Last week ago I put a pre-order for the domain name Luxury.Villas for the 5th day of the Early Access program for a total of $220, $150 for EAP 5 and a registration fee of $70.17.
I know that other registrars at the time where showing this domain name Luxury.Villas as a very expensive premium domain.
Hexonet for example had the domain for around $9,500 however when I check Godaddy the price was only $169.99, so I went ahead with the registration and Godaddy took my money.
Onlinedomain.com chatted about Luxury.Villas yesterday as well.
Yesterday I got the bad news:
Today I got another notice from Godaddy:
What I didn’t get from Godaddy was the truth which is that they made a pricing mistake that they were not willing to offer.
The domain is not registered which means it should have been acquired by Godaddy in the 5th day of the EAP and they should have sold it to me for what they charged me.
Of course this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that domain registrars take pre-orders based off of their own errors in pricing and then reject the order, take the domains back or even ask the registrant to pay for their pricing mistake.
We wrote a post back over a month ago entitled “The Domain Business Can’t Make The Customer Pay For Someone Else’s Mistake” but they still are.
… and the beat goes on…
OK. I am playing “devils advocate” here:
GoDaddy is an accredited registrar for the registry New Sky, LLC (Donuts essentially). They do NOT “buy” the domain from the registry and then resell it to you (like a wholesaler e.g. a hosting company would do with virtual servers); instead they “facilitate” the registration for you – passing merely the money through while keeping a small fraction as compensation!
When you instructed them to register the domain they offered to do so for amount X. They tried to execute the registration – which of course failed as the registry wouldn’t sell the domain to YOU (the registrant and not to GoDaddy) for that price.
They notified you about the issue – and well; that’s where you are.
So what can GoDaddy be accused of – and what are the remedies?
Simple, right? They can be accused of being sloppy in their pricing reliability and the remedy is that if they do that often their reputation will be damaged.
Which you did with this article!
But: What if one doesn’t have a blog that is read by half of the industry? Then you are pretty voiceless and where do you tend to? And how would GoDaddy be incentived to be more reliable? They should register GoDaddy.sucks and open it to the public!
Hey: Just playing devils advocate here.
Not wishing to sound too litigious ,but is there nothing you can do to force GoDaddy’s hand to act honourably ? May not be worth your while ?
Hi,
Same happened with me yesterday for the domain River.Cruises !
I thought I was on to a winner, the registrar was 101domain.com
I was offered this name for a total of just over £200 on the 5th day eap. I rang them this morning to be told it was an error on their part, oh well, there we go!
Regards
Nigel
You could always try another registrar who provides more personalized service.
It was established long ago that retailers cannot be held responsible for pricing mistakes.
Alan
But many times big retailers that I pointed out in the post I refer to above did in fact honor their prices and ate their mistakes.
johnuk
No nothing I can do legally but yes its worth my time, all of these instances need to be reported
Similar thing has happened to me,I purchased a domain at 101 which by the way,I have been doing business with for a long time,we have several hundred domains there at the moment,this purchase was in general availability too! Great prime name,brought it 5 days ago,paid,and they have taken the money from our a/c,it hasn’t been processed,sent a ticket,still no reply,after 3 days.What…is the registrar considering that “shit we missed that one! ?? And not going to give it to us,I don’t know,I’ll let you know,these things really stink in my opinion.
The hostile take-over of our blogs by new gTLD Registries and their cronies is more tortious than the one alleged against Godaddy.
And to keep these gTLDs in front of us, these pushers don’t care if the story is positive or negative. Therefore, shortly, I will be asking people in our industry to read, but not comment on blogs with the most egregious disrespect.
If that doesn’t alley our concerns, then unfortunately, we’d be talking boycotts here.
It would be great if you boycotted now. You are delusional but if you think you have any kind of following (you don’t) start your own blog. I hear Elliot Silver says a little thank you prayer every night you left his blog. If you don’t like the new gtlds don’t register any. This post that Berkens wrote is newsworthy and has to do with Godaddy
GoDaddy cant predict the pricing is the registry does not offer the wholesale rate upfront.
It is frustrating that many (not all) domains on the SLD block list are advertised as being available prior to the conclusion of sunrise. I have been able to place EAP orders for domain names that ultimately I have discovered are on the collision list and therefore no order should have ever been accepted. To use a random example, take a look at the collision list of .dating:
https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/tlds/dating/dating-apd-list-12nov13-en.csv
You will see that words such as “honest” and “granny” appear on the list. Now visit name.com and see that it is possible to place an EAP order on these. A little annoying.
From a confusing registrants point of view, it is worth bringing this issue to the attention of ICANN. Registrars are faced with great challenges when it comes to providing certain nTLD retail pricing to the registrant prior to purchase. Some registry pricing models do not allow for predictability in the marketplace that enables the registrars intent to inform the registrant. ICANN should consider getting involved in the issue so that registrants would be better informed of TLD pricing prior to purchase or pre-registration.
The presence of a name on a collision list does not mean it cannot be reserved for an interested registrant. We’ve had a sunrise customer who has been able to reserve such a name. The only unknown is when it will be allocated to them.
If a name is on the collision list then yes, I understand it can be reserved during sunrise by a trademark holder but not allocated. But what about SLDs on the collision list that can be ordered prior to the EAP by non-trademark holders as I described above? This should not be permitted.
I just “registered” Direct.Flights with godaddy for $69.99 + priority fee.
I then noticed it is around $4k everywhere else.
The whois has not been updated, and it is still for sale at godaddy, so I won’t be holding my breath.
Same thing for Discount.Flights
Are any priced correctly?