UPDATE: I have been working with a new customer service representative from GoDaddy for the past several months. My experience with the company has taken a 180-degree turn, and the poor customer service and disrespect I had experienced prior to originally writing this article now appears to be a thing of the past. For the record, the new rep is courteous, respectful and competent, and I have had none of the same complaints echoed in the post below since I started working with him. Therefore, it is an accurate statement to say that this post is slightly outdated and my complaints have all since been resolved in a satisfactory manner.

Domain Registrar, Software Company Goes From Bad-To-Worse

I’d like to begin by stating that I never wanted to have to actually write this post. I have done everything within my capability to try to resolve the issues to be discussed in this article directly with the company involved (GoDaddy Software, Inc.). Unfortunately, those efforts have failed, and in light of GoDaddy’s reckless disregard for their customers, I am left with little choice but to air my grievances publicly.

A long, long time ago, before I had my own domain registrar, I registered several hundred domain names through GoDaddy. I did this primarily out of naivete, as I was a complete novice when it came to registering domain names, and GD’s prices were much better than those offered by their large competitors.

Of course, the prices didn’t stay low, as GoDaddy has steadily increased them with each year that I’ve had to renew them, and they make it prohibitively expensive to transfer such a large volume of domain names to a different registrar (including my own registrar). However, this could have easily been anticipated had I had my head on straight, and thus, prices have very little to do with my present complaint.

You see, several years ago when I first began doing business with GoDaddy, one of the things about the company that I instantly fell in love with was their (at the time) friendly, competent and courteous customer service representatives. I was new to the web, and wouldn’t have been able to publish my very first web page had not an intelligent representative from GoDaddy walked me through the hosting set-up step-for-step until I had gotten it right. It was an experience that left quite a positive impression, and one that was not easily destroyed.

Much to my dismay, beginning roughly two years ago, GoDaddy’s customer service started to go down-hill. At first it wasn’t that bad. Sure, I’d have to deal with the occasional technical support “expert” who obviously had not been trained properly prior to taking on the position. However, initially, all I’d have to do was wait a few hours, call again, and hope to get someone with a bit more knowledge and experience the second time around. It was a mild inconvenience, but certainly nothing that would have driven me to the point I am at now.

Throughout the past twenty-four months, GoDaddy’s quality of customer service has embarked upon a gradual, downward progression away from the helpful, cheerful service I had grown accustomed to, and toward something more closely resembling Ebay’s customer disservice department from the early-to-mid part of this decade (when I ceased doing business with Ebay because of what I perceived as spiteful treatent from its service reps). The rate of GD’s deterioration of quality has seemed to accelerate rapidly over the past six-to-eight months, reaching what might have been the breaking point the morning of this blog posting.

Over a year ago, I made the mistake of signing up for one of GD’s higher-end software products. While my overall review of the product is overwhelmingly negative, it has grown steadily worse each month, finally irritating me so much that I felt compelled to write this post documenting the experience.

Without going into specifics, I placed several phone calls and requested assistance via GD’s email contact form on their site numerous times since the software product began to malfunction. The response was the same with each call and each email, and just happened to be the same exact response I got when the hosting plan I had purchased from GoDaddy stopped working all-of-a-sudden, leaving my websites and my business offline with no help in site. This was upsetting to me, as I am unable to earn any money, much less big profits if my main commercial site isn’t working. You see, GoDaddy, in an apparent attempt to be slick about cutting costs, seems to have implemented a policy in which the so-called customer service representatives simply deny the existence of any and all problems that customers call or write-in about requesting assistance.

For example, suppose I emailed GoDaddy’s hosting support to report that all my websites are down and were taken down (by whatever means) in the time since I had last logged into the hosting account. After a brief wait on-hold (one thing GoDaddy is still good at is not making people wait on hold indefinitely), I am transferred to a GoDaddy representative who adamately denies that problem exists. She claims that she has no trouble accessing the very websites that refuse to load whenever I attempt to pull them up. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I make a point of trying to load the sites on several different computers, all with different internet service providers. In each instance, the result was the same — no website.

So I move all my sites not dependent on GoDaddy software to another hosting provider. Things are going fine until those sites still hosted through GoDaddy began to malfunction. In one case the site would not load in FireFox. After uninstalling and reinstalling all of my browser extensions and plug-ins, I am able to conclude that the nature of the problems I was experiencing did not originate on my end of things. So I call GoDaddy again. Again, the GoDaddy representative vehemently denies that any such problem exists (nevermind that the sudden halt in sales serves as proof-positive). As the old country-western song goes “that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it”. This, unfortunately, was the attitude taken by this long-time partner of mine when I took the time out of my day to bring the issues to their attention.

Needless to say, at that point I began making alternative software arrangements so as to not be dependent on second-rate programmers in the future. I thought at that point my troubles were through. Boy, was I wrong!

As I was doing a routine check of my various accounts with various entities online this morning, I made an extremely disturbing observation: GoDaddy had pulled a switch-a-roo on me — with my billing information! That’s right, I learned today that GoDaddy, with no permission from me, written or otherwise, decided to change the primary payment method for my account from a credit card (which is what I authorized), to my PayPal account, which I had only used once or twice to register random domain names and had NEVER set as my primary method of payment. There are no issues with the credit card I have (had?) on file, and as of this moment I am at a complete loss for understanding what would have possessed whatever GD employee made these unauthorized changes to my account. I would have had some major financial issues to sort out had I waited another week before logging into PayPal.

I do have one theory, however I will refrain from speculating about motives until more facts are known. That said, had I not caught this when I did, and had GoDaddy been allowed to continue billing my PayPal account for all my domain renewals and reoccurring charges, the account would have eventually run out of money and I would have been at risk of losing the rights to several dozen domain names that I consider to be far more valuable than the registration and/or renewal fee. I reiterate that I am not accusing anyone at GoDaddy of acting with this motive in mind, but I admittedly haven’t been able to find another plausible explanation.

In any case, my past five months of dealing with GoDaddy have been so bad that I am actively seeking ways to divest from their company and gradually move all of my assets over to my own site — a costly and time-consuming project — but a very necessary one. I refuse to have the core of my business invested into a company that I cannot trust to represent my best interests and act in good faith. Right now, I do not believe GoDaddy has been acting in good faith in its dealings with me.

If anyone reading this has been contemplating registering a domain name or doing some other form of business with GoDaddy, consider yourself warned. I wish I’d been given such warning before I tied up thousands of dollars in domains and other products with this company that seems to have no problem figuratively spitting in the face of one of its most loyal customers.

In closing, I would like to remind the readers that I have tried for months to handle these issues internally, however this latest malfeasance was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and quite frankly, I am sick and tired of this abuse and I’m not going to take it anymore.