Last week I got a notice they were going to charge me for a renewal, which I did not want. So I called the support guy. Twenty or so minutes later, he sent me to a link to fill out a form where all would be taken care of.
Except it wasn't. Just like my previous few encounters with GoDaddy, when I went to the link I learned some obscure detail about my contract with them prevented me from getting what I wanted -- yet allowed them to charge me in full. I'm not going to go into details. It's a perfectly reasonable request on their part. The problem is they have created this monster of add-on services and items, all with little footnotes and gotchas. And it's all geared to extract more money from me.
Last time I had a domain going to expire that I wanted to keep, I went to transfer it over to my new domain guys. The domain was expiring in a month, but I had to complete a GoDaddy form online to make it happen (sound familiar?). The only way to complete the form online was to check a checkbox. The checkbox said that once I checked it I couldn't transfer the domain for another 90 days. Fuckers got me again.
I could tell you a few more like that. It's always some finely-detailed bullshit that ends up with you paying them more. Last week they got me for around 180 bucks.
So now I plan on using the domain I couldn't cancel. I go to the DNS settings. Looks like the new DNS manager is overly complicated and impossibly to use easily. The "adventure" continues.
I swear I hate those bastards. I consider myself a nice enough person, and I have been disappointed by online services in the past -- no big deal. Some online companies "get it" and some not-so-much. But GoDaddy has crossed a line with me somewhere. I'm not sure if it's the used-car-salesmen experience I get checking out or the policies that exist seemingly to endlessly screw me over in various and sundry ways, but it's just a really, really, really bad service in my opinion.
Did I mention I didn't like it so much?