Godaddy just stole my domain
I wanted to share a concerning experience we recently had with our domain name on the GoDaddy platform. A few days ago, we purchased a domain for our business for 10$. The transaction went smoothly, and the domain was added to our account.
However, to our astonishment, we later discovered that the domain had been removed from our account and was put back on sale by GoDaddy at an outrageously higher price 2000$.
We had genuine intentions to use the domain for our business endeavors. We followed all the proper procedures, paid the required amount, and were under the impression that the domain was rightfully ours.
It really seems like the domain has been taken away from us to be resold at a much higher price.
We have all the necessary documentation to prove our rightful ownership of the domain (bank statement, screenshots).
At this point, we have reached out to GoDaddy's customer support and are awaiting their response to rectify the situation promptly.
Can we do anything else?
57 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread> Cloudflare Registrar will only ever charge you what we pay to the registry for your domain. No markup and no surprise fees.
https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/
and cloudlfare is no longer the free speech champion they were many moons ago - in fact they have become a 'turn off the speech of those who concern them or others' kind of place.
Using their services is contributing to a less open internet.
your statement of "Cloudflare hosts 4chan..."
I did a whois and it says 4chan DNS is CONSTELLIX - I'm pretty sure that's not cloudflare, but I admit I could be wrong on that (I do not know all of CF's nameservers) - (also they publicly booted 8chan, (maybe you did not know this) so similar others I would assume also lost thier ddos protect from CF)
If you have proof they protect the other kinds of sites you mention then it would not surprise me to see them all pulled from CF, they are not the free speech champion they were 7 years ago.
Infringes on intellectual property rights;
Contains, installs, or disseminates any active malware, or uses our platform for exploit delivery (such as part of a command and control system);
Is otherwise illegal, harmful, or violates the rights of others, including content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or exploits violence against people or animals, or seeks to defraud the public.
( https://www.cloudflare.com/trust-hub/abuse-approach/ )
Perhaps you are thinking of the old cloudflare pre-2017
They can not be the 'best free speech champion' if they block multiple speech platforms and started to work with gov agencies on how to craft rules to force more blocking, imho.
every provider hosts some form of something that 'some people and content holder want to taken down.' - some more than others - that has nothing to do with the fact that cloudlflare promoted themselves as free speech champions / we are a dumb pipe - into we block and are making it easier to block things.
see also https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/ - read all the lines.
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/registrar/
The page does highlight abuse reporting - from there is a link to a page with a neat graphic that shows some of their services they feel are in a grey area of responsibility (https://www.cloudflare.com/trust-hub/abuse-approach/ ) and hand wavy infrastructure is important blah blah..
but then you get to the next section and it lists a to of stuff they block without a court order (and a couple they block with) -
Now does that page relate to the other services and not their domain registration is that what you are implying?
Meanwhile, deal with a different registrar. I moved most of my stuff off GoDaddy years ago.
I don't know because I haven't read their fine print recently. Like I said, I moved my domains years ago.
But just because they say something in the fine print doesn't mean it will stand up in court.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis_pendens
If not, that's who you need to complain to.
GoDaddy has been known for shady practices for some time now. They are NOT the only registrar out there. People really need to ignore their ads and shop around.
I noticed it via the automatic monitoring once the domain stopped resolving and escalated it, at which point GoDaddy graciously offered me to reinstate the domain for $55 lapsed registration fee. After a brief (10 sec) consideration I've made a counteroffer by telling GoDaddy to go fuck themselves and registering a "normal" .com domain with my default registrar. I am very lucky it was a tiny hobby website with no critical audience. Thank you for the lesson, GoDaddy!
Holding the money in between doesn't buy any additional security with ICANN, does it?
About nine months ago one of my clients bought a domain at "auction" run by Godaddy. Their auction terms included a 1 year renewal. Godaddy didn't renew the domain when he received it; Wouldn't have been a big deal but they also didn't allow renewal for a week afterwards "while the transfer took place". He set up automatic renewal and forgot about it.
Then, three months later, the domain came up for renewal. Godaddy failed to process the transaction once, failed to send him a notification e-mail, failed to send a second notification e-mail (The customer support rep confirmed that the e-mail notifications had failed in writing) and he lost the domain. It was promptly scooped up... By Godaddy. He had to buy it from them (rather, their shell company, "dan.com") again, for the same asking price.
It was a shitshow and there's an important lesson here: Never ever ever use godaddy. It's worth your time and money to switch immediately.
It can happen that an already registered domain will be apparently available but in reality something the website is querying fails to provide the correct information.
This has happened to me in the past, but checking ‘whois’ revealed the domain had already been registered and was active for a while.
https://www.icann.org/compliance/complaint
Don't expect anything to happen. However, if enough people have the same complaint Godaddy might have their hand informally slapped.
Alternatively, if you have the documentation you say, you could sue them (they are a US-based company after all).
By my own experience I know they don't have even basic business ethics.
Several years ago, a quite a large transaction appeared in my credit card bill. Upon checking I found GoDaddy charged for a hosting service I never asked for. Upon calling their support, they were not surprised or asked any question, they just rollbacked the transaction. I'm saying again, no sales person or anyone reached out to me before using my credit card to process the order I never asked for.
I have a few domains and a shared hosting service with them. Their price increases are not justifiable. I'm in the process of packing my stuff.
Use Porkbun next time.
I used to have this email address cheney@ice.org and a domain registered through Network Solutions using that email address. This was around the time that Verisign purchased Network Solutions. At some point the email mutated to cheney@icq.org whether by my error or theirs. At that time ICQ was the premier instant messaging tool because there was no other such thing. Around this point in time ICQ was sold to AOL including all intellectual property. The domain name for ICQ was actually icq.com, but AOL owned all similar domains for trademark reasons.
I could not get my domain free from VeriSign where it went into limbo at time of renewal and I could not get any help from AOL. The problem is that there was an account recovery tool for domain registrations, but it was based entirely upon email associated with a registration and I could not receive any mail at the icq.org domain. I was able to actually reach the person who managed online IP for AOL (as they had contact information in a whois for one of their domains) and still could not get help to resolve this issue out of fear weakening a trademark.
After 9 months of frustration I suggested some nonsense in the #gentoo IRC channel of Open Projects (later Freenode) that contained about 1100 highly active participants. I mentioned that Fort Hood just installed a tremendously huge internet pipeline, huge for that time, and they weren't using that bandwidth just yet. If an insider knew what they were doing they could easily use that bandwidth to DOS Network Solutions and take down a massive chunk of the internet. It was likely easier than it sounds because there was one of the fattest pipes around, with almost no security or monitoring, so you just needed some level of command and control and inside access. Before their purchase by VeriSign, Network Solutions was a government contractor managing most of the DNS registrations, so they still held many of the older DNS registration records. That's how my domain became associated with VeriSign.
The next day a sales rep from VeriSign called me on my landline at my college dorm offering to help resolve my email account issue.
https://science.time.com/2011/04/04/godaddy-ceo-on-shooting-...