Back in 2007 I decided to test out a new domain name registrar – GoDaddy. It had its old crazy logo back then. It’s now a lot more dull and lacking personality.
I’ve had that domain for nearly 17 years until I decided to switch off auto renew. I was going to manually transfer my domain away from GoDaddy.
Big mistake.
I was SO busy with work, life, and getting ready for Xmas that I took my eye off the ball. It wasn’t until the new year that I realised my mistake. Having been a 123-Reg user for a couple of decades I was used to the domain name registrar kindly holding my domain for me and keeping my website alive. Then I’d still pay the same fee and everything would continue as normal.
Not GoDaddy!
No Grace
Logging in to my control panel, they were going to charge me £17.82 for the renewal of my domain name (When I can get it for $9.77 or £7.66 elsewhere)
The most galling thing was that GoDaddy were charging me a “redemption fee” of £62.75!
So GoDaddy charge me more than THREE TIMES my domain’s annual renewal rate AND charge £16.14 worth of taxes on top of that. In effect I was paying over FIVE TIMES what I’d have paid if I’d allowed the domain to auto renew.
Daylight robbery. A con. Extortion.
On top of that, because I was so annoyed with the extortionate new cost of MY domain of MY name, and of no intrinsic value to anyone else, that I stalled the extortionate renewal until I found out that GoDaddy had put my domain into an auction and I was going to have to bid to get my own domain back! There was even already a bid on my domain – probably from some spammer or other extortionist.
So I called GoDaddy, stopped the auction, and paid the ransom.
Go GoDaddy
So bye bye GoDaddy, I will never use you again nor will I recommend your services to anyone. In fact, I will be advising anyone I encounter with a GoDaddy domain to seriously reconsider doing business with them and recommend transferring away to far more ethical domain name registrars (Like Cloudflare)
You have been warned, reader.