Darn GoDaddy
GoDaddy continues to scam with respect to private registrations but I’ve found one way to get around it.
I used to have 32 domains registered with GoDaddy. A while back I let one of them go due to my dissatisfaction with GoDaddy’s "bait and switch" pricing policy: get 'em in with cheap prices and then gouge 'em on renewal. I preferred to forgo the domain rather than give in to their bandit tactics.
This is manifested at its worst in their private registration scams, recently taken to new heights. Back when I first wrote about this I got some feedback from a GoDaddy employee:
Hello, i currently work for godaddy dot com so i have a baiesd opinion. bassicly i read the part about privacy, i agree. it is actually an icann policy that forces who is infromation to be avalible. the process of keeping domains private can get costly though. not for your everyday account, but we do have to offer the infromation to certan groups (the police, people with court orders, ect…). thus fieling and going over paperwork for thousands of requests can cost some money. $2 is a fair price i suppose. anyway have a nice day, your site is really cool. (i work tech support so we may talk one day.)
He has a valid point: providing privacy is a service and it’s not reasonable to expect that service to be free. In addition to the costs he mentions there is also the cost of maintaining an email forwarding service with effective spam filtering for millions of domains. Admittedly this running cost must be fairly small, but I think $2 per year is a fair price to pay. But $8.99? I don’t think so…
The latest scam
The latest scam is that GoDaddy offers you a "special price" of $4.99 on private registration when you’re on the way to the checkout to renew your domains, but then pulls the plug and tries to charge you $8.99 when you actually get there.
I contacted GoDaddy support about this:
I just tried to renew six domains. The bulk-pricing list shows me that when renewing more than 5 domains I should be able to renew my privacy for $4.99. But when I get to the checkout the system wants to charge me $8.99 for privacy. The advertised prices are here:
https://dcc.godaddy.com/Domains/DomainBulkPriceDisplay.aspx
I got to that link by clicking on a link which said "Renewing more than 5 domains at once will automatically qualify for special bulk pricing".
So what do I have to do to get this special bulk pricing to apply to my order of 6 domains?
And received this reply:
The special pricing for privacy only applies to new orders of privacy. Renewals are only avaliable for discounts on the domain name only not the privacy. I am sorry if there was any confusion. If there is anything else we can do to help let us know. Have a great day.
I subsequently complained but haven’t yet received a reply (several days have passed):
It appears that the information on your site is misleading then:
https://dcc.godaddy.com/Domains/DomainBulkPriceDisplay.aspx
Note that the table is titled "Bulk *Renewal* Pricing" and the row that says "Privacy" indicates that the cost is $4.99 per year. That table clearly gives the impression that the price is $4.99 when renewing. The table does not list a separate, higher price for renewing privacy.
Furthermore, if I do the following:
- Log into my account
- Click on "My Domain Names" from the "Domains" drop-down menu
- Select more than 5 domains and press the "Renew Domains" button
Your website shows me a message stating, "Renewing more than 5 domains at once will automatically qualify for special bulk pricing", and clicking on the link takes me to the price list for which I’ve already provide a link.
Just below this the page says, "Choose a Public or Private Registration", and further down, "Today’s Special! Just $4.99/yr. per domain" (screenshot attached as proof).
Once again this clearly gives the impression that the price is $4.99. If that is not the case, why then does GoDaddy go out of it’s way to make the offer? Your site is showing this offer to me as a logged in user who has indicated which domains he wishes to renew; there were no non-renewal domains selected and no non-private domains selected. If the offer does not apply to any of the selected domains then GoDaddy shouldn’t be showing it only to later withdraw it.
So basically this amounts to false advertising. What can I do to obtain the advertised price? It seems you should either withdraw the misleading offer or provide a means for customers to actually take you up on it.
I await your clarification on if there is anything I can to do obtain the advertised offer.
The workaround
Well, it turns out there is a workaround. This time around the domains in question were important ones that I couldn’t let slip by, so I decided that I would rather forgo my privacy then give in to GoDaddy’s trickstering. I have a post office box address so I can at least allow my WHOIS information to be public without disclosing my residential or work address.
I figured I would renew the domains for one year without privacy and then renew them again shortly after with privacy added back on.
I checked the "public listing" box on the way to the checkout, and lo and behold, GoDaddy wanted to charge me $8.99 for "privacy renewal". It is to laugh.
Off to Domains By Proxy (really just another GoDaddy website) to cancel the privacy on the domains. Then back to GoDaddy to renew the domains; but this time seeing as they were "public" I was able to "add" privacy for $4.99. That combined with the TODD 10%-off coupon code that I found here meant that I was able to renew 6 domains with privacy for $79.97. In the end it worked out better this way because I didn’t have to do the double-renewal trick that I was contemplating and my domains were only non-private for a couple of minutes. Immediately after renewing I checked the WHOIS database and all the domains had been extended by a year and all of them had the private registration information intact.
This really does underline the lunacy of it all. You somehow claim that renewing a service is more costly than setting it up from scratch. As a result, I required you to cut off the service and then set it up all over again in order to get the lower price. And somehow that works out cheaper for you? I don’t follow the logic… but wait a second… I’m beginning to see the light… All that stuff on your website about being good guys and not doing "bait and switch" is a bald-faced lie: this is classic "bait and switch"; get 'em in cheap and then bleed 'em dry.
Of course the instantaneous manner in which I was able to first cancel privacy on six domains and then set it up again immediately shows that this service is provided in an entirely automated fashion, costing you almost nothing to run.
So GoDaddy, I hope you mend you ways. Start charging reasonable prices for private registration renewals (try $1.99). Stop "rewarding" your loyal customers with a $8.99 gouge-in-the-eye. And if you decide not to mend your ways, don’t think it’ll net you any profits. I’ll either use a workaround like the one mentioned here (or find another), drop the privacy on the domain, or just drop the domains entirely. You might not lose in the end, but at least you won’t be winning at my expense.