GoDaddy - Thieves or Incompetents?

Last March I received a phone call at work from GoDaddy to notify me that my oldest domain, svarri.com, was up for renewal. This is the only domain I have registered with GoDaddy. All my other domains are registered through 1and1. This incident illustrates just one reason why.

The caller offered me a good deal on an annual renewal, so I agreed to pay $107 for a year’s renewal of the domain and hosting.

On April 12th I received an email.

Per your request, the items listed below have been cancelled
from your account, xxxxxxx:.COM Domain Name Registration - 1 Year: svarri.com

I made no such request. In fact that’s exactly what I paid $107 for in March. I replied informing them that this was obviously in error and asked that the situation be cleared up promptly.

I received no immediate reply and presumed the matter had been resolved and they would be notifying me of that shortly.

The next day I received a reply informing me the domain was now the property of Andrew Browne, a resident of Port Huron, MI. I don’t know Mr. Browne and have no reason to believe he’s anything more than another victim of GoDaddy’s screwup. Now they’ve gotten paid twice for the same domain.

I’ll be calling GoDaddy tomorrow to demand either a return of the domain to its rightful owner, me, or a full and complete refund of my renewal payment. I’d really like to have what I paid for, but on the other hand perhaps a refund would be more acceptable. I have full backups of the database and content of my “former” domain. And once I have my refund, I will no longer have any reason to deal with GoDaddy. No more will I fall victim to their poor record keeping. Never again will I have to suffer from trying to navigate their horrible home page, strewn with more ads than links to useful content, a perfect example of “user unfriendly”. I will never have to wonder if I should recommend them as a web host.

I’ll be posting follow-ups to this.