Closeouts” and “Mid-Year Blowouts”. While it has been tempting to get a “closeout” or “blowout” before the [sarcasm]supply of domains runs out[/sarcasm], I’m hard-pressed to find out “email outreach several times” before and after my domain has expired.

I took the effort to read the emails back to July (before I had to give up on reading all this wonderful promotional email…), but nary a reference to expiring domains could I find.

GoDaddy guy’s other point:

Finally, we provide the registrant some time to take care of his or her account by allowing a 19 day grace period to renew without penalty.

I logged into my account about a week after it expired, well within the “19 day grace period” to renew without penalty, and was slapped with the ridiculous $80 registry recovery fee. Grace period? What grace period.

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Just in case you think I’m unnecessarily bashing on GoDaddy, consider its illustrious competitor, Namecheap.

Here’s a list of emails (more…)

• domain names, Internet Marketing
• 232 Comments

If you think choosing commodity services such as domain names, webhosting, email service providers is a matter of choosing the best prices and features, you could not be more wrong. A recent experiences has shown just how much the support factor matters when it comes to your online business.

I have a fairly extensive portfolio of domain names, some of which I use for my websites, with the majority of domains kept in storage till I’ve time to develop them.

This past week, I got a message from one of my domain registrars GoDaddy that one of my domains had expired. Since it’s a pretty high value (though unused) domain related to the dietary supplements niche, I decided to renew it.

At the domain renewal screen, I see:

So in addition to the $10.89 renewal fee for a year, GoDaddy wants to charge a “Registry Redemption Fee”.

This “redemption fee” is going to cost me $90.

What?

I have to pay the equivalent of 9 year’s registration to get my domain back?

And it’s not likely that GoDaddy will budge on their policy.

I like GoDaddy’s support of female race driver Danica Patrick. I sometimes even like (more…)

• Internet Marketing
• 12 Comments