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GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#12Anecdotally, this type of behavior seemed to be the norm in the late 90s / early 2000s.
I remember having a domain my parents' had registered for their business. My parents forgot to pay the bill on it one year, and the registrar (don't remember which) bought it up, and wanted some huge "fee" in the hundreds of dollar range before giving it back.
It's akin to the overdraft fees banks charge: charging ridiculous prices for a "service" the customer didn't even ask for.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#13One more suggestion. Never ever search any domain you want to buy on GoDaddy. If you search something and the domain name is available and you did not buy it, then good luck getting that domain at a normal price in the future. GoDaddy generally buys it and then parks it with asking price of x100 to x1000 range.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#14Not sure if still a thing, but years ago some registrars would register an available domain as you searched for it. They could do this instantly, at zero or near-zero costs, and then release it later if the purchase did not go through.
In other words, be careful which tool you use to search for the availability of domains.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#15So the author didn't set their domain on auto renew, ignored all warning emails and let it expire. Then someone (probably a bot) bought it and put it back up for sale, for an amount more than the author is willing to pay. And somehow this is all GoDaddy's fault? Where is the "scam" exactly?
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#16First, GoDaddy is a garbage company and I would avoid using them. It is very hard to purchase a domain without agreeing to some other high-margin, bs-service add-on. The dark patterns are off the charts. That said, you did let your domain expire. This is really tough to do unless you're not getting admin reminders (I think you get 3 before it expires?). If your domain is important or valauble why would you save a pid…
GoDaddy is the pioneer of dark patterns and the Silicon Valley SaaS model. Every step they take is a step to extract more money out from the user. Sadly, it is clearly a good business model.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#17So the author didn't set their domain on auto renew, ignored all warning emails and let it expire. Then someone (probably a bot) bought it and put it back up for sale, for an amount more than the author is willing to pay. And somehow this is all GoDaddy's fault? Where is the "scam" exactly?
It sounds like the claim is GoDaddy themselves are squatting on domains their customers fail to re-register. According to previous reports they also do this to domains prospective customers search for.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#18ICANN doesn’t enforce its rules with GoDaddy because they’re too big. I had this conversation with Vint Cerf about their shenanigans several years ago when he was the chairman. Something that’s a grey area is 0 hope. Some things never change. Don’t do business with GD.
Fortunately we don't need ICANN here. GoDaddy is claiming that the new domain owner paid over $100 for the domain.
If the new owner is GoDaddy itself and they haven't completed the necessary accounting gymnastics to make this legal, then their statement may likely constitute fraud. IANAL & TINLA.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#19Others have mentioned that GoDaddy will park domains that users have searched for or added to cart.
Does this cost them money to do? Or do they get to buy domains at near zero cost by virtue of being a registrar?
I wonder if it's possible to penalize them for this behavior with bots to perform searches of useless word permutations and adding them to the cart at scale. It would probably be too easy to identify and filter the traffic, but just musing out loud.
Re: GoDaddy buying domains when they expire to extort their own users
#20First, GoDaddy is a garbage company and I would avoid using them. It is very hard to purchase a domain without agreeing to some other high-margin, bs-service add-on. The dark patterns are off the charts. That said, you did let your domain expire. This is really tough to do unless you're not getting admin reminders (I think you get 3 before it expires?). If your domain is important or valauble why would you save a pid…
She did say in the tweet replies that yes, it’s on her that her domain expired, the credit card expired and the reminder emails went to spam. That’s not what she is complaining about though.