GoDaddy
reviews and complaints

Go Daddy has to be one of the most dishonest and manipulative companies around. They have a default AUTO RENEW for domain names that you have to look to find. I get dozens of alerts from them to add or renew domain names not on auto-renew, but NONE when they've been auto-set to auto-renew. The charge just shows up on your credit card. Even without CEOs that shoot elephants, this company has got to be the most aggressive and dishonest internet service on the planet.

We have renewed our domains with this company through paypal and due to some reason, paypal charged back the transaction and these guys simply took the domains off our list and despite calling for 3 days, they did not reinstate them. Unfortunately, the domain names are high ranked domains and are on the 1st place on Google for few key words. Our page position went off and almost 12 people work on the products/services these domains provide. We have a so called dedicated account manager to our account as we have more than 1000 domains in our account. He is of no use either. Firstly, the domains we renewed are not yet expired and secondly the company did not even send us a mail and give some time to pay the outstanding through alternate payment method. Never trust www.Godaddy.com for something very important. Their customer care can never help you out and the so called dedicated account managers are useless too. The only way to save yourselves is to keep away from them and buy your domain elsewhere. If you think of hosting, they provide the 3rd grade hosting services. Always unreliable

I've had many frustrations with the support at GoDaddy.com. The answers to most of my questions are either incorrect or they suggest fixes I've already proven don't work. The incident that provoked this complaint occurred during a support call. I asked whether it was possible to download a file of an old version of the website because I wanted to ensure I retained it. I was told that no, it was not possible. During the support call the tech support rep made 5 backups of the current version of the site, deleting the very copy of the site I wanted to retain. When I discovered this I called to request that the copy of the version they deleted be recovered I was told it wasn't possible. Keeping this old version of the website was imperative. It's absurd to me that it's impossible to recover something they themselves deleted. Every network has backups for this very reason.

In my experience, the most common response to my varied questions has been, "I'm sorry. That's not possible." May I make corrections to the template were using? No. May I submit the need for a correction in their erroneous CSS? No. Those who are considering Go Daddy and it's design tool Website Tonight for a serious website should think seriously and do their research before committing money to such a horrible design tool and such incompetent customer service.

Unauthorized charges to credit card.
Go Daddy took it upon itself to charge my credit card for service I never ordered or agreed to. Since I wasn't going let these slim bags steal from a dog rescue I disputed the charges with the credit card company.
Now Go Daddy is punishing us by holding our domain name hostage so they can extort money for there fees and the service we never ordered.
I am going to file a complaint with ICANN as well as the attorney general. Then I am going to contact the credit card company and inform them Go Daddy try to use the account in a fraudulent manor.
We are a non profit dog rescue for abused dogs.
Good job Go Daddy!
I am going to be your worst nightmare...you screwed with the wrong tomcat ###.

I had paid for a website two & a half years ago and decided in Dec 2010 to go on and pay for three more years. I also paid for an addtional domain name for my second business however not a website. My expiration date was actually May 2011. In March I began getting email about renewing my site as well as domain. I was confused because I had already paid for the renewal of both. I contacted them regarding the email and GoDaddy began explaining I had not paid for a renewal of my domain name for my existing website. He said let me chweck something and I asked if they were charging me for the domain he said no! I go to my email and see I was charged $130 for Domain renewal and security charges for a website that did not a pay service. I called them back immediately, telling them not to charge me for somethiong I did not order. needless to say they sent me on a run around then said I could get $75 back if I went to anbother dept and submitted a copy of my license and did that within 5 days. They then said I had to scan my bisiness license in order to get any money back. I called them and they said a Supervisor would be calling me and that never happened. Unfortunately I have already paid for the site howevwr if I had not I would never use them again! They are not accountable so if you order services from them do not use your ATM card, but your credit card so if you are in a similar situation you can recend the charges yourself!

Godaddy.com web hosting and domain name registration is a total hoax! The domain names we registered with godaddy - which they said were available were in use... The website tonight they claimed we would have online that evening because it was so easy to setup-never worked right!
They talk you into protecting your domain names in case someone steals them, this is the biggest hoax of all. The protection they are offering, that you do not have to show a federal ein or dba registration, can only be cancelled if you have a federal ein or registered dba... When they are scaring you into purchasing this said protection for your domain name - that is already in use, can only be cancelled if you show these documents. They keep your bank account information and charge it automatically until you can produce said items-with your government issued id with your picture, that you may or may not have-I might add these docs were not required to get the protection but are required to get out of the protection. After they spin you for months, of course, they claim your use of the protection for those months, so you get next to nothing of your money back.

Warning: do not trust godaddy.com...

GoDaddy.com saves information about searched domain names and then unless you buy the name right away, either it or people on its staff will purchase it, hoping to extort money from you if you want that name later.

Transaction occurred between 9:00 and 9:30 am pacific time.

Complaint against Customer Service personnel regarding threats to damage my web site

I was aware that all of my nine domains leading to my primary account were up for renewal at the end of this Spring. I have been getting large numbers of reminders from your company reminding me of this.

Today I thought I would take care of it. Using the link on one of those emails,
https://www.godaddy.com/icann/domain_search.aspx?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=BBCNAA
I saw a yellow box which said (25% off your order of $75 or more). I have just rechecked it after this discussion, and notice that this offer has been removed by your personnel. Go figure.

But it was this offer which encouraged me to make an even larger purchase than I would have. I assumed that clicking through that page would have allowed the discount to show up at the final purchase. See below. It did not.

I immediately called and after several minutes was put through to [protected]@godaddy.com. I am afraid that I did not catch his name on the first conversation. I sent him copies of the page I had looked at and he agreed that it said (25% off your order of $75 or more) and when I clicked for (details) it said the exact same thing.

He told me it was a moot point because I had gotten a discount already off of the bundled purchase. I told him that I believed the (25% off your order of $75 or more) involved bait and switch tactics. I would not have done such a large purchase (2 years) unless I anticipated getting that discount. I requested that he cancel the purchase and I would make a decision at a later date. He told me if I canceled the purchase, I would immediately lose all of my domain names -- even though they did not expire until May and June.

I asked to talk to his supervisor. Dirk Cyr was the name given to me when I requested it. He reiterated the threat. I said it was BAIT AND SWITCH. He told me I should have read the fine print at the bottom of the page. I told him that most people do not read beyond the CLICK HERE and the place where the KEY needed to be pasted. Again I asked to have the transaction, based on the (25% off your order of $75 or more) to be voided. Again he said that, by doing so, I would lose all rights to my domain names and my web site. And I could not change the order. He said I had already gotten a bulk discount regardless of the (25% off your order of $75 or more).

I told him this was unrealistic and I asked for contact information for the Legal Department of Godaddy. He said there was not a Legal Department at GoDaddy. Go figure.

Then, to my surprise, he kept repeating my name and said he could no longer hear me and that we obviously had a bad connection. He said he would hold on for 90 seconds and that the time was ticking away.

It took me only a few seconds to find this email address [protected]@godaddy.com, I wanted to provide the link with the initial offer and it no longer appeared on that page. I believe this is BAIT AND SWITCH. I believe I have been duped by this offer to purchase more than I had intended. I feel that I was trick. I was not provided Customer Service by the department of that name.

If you are not going to honor the offer, then at least allow me to cancel without ruining my company by crashing my web site. That is an ugly threat. I will take my business elsewhere -- after 12 years with your company, this is unconconcionable.

I am copying this email to the California Department of Consumer Affairs and every single Consumer Affairs reporter I can possibly find on the Internet.

Sincerely,

Penny Goforth
Grant Writing Specialists
4281 Lowell Street #19
La Mesa, CA [protected]
619.460.2738

Go Daddy is a very large SCAM organization. This company should be sued out of business. They have me between a rock in a hard place right now, but next year I will be prepared for their extortion attempt and will have alternate arrangements. I will never use them again. I paid over $1k for Go Daddy to design my ecommerce website. Now, 1 year later, Go Daddy wants me to pay $1k again for design services; but, get this, they will not do any design services this time. This $1k fee is just for me to be able to continue using the website I paid $1k for them to build for me last year. Are you as confused as I am by now? I repeatedly asked the rep, 'well what will you be providing for this year's $1k? Last year, I gave you $1k and you gave me a website. This year you want me to give you another $1k, but what will I get?' The rep repeatedly answered that the $1k will allow me to have '30 minutes of monthly site maintenance and will allow me to continue using last year's design work - it will not cover any additional design work and if I don't pay it, I will no longer have a website'. Are you kidding me? $1k for '30 minutes of monthly site maintenance' that Go Daddy locks me out of my ecommerce site for 10 DAYS so that I cannot process any orders for 10 DAYS ---- only to find that 10 DAYS later when Go Daddy unlocks the site, that the changes 1) have not been made at all or 2) were only partially made. $1k to continue looking at the cheesy, tacky, TEMPLATE Go Daddy passed off as web design last year. Go Daddy is a large SCAM! I am shocked that they are still operating. If you are on the fence about using Go Daddy --- run the other way. I'm sure that you have many legitimate uses for your money rather than just giving it to Go Daddy for nothing in return.

Recently, my website was removed from the web community after and issue with the domain name occurred. Godaddy, the custodian, was notified of the issue, as well as; the fact that the this name was trademarked and used as part of my doing business as. The president of the company was notified and advised me of the fact that my domain name would be auctioned regardless and to purchase a $30 domain name back order, as well as, submit documents to their legal department to demonstrate ownership - which I did. It was explained to me that with the back order, I would have the ability to counter bid any offers on my domain name and subsequently procure my domain name. The domain name was sold via auction without notification and opportunity to counter the bid. Further two-days before the purchase, godaddy advised me that the domain name was mine and would be in my custodianship within 30-50 days. I maintain through this complaint the following: godaddy.com sold a encumbered product knowingly and with blatant disregard of legal protection; godaddy.com sold a service that did not perform as promised; godaddy.com has caused my philanthropic entity irreparable harm due to its predatory business practices. Godaddy.com single handily wiped out a web community that took 3-years to grow.

I have several hosting accounts and I was a Reseller with GoDaddy. Today I cancelled my Reseller account and GoDaddy refuses to allow me to copy my data unless I renew my Reseller account or pay a restoring fee of $150, thus holding my data hostage!
In addition, in several occasions, Godaddy sales associates have fraudulently accessed my customers privileged information and breaching my accounts privacy, thus commiting identity theft. They contacted my customers using this fraudulently obtained information by offering lower prices to move their hosting accounts directly wih GoDaddy.

Fellow Scam members,

Here is a brief story that just happened to me over at Godaddy Auctions.

I bought a domain throught their auctions and paid $300 for it.

The admin of the domain would not send over the codes to initiate and finish the transfer.

Godaddy refused to help me transfer the domain that I fairly paid for and won at their auctions.

It Gets Worse...

The admin of the domain later told godaddy that he does not own the domain any longer and therefore cannot hand it over.

Then, he requested a refund on my behalf and godaddy is now issuing a refund that he requested on my behalf on the grounds that he does not own the domain anymore.

But...

Now it is listed again at the auctions by the same person...

I feel like that mo%$er$%^er...

And godaddy is just the best at enforcing the rules of the auction.

Avoid dealing with them if you can.

GoDaddy is one of the worse domain and hosting companies in America. The company I work for stopped using GoDaddy after we noticed GoDaddy was harvesting our credit card details to add unauthorized charges to the cards.

The company, my employer, had been a customer of GoDaddy's for several years and had various orders and charges with the company on different charge cards and accounts. Whenever they tried to cancel a product or service, they faced problems with GoDaddy. GoDaddy's customer support is the worse imaginable and does not provide any help. As an option the features on GoDaddy's website allows a client to add or remove their own updates or cancellations. Surprise, surprise when we canceled a service or item with GoDaddy it would magically appear as active again sometime later. In other words, it was difficult to cancel items. GoDaddy clearly involve themselves in guerilla sales tactics. This happened several times. Since GoDaddy has zero customer service that will help with cancellations you are basically stuck.

To stop these incessant fraudulent charges from occurring from GoDaddy we finally ended up canceling all accounts and cards associated with the account. A lengthy and cumbersome process and needless to say we never used GoDaddy again after years of being a customer with the company.

Quite recently we noticed GoDaddy is involved in other guerilla sales tactics: they email payment due notices on domains and hosting we don't even have registered with them! This is amazing considering that Bob Parsons, the president of GoDaddy, filed a lawsuit against a rival for doing the exact same thing.
This company is simply highly dishonest.

My employer has switched to bluehost with no problems and no fake charges or forced extensions on orders.

When you choose GoDaddy.com, please be aware of the following.

1. Whenever I change directory name, forward domain names, designate directory for domain, or setting up database, it seems to takes forever. In other words, whenever you try to do something on the hosting, or domain control, it just takes too long. I used many other companies domain and hosting service, they are usually immediate.

Now I realize GoDaddy.com is not GoSlowest.com

2. Whenever I request simple application installation which is done by automatic, it just takes forever like 24 ~ 48 hours, which make you impossible to work during weekend. GoDaddy is not business and customer oriented service.

Whenever you use GoDaddy, please do not use their auto-application installation. It is takes days to install simple application.

3. I am not sure but since the news of GoDaddy.com auction sales for its own company, the service attitude has been downgraded, because I did NOT feel any sincere help that their tech service people is willing to solve or help customer.

4. Their survey is only for survey, not for real improvement of service.

From now on, I will not spend any single penny on GoDaddy.com

I used GOOD AS GOLD account to invest in domains industry, but Godaddy needed to refund some money to me.

I begged those people not to send a check by mail but made a wire transfer, in the same way I´ve sent the money. One week later, I`ve received an e-mail telling me "the check is literraly in the mail to you".

I´ve been waiting for 3 weeks in order to receive the check, a tracking number, the shipping company´s name, a scanned copy of the check or the invoice, but nothing happens yet.

My VIP Sales Representative just answer: We have more than 3 million customers, so understand why we are doung things this way.

I can´t belive the world leader company do things like this.

I´ve wrote dozens of mails, I used the forums of their site, so I decide to worte this to tell you:

PEOPLE: DON´T USE GODADDY GOOD AS GOLD

or use it but you´ll never think about receive your money when you need it, just when they will.

I really hate GODADDY.COM now, but what can I do if they are the "best"? How can be the others?

Letter to godaddy - hackers infiltrate godaddy - godaddy does nothing unless you fork out $150 to restore your database file.

To whom it may concern,

I have been a godaddy member for over 7 years. I have recommended godaddy.com as “the” go to place for website business. The customer service has always been available, the prices are reasonable and godaddy.com has been around for many years.

Recently, someone hacked into my account and installed malware code into my website pages by hacking into a database file. This application is joomla. I installed this application, as I have many others, through godaddy – instructed by godaddy and promoted by godaddy as “your connection for the best free & premium hosting applications!” as far as I knew, what I was doing was safe and stable and run by godaddy because the godaddy name is all over the page and is promoting it.

On may 11th my business site was rendered completely useless because of this hacker. Godaddy told me they would be investigating and not to touch any files. 10 days later I had to keep calling to find out what was going on, and 10 days of business was lost, and is still being lost.

I installed joomla to be able to use as a non web person – as a user friendly way to have my own website that I could manage myself. This is how godaddy promoted it.

When I called tech support to find out what had happened - I was told I should have backed up my database (That I installed through godaddy’s website) – I have no idea how to do this – and that I will need to go into each and every one of my pages and remove the malware code. Again, not something I know how to do.

I asked if godaddy could simply restore the database file since they claim on their website – they backup all of their servers– I was then told the database file does not exist on their servers, the file exist on a third party server – and I would have to pay $150.00 to get it restored.

Now – this does not look right. There are many people who have been affected by this who are loyal godaddy members now having to fork out extra money because they made the mistake of using godaddy promoted items, not to mention the 10 days (And still counting) of having no web business. Nowhere on your website does it say – use these applications, but if anything happens, we are not going to help you. Because that’s basically what just happened, and now godaddy is going to make a $ mint $ off of all of us who do not know how to fix it on our own or who have a programmer friend.

This does not look right.

I have asked a number of godaddy personnel to wave this fee and simply make it right – restore my database – it is that simple.

Otherwise, I am going to assume this is fraudulent behavior on godaddy’s part and this company is taking advantage of the very people who made it and sustain it. And I will make sure this is known.

GoDaddy has the worse reputation in the industry for domain and hosting services. No matter who I talk to, they view GoDaddy is poor service, mediocre hosting quality, and is quite the scammer with payments. GoDaddy will keep any payment information on file and harvest the information to collect money from you for renewals or orders you have never authorized. They keep charging and charging endlessly whether you approved for it or not and they will automatically go through any payment method you have ever used and charge on that even if it is not related to the purchase of the product in question. With GoDaddy the customer is simply never right. They will never provide refunds and argue endlessly to justify any charges they do. Customer support is so bad it's a joke. At best you get a response back that has no relation to the question you ask. And they go on and on like that so you get nowhere with them.

What the company does is no different than the old AOL guerilla tactics, where a subscription became impossible to cancel. Customers could try even for 1-2 years to cancel their service with AOL and they would simply not do it. GoDaddy is like this. For this reason I don't use this scam company anymore. In addition, a friend of mine who is a web developer had so many problems with GoDaddy he gets nautiated if the name is mentioned. He has canceled hundreds (yes, HUNDREDS) of domains and hosting accounts with GoDaddy and transferred them to another service for the same reasons and experiences I had.

I've tried other hosting companies since, and never once had the bad experiences I had with GoDaddy. GoDaddy is by far the WORSE domain and hosting provider out there and truly on the bottom rung of scammers.

DON'T WASTE TIME AND MONEY ON GODADDY UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR CREDIT CARD TO BE MISUSED! YOU WILL NEVER GET ANY SUPPORT OR CUSTOMER RIGHTS IF YOU BUY FROM GODADDY.

On November 14, 2009, I purchased two (2) domain names from Go Daddy.com after discussing with them that I wanted the 2nd domain name to forward to the first. They stated that could be done when I start building my website.

On February 16, 2010, I purchased the Quick Shopping Cart web development package from Go Daddy to get my site and project started.

I found the section in which I could have my 2nd domain name forward to my first. According to Go Daddy, I selected their default domain name of which there was no option, pull down menu nor could I type it in to select this option. I reminded them that the 2nd domain name is an acronym for the 1st for the purpose of making it easier for customers to find my site. I reminded them that there would be no reason to select or use their default domain name.

The week I began testing my site, I found that my 2nd domain name forwarded to a Go Daddy Sponsored advertising page. I called tech support service and they assured me that the problem was fixed. Later when I would check this, I would get the same Go Daddy Sponsor page. This happened at least 4 times even to the extent of arguing with raised voices. I told them that my advertising starts this weekend and I need this fixed permanently before I spend money promoting the 2nd domain name in my radio ads. I called them Friday Night before midnight as well since I had weekend overnight commercials scheduled. The tech support person said it was working properly and I had nothing to worry about.

On-line on Monday morning, I typed in my 2 domain name and it took me to the same Go Daddy Sponsored page. All weekend, all of my customers went to the same Go Daddy Sponsored page. I had no sales.

I called tech support. The tech told me that there was a problem when opening my account and that there was an additional line added to my forwarding request. He was obviously the first tech that actually opened my account to provide assistance, but the weekend was over and all of my advertising dollars had gone to the Go Daddy Sponsored advertising page.

Later, it was explained that the reason that I was getting the same error page was that the wrong page was on my server and it had to recognize the correct address. It was explained that once the address is on a server, it speeds searching by recognizing a previous search. Further, it was explained that once it was an error on the server, everyone using that server would get the same error.

I told them this was unsatisfactory. I told them that I called numerous times and was told it was working properly (feels as though it may have been intentional). I told them that all radio station ads promoted that web address and everyone was forwarded to the Go Daddy advertising page. I paid for their advertising. I demanded that they reimburse me the $342.00 I spent.

GoDaddy sells already registered domains in their crafty auction system which provides purchasers with FALSE Page Ranking information on the domain individuals purchase.

Page Rank is THE important factor in the valuation and "worth' of a given domain name. You buy a domain based on it's "supposed" Page Rank of 5, which both GoDaddy and their slick 3rd party inform you, when in reality it's only a Page Rank of 0... which devalues that domain 90% in most instances.

GoDaddy is making hundreds of thousands dollars in selling these domains that are worth only 10% of what they're selling for based on the FRAUDLENT Page Ranking information and verification tools Go Daddy is providing the unsuspecting public... like myself being victimized and then refused a refund when confronting them.

GoDaddy sells already registered domains in their crafty domain auction system which provides purchasers with FALSE Page Ranking information on the domain individuals purchase.

Page Rank is THE important factor in the valuation and "worth' of a given domain name. You buy a domain based on it's "supposed" Page Rank of 5, which both GoDaddy and their contracted slick 3rd party (URLTrends) inform you, when in reality it's only a Page Rank of 0... which devalues a given domain 90% in most instances.

GoDaddy is making hundreds of thousands dollars in selling these domains that are worth only 10% of what they're selling for based on the FRAUDLENT Page Ranking information and verification tools Go Daddy is providing the unsuspecting public... like myself being victimized and then refused a refund when directly confronting them. Not surprisingly, they ARE aware of what's going on and continue the fraud like it's all good

GODADDY Incident#8707425