GoDaddy
reviews and complaints

GoDaddy lied, tried to extort money from me, then killed my website.

The nearly complete version here: http://democratshallofshame.net/RAT_DHOS_vs_GD.html

Or, here: http://democratshallofshame.info/RAT_DHOS_vs_GD.html

And here: http://democratshallofshame.us/RAT_DHOS_vs_GD.html

Godaddy sucks! Horrible customer service. "don't care" "take it or get took attitude" absolutely the worst business experience ever!
I bought a domain and website hosting service from them. Two days later I get an email saying "scan over your government i. D." to
Verify that you actually bought this. I've bought lots of things - including houses and cars - online, and have never been asked to
Scan over my actual driver's license or passport! I thought it was a phishing scam, so I ignored it. Then a day later when I went to
Open my account with godaddy, it prompted me to do as previously emailed. I called their customer service line, explained that i'd
Never been asked anything like that before, and asked them if there were any alternative to doing that, as I was really leery of sending my i. D. Over the internet? Wow! The response I got, was sooo negative, that I am spending hours online now, trying to tell everyone that will listen... Don't godaddy! Not only did they have the attitude of "take it or get took", but they also emailed me, that if I was still inclined to let them violate me, there'd be a "miscellaneous charge of $12.85" to do so!

No one would give me their full name. No one would even say where they were actually located, who made the decision to interrupt my service, nothing. It was "we did it, do what we told you (Or f you)" that simple.

Needless to say, I won't be going daddy and I have written this so that you can prevent having it happen to you too.

I can not enter may account. Because unlock account. The company see my account fake account. ı can not understand them because they got my many but they do not give me serve. ı can not use my account. ı create my account to my name but ı make the payment to my mother name. ı said to me fake account. How is it be? We both have same surname. Please give me my account back or my many

Wrong promise form godaddy.com hosting.. i have took Deluxe hosting plan from godaddy. there is option for FREE Domain with Any Annual Plan* its fake promise. i try to reach on C Care from godaddy number: 040-[protected], 9 AM to 9 PM IST and 7 days a week. when i call it always i lesson award winning C care for min 10 mins.. award winning means to hold 10 mins and its not a toll free number.. fake godaddy.com in india. no support for any users. i think fake promise and bad services form godaddy.com. 100% airtel ccare is better.

I was horrified at the pornographic advertising yesterday on tv. As a mom of 8, I am used to protecting my children from compromising situiations, but didn't expect to have to do so during the Superbowl game. Perhaps this is "business as usual, " since we do not have a television it is possible that this goes on all the time...but whether or not this is new or the usual, it is shameful! Sex and all that goes with it is beautiful and wonderful in the right setting, but before children and families and men who do not need to have their minds filled with suggestive and hurtful ideas is not the place! I am angry and feel violated, and will yell loud and clear to all in my circle of influence to avoid Go Daddy and other companies that choose to use filthy advertising.

I purchased a website and domain name from Go Daddy and will not get my money back. I would like to file theft charges or file a complaint to the credit card companies of Credit Card Fraud. These people take advantage of people who do not know how to use their products and fail to refund their purchases.

Unhappy customer from India: hi, i transfered 3 domains and bought hosting for them with go daddy 3 weeks back. Installed wordpress on all 3 and started building my small business website on the primary domain. 10 days back i tried to login to my 2nd domain and couldn't. Called Godaddy Support who asked me to uninstall and reinstall WP. I checked twice if this will effect my primary domain work in progress and i was assured that it won't. The agent stayed online to guide me thru the uninstall and reinstall. This process has now wiped off the content from my primary domain. We have no back up yet as this was work in progress and all the effort has vanished. Godaddy agrees on their mistake and instead of restoring the content have asked me to look up google articles to read up on htaccessredirect. i have no idea what to do with this. Godaddy support has told me read articles on google on what to do! i've tried. i'm not a technical person and am at a dead end. With my data wiped off thx to godaddy and left to my own devices to recover it, if at all its there. My request to go daddy is that you've wiped off the content, you restore it. Its a shame that the customer has to suffer like that. I'm really unhappy at the callous approach. As a small business startup one works with minimal resources and such loss of time, effort and cost is criminal. There is not a single person besides the support no who one can turn to. And the support no brings in a new agent every time who has absolutely limited knowledge and can just not help apart from recounting the entire story every time and new angles being uselessly added every time. I want GoDaddy to restore my data. Simple. I'm so utterly disappointed with the company's callous approach to this.

I spoke with a Billing representative named Moncef at Go Daddy about this matter and Moncef informed me that I would have to make an additional purchase for this domain product to remove it from the suspended status. He clearly stated that upon the credit card dispute being removed that I would receive a refund for the duplicate domain purchase plus a refund of the $50 admin fee charged by Go Daddy. Now that the credit card dispute has been removed by the bank, Go Daddy is now saying they will not refund the $50 admin fee. I spoke with several billing reps including a supervisor. They asked that I contact the CEO Team for a resolution. Therefore, I contact the CEO Team at [protected]@godaddy.com and explained the information and the situation and they were not willing to provide the refund that their rep had already promised during this domain dilemma. It started back in April and I have had to literally call them every single month to ask about the status of the $50 refund.Please contact Go Daddy at [protected]@godaddy.com if you want someone aside from the billing department or customer service department to address you concerns or questions.

These guys are absolute thieves! I'm so fed up of using them. It seems they are more concerned with sucking the money out of their customers pockets dry rather than providing an exceptional, memorable experience. I was abroad while I received an email notification that my domain name expired on 5th May and that I had 90 days to renew. I couldn't renew while on holiday so thought that I could do so upon returning to the UK as I would do so in 16 days from the date of the notification. I returned and attempted to repurchase the domain name but these blood suckers did not let me do so and had auctioned the domain name even though it had only reached 17 days since the notifcation and not 90 days! I registered with the auction paying just under £4 and I had to agree to a set of terms which automatically set up a direct debit which takes a fee every year for using the auction site even though I have no desire to use it again in future. Everything about these guys has been a headache from day one. The hosting package sucks and the shared servers are so slow there's no point in using them. To upload website files is not very straight forward like other websites. They have poor customer service quite simply look for any means to imprison their customers to a point where they are obliged to stick to using this appalling services.

The issue was caused by a GoDaddy upgrade to the IMAP email service I am using.
The upgrade caused some Mac Mail users to experience problems while synching of their inboxes. That is the problem I experienced.

I am an extremely experienced and knowledgeable user. I began my career as a programmer at AT&T, Bell Labs in 1985. I have a Masters Degree in Computer Science and understand email protocols and the underlying process of email communications better than the average user, and most likely better than all of your first tier support staff.

I called twice - first speaking with Garret, who was very unhelpful, and then to Daniel, when the problem was identified and then resolved. I later spoke with a supervisor, Sergio, who followed his training and listened quietly to my complaints, infrequently making sympathetic sounds, and in the end made me feel worse about the entire experience and GoDaddy's commitment to customer service.

During my initial call, "Garret" did very little to diagnose my problem, simply concluding that the issue was with the Mac Mail client, and instructing me to call Apple. Garret's failure was not consulting your internal knowledge base to identify that the problem I was experiencing and describing to him was a known issue, and properly corrected from your end of the connection.

Upon Garret's recommendation, I then proceeded to contact Apple and embarked on a four hour process of diagnosing the problem and potential resolutions. During that time I worked with some extremely knowledgeable escalation support reps. In addition to my time, I spent ~$50 on a support incident. At the end of some extensive testing, the Apple rep and I concluded the issue had to be located with the GoDaddy servers.

I then made my second support call of the evening, and spoke with Daniel. To his credit, he actually checked your knowledge base and recognized that the issue I was describing was a known issue, and could properly be resolved by your server team making adjustments to my account. He was helped in his conclusion by the certainty I then had that the issue was within your walls.

I might have finished this support odyssey with an "okay" feeling about GoDaddy and your support is Daniel had moved immediately into resolving the issue and apologizing for the inconvenience and expense that GoDaddy support had caused. Instead, Daniel proceeded to attempt to upsell me on hosted Exchange - making a technically absurd argument regarding IMAP and that I was somehow overloading the connection and should be using a more robust and expensive solution.

I did not appreciate this - considering it more insult atop my GoDaddy caused injury.

Once the issue was finally resolved, I commenced to complain. Not a virtuous act, but one that I can only explain (at least to myself) as a mechanism to vent some of my built up frustration.

Receiving no satisfaction from Daniel (and recognizing that he really is not in a position to offer any), I asked to speak to a supervisor.

Transferred to Sergio, I felt even less satisfaction.

I can only offer to snippets of advice:
1. Encourage your first tier support reps to AT LEAST consult your knowledge base before making a diagnosis of a problem. Garret's lack of professionalism resulted in very low performance by the GoDaddy team.

2. Instruct your support team to lay off on the upsell when dealing with a recognizably frustrated user. That was a completely tone deaf and self defeating behavior. I recognize that GoDaddy support is really a selling machine, but you need to make sure it is also a customer retention tool.

When Godaddy's assigned "Total DNS" name servers nsXX.domaincontrol.com started responding only intermittently (DNS up and down enough to make one dizzy) and the telephone support was unable to comprehend the complaint, I followed up to my tele-supporter and support with detailed emails including ping and traceroute info, only to get the following responses:

=======================
Dear Dizzy,

Thank you for contacting Online Support. Our hosting servers and nameservers will more often than not respond to pings as they are the lowest priority traffic. They should resolve to traces with no problem, but most pings will be refused. We apologize for any confusion this may cause.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Regards,
Mitchell P.
Online Support Team
========================
Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for contacting Online Support. Upon reviewing your account, it appears that your domain is not hosted with us. As such, you will need to contact your hosting/IP provider for assistance in this matter.

Please let us know if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns by replying to this email. Our service departments and telephone lines are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to accommodate your needs anytime.

Sincerely,
Martin P.
Online Support Team
========================

Despite how the service had made me feel, my name is not actually Dizzy, the issue was not about ping, and certainly my domain's DNS was hosted by Godaddy.

After providing more elementary support via email, as well as lambasting their idiocy and incompetence, I got the expected silence that was at least a relief.

About 20 hours in I finally could stand it no more and called again, then forced escalation to a higher power. About 64 minutes in, after repeatedly explaining the basics of DNS and the insanity of me contacting my ISP service to complain, and assurances everything was perfect from their side, I was finally let in on the secret: Godaddy/domaincontrol has network restrictions on the name servers that should be lifted within another day or so. Nothing more will be done to help your domain's name resolution.

I think the incompetence of providing service, of providing support, and of caring at all about the whole business of DNS is made pretty clear by all this.

Look elsewhere.

As someone who has used them for 5+ years and spent thousands of dollars (for dozens of domains and services) I can say that GoDaddy (henceforth “GD”) is the Wal-Mart of Internet hosts; only, one that lives up—and then some—to the hysterical denunciations its opponents levy against it.
Where to begin?

Well first off, GD’s debut on the scene—their initial “offering” to would-be customers—involved a suggestive Candice Miller’s enormous breasts. That ought to tell you the demo they’re shooting for.

But second, how about the fact that when you buy a service from GD, they have about three dozen checkboxes (better make sure none are pre-selected!) so that you have to opt out of buying its worthless services?

Or how about the awful site design, which not only looks like an extra-high Andy Warhol painting, but which at checkout is like the Internet equivalent of a Best Buy: “Now that you’re buying that $700 Dell laptop, would you like to buy Best Buy’s Accidental Damage ProtectionTM for $200? Or how about our preemptive Data Recovery ServiceTM plan? Then maybe the Extended WarrantyTM? Or how about 155 other useless ‘service’ upsells?” Not only does this reek of desperation; of a company trying to squeeze as much blood out of your rock as possible, but like Best Buy’s add-ons, it similarly preys on the technologically ignorant in hopes they can convert a $10 domain buy into a $100 shopping spree.

And how can anybody possibly like the fact that GD automatically puts all of your products on Auto-Renew? In other words, you’re getting charged for them this time next year unless you opt out.

From a user interface standpoint, GD’s services—email, storage, account information, etc.—are totally unusable. I hadn’t used GD for about a year when my dad started having trouble with them, and it took me probably 7 minutes to figure out how to access the account information I needed on the redesigned back-end. And getting back to the email etc., it’s laughable to think anyone would actually go to the trouble of logging into GD’s clients to use their web services—it is Web 1.0 all the way. More UI work and fewer boobs on TV, please.

Then, anybody’s who’s bought something from GD knows how INSANE their email reminders are. I don’t have the patience to look through my own email logs right now, but off the top of my head I believe GD will send you as many as 6-10 “friendly reminders” that your service is about to expire. Outrageously, I’ve gotten urgent warnings about domains set to expire several (i.e., more than 3) months in the future. But everybody can look forward to getting “90 Days Left!” reminders, then perhaps a 75, 45, 30, 15, 10, 5 and so on. I’m winging it there but honestly, I don’t think that’s far off. And if you’re like me and have two dozen domains or services with them that you purchased at different times, you’re getting somewhere in the neighborhood of an email a week (or more). It’s borderline harassment from a company YOU ARE PAYING. What’s more, even if you paid for several years of a service, they’ll still antagonize you with regular updates reminding you to extend those years even further. Too much is never enough for GD.

From what I can tell GD also anonymizes ownership of many of its un-owned domains so that WHOIS queries yield nothing unless they’re made from GD’s own site. Is this a traffic-boosting measure?

But the big kicker with GD is how difficult it can be to cancel the service. My dad paid $1500 for a premium domain, a purchase I oversaw. He bought 5 years of ownership and hosting on top of that but didn’t require any additional email addresses etc. Well the domain he bought was rendered obsolete when his eponymous company went out of business. That’s when the insane journey begins; one I largely oversaw.

Even though he’s purchased several years of service in advance, they’re still terrorizing him with “reminders” to give them more money. On his behalf I log in, and upon spending 7 minutes navigating the unusable UI I finally find the billing information. There I notice they’ve been charging him for perhaps a half-dozen services he doesn’t know he owns, and in any case wouldn’t know how to use (and to be fair, as I said nobody in their right mind would use GD’s HORRIBLE email etc. Web 1.0 services). I’m talking storage, FTP access, extra email accounts, domain anonymizer and privacy protection. My dad is trying to sell this domain, why would he try to keep the WHOIS details a secret? It would be like trying to sell a used car by paying to have your contact details removed from the Autotrader. Sure enough, his VISA was being charged the whole while; most recently, twice in 48 hours for around $50.

So I set about canceling these services, but there is no “cancel” button, only the option to turn off Auto-Renew. Fair enough. So I uncheck everything, but it doesn’t process. Turns out you have to select the correct checkboxes in the correct configuration like you’re Nic Cage in National Treasure 3 getting out the green half-glasses to solve the Riddle of the Sphynx (i.e., some choices require “extra” confirmation to cancel). I figure this out and get Auto-Renew turned off for all services except for two.

Those involve some kind of domain privacy protection, and they “need additional information” to process your decision to quit GD’s services. Among that information: everything but the kitchen sink. They wanted a full color scan of your driver’s license, domain protection login, phone number, email—everything. Whatever, I reluctantly submit it. About a day later I get a followup saying they now need a full-color scan of the business license associated with the company owning the domain, but that company is out of business so, now ticked off, we send them the new one. Another day later we get yet another followup, this time asking us to fill out a form in lieu of having the “proper” business license. By now we’re infuriated but we just want this thing to be over with so we want to sign the new document. I open it up and read it, and it’s asking my dad to relinquish all legal claims of ownership to the $1500 domain (and services) that he owns, and to further “support GoDaddy” in any of its own claims of ownership of those products and services.

WHAAAAT?

We paid $1500 plus hosting and now, as a condition of turning off Auto-Renew for domain protection, you want us to hand over the product you sold us for $1500 with about 4 years left on the contract? I’m thinking this is a total mistake so, now apoplectic, I email them back clarifying what it is we want, and telling them we’re not handing over our $1500 domain as a condition of turning off Auto-Renew. As if we couldn’t get any angrier, they email us back with EXACTLY the same form email telling us to sign away our rights so they can process our request to turn off Auto-Renew for our domain’s “protection” service.

At the time of this writing (5/2012), the issue is still not resolved. GD will not turn off Auto-Renew, and so we have just canceled the card they were using. Try it now, GD.

The experience, which of course is still not over, has been like getting out of a gang.

Honest to God, avoid GoDaddy at all costs. Use ANYBODY else. It should have been clear right from the outset with the boobs commercials that they don’t respect the intelligence of their clientele, and they will treat you accordingly from beginning to end. Disregard this, and you have no right to be surprised when weird charges you don’t remember making start showing up on your VISA bill, when you’re getting terrorized with their spam emails, and when they refuse to honor their contracts—not even when their awful website induces a seizure.

I use their e mail service and created a domain for my company to receive e mails. Their service stinks, I am so sorry I ever did business with them. I experience problems getting my e mail wand often, and always it is never THEIR issue which they immediately deny when you call. Today May 7 2012 I had issue with Outlook getting on their server. I had the same issue with two computers and an Internet service hosted by two different companies in NYC. Their crack Go Daddy Customer Service denied it was them, said to call the internet provider.

You waste you time doing that, the NYC Internet providers both said there is no issue with them, which is true. They also both said they have problems with Godaddy and it is often their fault, but that they always tell their customer to contact them anyway. Finally after wasting oh 90 minutes Go Daddy send an e mail...".oops it i was our fault." That is it. This same thing has happened not once but a half dozen times since I was stupid enough to do business wit them. Their service stinks, their customer service people are arrogant ###s who refuse to acknowledge any problem could even hypothetically could be theirs. Don't waste you time or money with GoDaddy they suck!

Godaddy's checkout had a glitch that did not display a correct purchase properly. Thus I was billed two one year subscriptions for the same domain for which, if I wanted a two year subscription it would have cost less thasn two one year subscriptions "bought" within 10 seconds of each other. They did not refund the surplus saying that they have no glitch and I agreed to the terms and conditions, they did not even offer to refund the difference between the cost of two one year subscriptions and the lower cost of one two year subscription (nor did I ask as I wanted a full refund for their glitch). So I told them I would ditch their services completely for ever and report this dishonesty and lack of tact and jobsworth boneheadedness to anyone who would listen, so here I am doing that, so that they make a greater loss than they have ever made in profits from me in the 4 years I and the organisations I work with change provider. Indeed also they have changed provider

GoDaddy sent a domain name expiration notice for a domain name that was not expiring. I logged onto the account and it showed the name had expired so I renewed it (in a panic). Ten days later, our business manager noticed we had paid for multiple years the last time we renewed it. When we contacted GoDaddy, they said nothing could be done about it. They refused to refund the money saying we had to cancel within 5 days of the renewal. They have refused to acknowledge their action of sending false information caused the problem. Perhaps this is standard operating procedure of GoDaddy? Watch out for this scam. Better still, don't use GoDaddy.

Public warning! - major scam in progress!
The one owner not a company who owns and operates all these sites wll never actually send you a credible document that would pass inspection or anything at all once you wire him money!

Owns – operates

Fake diploma watchdog fake-uk-degrees.co. Uk
Degree watchdog & www.fakediplomareviewsite.org www.fakediplomareview.org

Same scam owner & operator:

Phonydiploma.com
Realisticdiplomas.com
Diplomacompany.com
Phoneydiploma
Replicadiploma
Replicadiplomas
Realisticdiploma
Kwickdegree.com
Spoofprint.com
Fakedegrees.org. Uk

This is a complex scam whereas the same owner of all the sites listed above is based out of the us in the state of virginia. The real owner who pretends to be based out of the uk operates many quite believable fake diploma review sites (Above) or his main fake diploma watchdog or fake-uk-degrees.co. Uk.

The scam of course is to recommend his own sites and charge large amounts of money fooling the customer into thinking that the product must be good for that rather large amount or sum. Of course the whole scam is just a wire transfer scam in which that is the only payment they accept because they know you will never get your money back!
Suckers or uneducated people who have made the wire transfer never see a product as the company scammer or princeton partners etc uses part of the money to remove and disable complaint links. Customers and a rather large amount if not all have reported that they were duped and threatened if they posted any complaints.
The scam which does not accept paypal because you will get your money back was created with a payment accept mumbo jumbo story behind why they do not accept credit cards blah blah blah.. This scam runs off of no protection for the consumers you pay you lose scam!
There simply is no product – your pay or wire transfer and your money is gone!

All web site hosting is godaddy.com which is in complete violation of the us patriot act providing hosting to a site that sells and advertises the sale of fake degrees. Godaddy.com which allows, provides such hosting has no excuse which it comes to being put on notice as to what this owner and his many sites sells which is a complete and utter crime.

I went to renew 5 domain names on Go Daddy. I renewed them and then went back in and the system showed two more domain names I had not renewed. I reprocessed them but then realized their system messed up. It only showed three domain names renewed. I called Go Daddy and they said too bad too sad. 20.78 they don't care and can't do anything. they demean and use women to advertise their products but don't care when you actually do a transaction with them. When they were small they were so easy to deal with. Now avoid them. stay away

I purchased a Kijiji Daily Deal for junk removal by 1-888 Junk Van. When the truck arrived, there was already a load of wood in it. I was assured by the drivers that my junk was less than the 400 pound limit for the coupon and there wouldn't be any additional charges. Boy was I surprised when I received an invoice for over $100 the next day. When I called to inquire, I was told that the coupon amount would be credited and the credit card would charged the difference. After several calls and emails, the coupon credit was not applied nor was the charge reversed on my credit card. Lodging a complaint with the Better Business Bureau solicited a phone call from the franchise owner but his promise to call back on Tuesday didn't materialize. This business is a blatant sham. BTW - I also reported this fraudulent behaviour to Kijiji Daily Deals. Guess what they did? They ran another coupon promotion for the company! I wouldn't recommend this service either as they certainly don't care how the vendor represents their service.

I have tried to cancel my domain hosting services with godaddy.com twice now to no avail. Recently godaddy.com charged me $198 dollar for an auto-renew of domain names that I have tried to cancel. I recently contacted them to try to resolve the issue and they are requiring documentation that I don't have. I can't cancel the auto-renew and I can't take my credit cards of file with them. This company has no problem charging my credit card without any documentation at all however when you try to cancel their godaddy.com auto-renew scam they all of a sudden require all sort of documentation. This godaddy.com scam is like having someone rip $200 ouot of your wallet and not be able to do anything about it. Avoid this godaddy.com billing scam and this auto-renew scam at all costs it has cost me hundreds of dollars.

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.