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GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

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Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#221

Post by _carbyau_ »

saddist0 wrote: post #188
nine_k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all the publicity GoDaddy has received over the last 10 years or so, I wonder why anybody reasonable would deal with them any more. Maybe the prices are irresistibly low, IDK.

What are the good alternatives? In domain business, everyone like a service which has lived for decades. GoDaddy being the one helps a lot. I love Cloudflare for my .com domains but they don’t support a lot of TLDs till date.

Porkbun.com Been around since 2015. You decide if that's long enough.

For my extremely simple needs, the website is domain name magic for a plain customer wanting a plain service.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#223

Post by nofriend »

nine_k wrote: post #84
gpm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then slow rolled support. And then flat out lied that they received "the correct" documentation justifying the transfer when they hadn't received any documentation, and denied the appeal. Frankly the whole thing is inexplicable. The best explanation is fraudulent business practices to save 60 seconds of looking for the documentation.

With all the publicity GoDaddy has received over the last 10 years or so, I wonder why anybody reasonable would deal with them any more. Maybe the prices are irresistibly low, IDK.

The bad publicity is all in tech spaces and they do ads IRL.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#224

Post by TZubiri »

Zak wrote: post #22
TZubiri wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing is that it makes sense when you are small, and it's one of the hardest and riskiest things to change, so it's a decision that stays with you. And to be completely honest, it isn't that bad, you get a phone you can call 24/7. Of course mistakes happen and staff can't always help, but it's more like a 99.9% vs 99.99% quality thing when comparing to other providers like AWS or CloudFlare.

Why does using GoDaddy as a registrar instead of one with a better reputation like Porkbun or Namecheap make sense when you're small?

Namecheap looks really bad if someone does some due diligence and the word 'cheap' comes out, it's unproffessional and signals cheapness of materials.

Porkbun I'm not familiar, but it for sure can be a better option, it's just that when people start out they look for a familiar name rather than the marginally best option.

I just said it makes sense, not that it's the best option. It's just fine if you are a small or even medium business.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#225

Post by thimabi »

mh- wrote: post #204
nabbed wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either way, GoDaddy is not the first choice for a new domain in 2026. Off the top of your head, what would be a decent one?

Top tier is still MarkMonitor. Last I spoke with them, they had a five-figure minimum spend, but the per-domain costs are competitive. That cost buys you proper named support contacts, etc. If you look up the whois for microsoft.com or yahoo.com, that's who you'll find.

Five-figure minimum spend sounds pretty expensive for the vast majority of businesses out there. Of course, just a drop in the bucket for major brands.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#226

Post by mh- »

thimabi wrote: post #225
mh- wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top tier is still MarkMonitor. Last I spoke with them, they had a five-figure minimum spend, but the per-domain costs are competitive. That cost buys you proper named support contacts, etc. If you look up the whois for microsoft.com or yahoo.com, that's who you'll find.

Five-figure minimum spend sounds pretty expensive for the vast majority of businesses out there. Of course, just a drop in the bucket for major brands.

Definitely. I don't use them for my personal domains, of course.

But as others have pointed out, there's basically zero margin on simple domain sales. So if you want proper support, you need to go to someone who bundles it with other enterprise business (e.g. AWS), or who makes it their whole business (e.g. MM).

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#227

Post by dawnerd »

SahAssar wrote: post #208
dawnerd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Namecheap has had its own host of issues like a few years back breaking hsts and causing tons of sites to break for quite a while and their response was basically oh well. That incident along made me move my domains off to porkbun.

Porkbun uses cloudflare as their DNS backend, and has accidentally issued certs for domains hosted on them ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455508 was one instance). Since cloudflare is basically the only registrar that will not allow you to host nameservers anywhere else I'd be weary to use them (even indirectly).

Realistically you should never use the registrars dns to begin with. But you can set your own dns with porkbun, I have customs dns on all of my domains. I especially have been doing that since the Namecheap hsts issue. Can't trust any of them.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#228

Post by DANmode »

rationalist wrote: post #175
parham wrote: post #43

I’ve successfully saved many people suffering with godaddy. As soon as the word is mentioned I tell them the horror stories. Saving this to the bucket of stories.

Unfortunately the few people I have tried to convince all double-down. People don't like to admit they made mistakes.

From the limited scope of their perspective, they haven’t made a mistake - until something harms them.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#229

Post by fragmede »

mixologic wrote: post #148
gzread wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You moved from the worst registrar to the second worst registrar. Cloudflare will call you up one day demanding an immediate payment of $150k and holding your domains hostage if you don't comply.

Yeah, thats FUD. Cloudflare hasnt called anybody demanding huge sums of cash and holding your domains hostage. As a registrar they're fine, dont play scammy scum upsell games (because they have a real business model that isnt just registration skim).

Isn't that exactly what https://robindev.substack.com/p/cloudflare-took-down-our-web... purports happened?

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#230

Post by protocolture »

I had an issue for a customer once where they had lost the root account credentials for their domain registrar, and it was the only vector they could use to perform some critical action.

It was trivially easy on the phone to pretend to be the guy with approval (he was out of the country and uncontactable) and get the account reset. I could have then transferred the domain.

A few years after that I had a similar issue with the same registrar, and they had added a cooldown, and review to the password reset process. But it was fundamentally the same and I was able to eventually repeat my process.

Godaddy and a lot of other registrars are in the position of catering to extremely non technical people as part of their core business proposition but also, having the responsibility of protecting those people from fraud. Its rough designing processes that permit transfer at all for these people. I dont envy them, but its something they opted into.

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