We are starting a new column here at The Domains, “The good, the bad and the ugly” An opportunity for readers to discuss what they like and don’t like about a particular company in the domain space.
Each post will deal with just one company, readers are encouraged to share their positive and negative experiences. Suggestions for improvement are also encouraged.
One of the goals of the column is that company representatives will see how their customers think of them. This can lead to a conversation on fixing problems.
What is not allowed:
- Personal attacks on individuals at the chosen company
- Promoting a competitor
- Posting domains for sale
The company in the spotlight today is GoDaddy.
Founder: Bob Parsons
Founded: 1997
Revenue: 1.607 billion USD (2015)
I like this idea !
Good = Their auction platform
Bad = That people can renew names I won at auction
Ugly = No more coupon codes
Agreed. However, the GoDaddy team has great customer service and are always available. But the 7 day auction rule is real ugly.
On the good side of the equation I would say premium listings. all the upsells would be the ugly, nothing really bad for me.
good=customer support
bad= premium & platinum support
ugly=method of making money from expired domain auction
Good: Excellent customer service, probably the best in the business.
Bad: People can renew names won at auction.
Ugly: need better payment options for domains sold for people who live outside the US.
Could you elaborate on the ugly part? What was missing in their payment option outside the US?
they cannot send money via wire transfer to another country, so if you are based abroad, you have very limited options of getting paid.
Ugly, their tdnam search function is all messed up, please fix it.
Good: Still like account management interface once logged in. Hosting is reliable and affordably priced. Like the approval function within accounts to conveniently expedite transfers.
Bad: Their retail pricing for domain registration has gone up over the years especially for registry premium domains (compared to many of their competitors).
Ugly: The “Let’s Chat” pop-up window relentlessly loads every time visitor navigates to a page.
Good: customer support
Bad: Seo Service. tried one time and will never do.
Ugly: trying to earn money with silly methods. did you know if you turn off privacy you have to buy a new one??lol yes this is true and learned it recently. something uniregistry and others do for free anytime.
Good: End-user sales
Bad: .Com renewal price increases
Ugly: Expired auction domain tasting
Premium listing distribution has always been good to me.
Their bulk domain checker is better than is was, seems to be working well recently.
Bad- there’s no bulk transfer button anymore and while I like the added security, needing 3 codes to transfer a domain in becomes tedious.
Premium listing changes could be done in the regular dashboard. I can see the price but have to go to a different section to change it.
Ugly- the interface with Afternic. Why can’t I add names to Afternic quick transfer in my Godaddy dashboard? Using Afternic directly gets to be a pain in the ass
They need to spend some money dissecting the coding of afternic which is ancient, and integrating it into godaddy.
Another HUGE negative, how come you cannot remove privacy in bulk, if you have to do it, has to be 1 by 1.
Ugly- the interface with Afternic. Why can’t I add names to Afternic quick transfer in my Godaddy dashboard? Using Afternic directly gets to be a pain in the ass
AMEN!
Afternic admin is very clumsy and bad.
Why cant be just add names to Afternic from GD?
GoDaddy
Good – Lot’s of good. Could fill the entire comment box with the good, but it’s Sunday and the Rams are playing.
Bad – When searching for available names the domains showing ‘available’ are rarely available.
Ugly – More on the development side of domaining, but their newest version of the website builder (vnext) is a complete nightmare and it is the default. Please bring back V7.
Good = Good Customer Service and their 2 Factors Authentication Identification – prevent those thieves
Bad = That people can renew names I won at auction
Ugly = No more coupon codes
Remember- a gal in China stole my BullshitWebsites dot com and other 4 L domains and she is one crazy B888ibitch
Will do a write up on my experience dealing with the hackers from China soon.
Good: Great selection of expired domains
Bad: Takes to long to get a domain won at auction
Uggly: No free whois pricacy and renewal pricing ridiculously high and forces you to BUY domain discount club to SAVE.
I prefer using cheaper registrar that offers free whois privacy. There’s plenty of those.
Good: customer service, ui, bulk search
Bad: privacy service is separate entity/pw/name.
Ugly: renewals are expensive (must join gdc), coupon codes are scarce, if not non existent (thank God for the on going name pros godaddy thread).
Privacy is all inhouse now
I did not realize that Ron. Thanks for the heads up.
Good: Definitely customer service access
Bad: Not recognizing or recording the domain age via whois for names placed on auction via personal accounts?
Uggly: Agree with Xavier, forced to purchase discount club to save. Godaddy do not take care of their long term clients, “Special is a Special” & should apply to existing clientel not just designed for new customers!
I have zero complaints with Godaddy. If I’ve ever had a problem, their customer service stepped up and fixed it (EVERY TIME).
Good: The progressing experience as a GoDaddy customer
Bad: Regret seeing them discontinue sponsoring NASCAR
Ugly: Tony Stewart
Their auctions are rigged!
Kidding aside, I don’t feel customers auctioning off their own domains are getting the same exposure as GoDaddy’s expired auctions. I know this 100%. You can tell by the prices they sell for something comparable because it didn’t get the same exposure.
Let’s get straight to the ugly…
I hate that GoDaddy places so much emphasis on the new gtlds. They totally suck and GoDaddy knows it. The registrants all know it. The consumers know it. No one really wants them. They are painfully long, painfully stupid, painfully expensive and come with painfully high renewals.
Yet…GoDaddy continue to push and promote them heavily towards suckers and newbies who are too stupid to know otherwise.
Why not go back to just selling .com, .net and .org? Even .biz, .mobi, and .ws if additional crap inventory is needed as shelf fillers.
Other than that, great service.
Ray, excellent idea for an article, as a service provider I can never get enough feedback. I appreciate what you’re doing here, giving everyone an easy voice to speak directly to their registrars with an open format.
For all that have taken the time to comment thus far, thank you! Rest assured that our product teams are following the comments, and many of the things mentioned are being actively worked on. Please continue to add comments and suggestions even if they’ve been covered by another poster, feedback is a gift.
-Paul
nothing to really complain about. anything bad for me is minor and not really worth mentioning. customer support is always great and the reps i’ve had over the years have always gone the extra mile when needed.
Thank you Paul for taking the time to comment. That was one goal of the post to get company representatives to engage.
Ugly: Renewal prices are hellish. If I haven’t sold the name after the year I transfer it out. This is money you lose GoDaddy. I’m an existing customer (cheap to keep) as opposed to the high cost of acquiring new ones.
Bad: Privacy.
Good: Interface and security are excellent. Excellent name recognition with enduser’s. Would prefer to use nothing but GoDaddy except for “Ugly” and “Bad” above.
Good = Premier Service (regular service/support is very ordinary)
Bad = No email contact for regular service/support
Ugly = Charging for privacy is like a hotel that charges for Wi-Fi (ripoff)
Good — Customer service is good but there are flaws such as the GD reps not being able to answer questions about issues with auctions and taking sometimes up to 10 minutes to investigate a question about a domain transaction or status. It’s widely used and pushing domains to another GD acct is speedy and flawless with email notifications at each step. I give GD credit for getting rid of the double sign in for GD and GD auctions.
Bad — As others have mentioned it seems a bit unfair that GD can sell a name they don’t own at auction and several times I’ve bought names at auction and they’ve never hit my account. Then I call a rep and they say ‘oh yea’ that one was renewed by the owner, didn’t you get an email? and I say No I didn’t get any notification. That’s poor service all around. Also for a while GD was not listing the domain you bought in the email receipt. This went on for several weeks before being fixed.
Ugly — I’m surprised no one has mentioned the dashboard for managing your account. It’s horrible. More than half the page is empty space or GD logos and ads. The viewing window is tiny, it takes forever to load names and I can’t adjust pricing on my GD premium listings. The GE Premium dashboard has more workable space but it is also clunky. I find it very difficult to manage a large portfolio of names on GD
PS On the point about names bought at auction being renewed by the prior owner…….. When an auction is reversed the auction winner should get an email saying the auction has failed. This usually happens but not always as I’ve mentioned in my prior comment. ALSO, the refund should be made at the time the auction is reversed, not days later and the email should specify the domain being refunded and why. Sometimes I get an email saying I’ve been refunded for something but I don’t know which domain its for. I have to search my CC bill and compare with my GD receipts to figure out what went on with the transaction. That’s a total waste of my time. I want GD to save me time not create new things for me to do.
Regarding your refund remark: If you log in to your godaddy account and go to https://account.godaddy.com/orders you will see all your orders, including the refunds that Godaddy sent your way. If you click on “View” you will see detailed information about any refund, including of course the name of the domain that was refunded.
Bad : All the above PLUS renewals too expensive – PLUS that damn annoying LET’S CHAT POPUP WINDOW that fills nearly 1/3 the screen and moves around just when you’re about to click on something. Sometimes I click on LET’S CHAT just to annoy the people at the other end and leave them hanging ! If I want to CHAT a small icon in the bottom corner is more than enough, are their agents bored or something that they seem to want to force you into having a CHAT !? I don’t need to CHAT for no reason with people I don’t know half way around the globe !
Good = Pricing, deals, tech Support
Bad = no email support. International users have to borne the ISD call charges if its emergency.
Ugly = reseller site design/UI, reseller buy-rates are too high to compete.
This is mainly about Afternic, which is my favorite sales platform, but it still has some issues:
PROS
– Afternic fast transfer with GoDaddy is awesome, and being listed in the path of GoDaddy by default and listed as “premium” is huge
– $25,000 BIN price max is much more reasonable (compared to Sedo’s $10k)
– No max price limitation on “make offer” minimum
– I’ve never had a buyer back out of a sale
– Great customer support and service, especially premier/VIP service
CONS
– domain management interface is bulky and having to scroll horizontally to view columns sometimes causes me to go back a page and lose my progress
– When you first add a domain, too many go straight into “pending review” and stay there forever (until you send an email).
– So many names show as “already listed” when I try to add them. You guys should implement a separate way for users to flag a domain that they just registered but cannot add because it’s already listed. Using the contact form every single time to get this fixed is annoying — create an automated process or a fast-track way to flag these and get them listed.
– Why can’t I change my user login username for security purposes?
Godaddy.com has been a complete nightmare not so much as with products but with service.an hour and a half today waiting for managed service after premier shutdown. No wonder why pouchers are looking for customers to transfer their whole accounts. This other company gave me a great offer to move. But I cant lay out 15 grand upfront even if I can transfer all for 6.50 each
Godaddy is a terrible company with terrible service. I sold a domain thru them a couple weeks ago and still have yet to receive payment. I have called over 6 times and have send auctions@godaddy.com multiple emails, but the excuse is always the same “It’s not my department”, but then they never transfer you to the right department because apparently the Godaddy Auctions team doesn’t want anything to do with helping their customers. What does the Godaddy Auctions team even do if they don’t help customers? Bid up their own auctions? I can’t believe they are so reclusive that they want nothing to do with their customers. Is it just one guy wanking himself to the Godaddy Girls all day, he must be busy, too busy to have anything to do with customers!
Funny you just did this blog post because I am currently on hold with them trying once again to get anywhere with them, let’s hope! At least I am speaking with a women now that doesn’t have a chip on her shoulder like most of them do.
I have transferred all of my domains from Godaddy! They clearly serve their investors, not their customers!
I have lost multiple domains I have won at Godaddy Expired auctions because people purposely let their domains expire to gauge interest and see what the bidding will go up to without incurring a percentage fee hoping those people might contact them after they renew.
Well, the women couldn’t help me at all, so now I am being transferred to a supervisor after almost an hour on the phone with them now. I spent over an hour talking with a manager on Monday who promised me the money would be in my account within 2 business days, now it’s Thursday and nothing, REALLY?
I literally told the manager, I just want my domain back at this point! Unfortunately, I transferred it to the buyers Name.com account because it was registrar locked, but happy to not transfer it to Godaddy!
This company is a joke! If I wanted to BS with someone, i would call a friend, not the Godaddy company, but all they offer is 24/7 BS, you’ll be lucky to find anyone that knows or cares about thing but themselves here!