The Ultimate Go Daddy Group Rip Off

It looks like you have made a lot of progress in identifying the problems and putting all of the facts in perspective.

Maybe the next step is to identify the legal basis for complaint (i.e., the specific regulations, contract clauses, agreement provisions, etc.)  that have been violated in your case.  This might  be a bit complicated, since your complaint apparently involves two entities, Wild West Domains, and ICANN.

I might also mention that it is possible to file a complaint against ICANN using the Better Business Bureau on-line system.  Although BBB deals primarily with commercial businesses, it also handles complaints against charities and non-profit organizations.  They have a file on ICANN in the Los Angeles office of BBB.   To file a BBB complaint against ICANN, go to the regular BBB website and enter www.icann.org as the website identifier of the organization against which you wish to file a complaint.  This will re-direct you to the Los Angeles County website for BBB.

ICANN do not appear to be willing to learn from what happened, they are continuing to allow Accredited Registrars sub let their Registrar Status to an unregulated Reseller market.

I have put it to them that all a person needs is access to an online computer and a credit card to enter the business as a domain Reseller without any training or knowledge of what they are doing or the potential consequences should they get bored and just stop answering their emails.

Wild West Domains recently had a Reseller package on offer for $69.95, when a person can get into the business as a Reseller for such a small outlay the same person can very easily walk away when the see the amount of work and commitment required for what can be a very small return especially when the same Wild West Domains Reseller is competing with Go Daddy .com 

Which begs the question:

How many times has this happened and private individuals who registered domains for personal / family use and lost them just walked away when faced with trying to argue their case against a major corporation?

Wow. Thank you for posting this. You start feeling like you're losing it or something when battling these registrars online. What you are describing is EXACTLY what I feel I found in the alternative I chose last year.

They passed the BBB test and had amazing turnaround on customer service questions LAST YEAR. This year? They're letting eight domains expire that I paid for and that money was taken out of my account for two weeks ago. JUST found it so am in that initial "freak out" stage of first realization that one has just been shafted with no apparent recourse.

AGAIN.

It doesn't matter what you do, they get you. No matter how much you try to protect yourself and play exactly by the rules. (SORRY, that sure sounds negative. Like I said, JUST found it. )

What am I doing now? I changed my contact info back that same two weeks ago. Have notices in my inbox that I now need to check some domains for ICAAN. Those changes I made before either never made it to the domains or who knows anymore. Either way, there's that wonderful note at the bottom of the email threatening these domains will flat out be taken away if the contact information is wrong. Even though you JUST changed it within the same month. Quite a racket the registrar industry has going as a whole.

[Resolved]

Hi girlDaddy,

I hope you have a better result than I did, I suggest that you check out as many of the ICANN regulations as possible and check out the links in this thread, you may find the rules your Registrar is breaking.

I have just discovered how the Registrars appear to have such good records with BBB, I hope you and others can learn from my experience.

Having made the complaint to BBB which they accepted by email as my telephoe number would not allow me to complete the on-line process (technical blip on the web site).

The complaint is forwarded to the Registrar in my case Go Daddy Group / Wild West Domains and they get the right to reply (fair enough).

I then got the chance to rebut their reply (which was basically the Go Daddy Group edited version of events), my mistake was to provide my version without the content of the large number of emails, so anybody using BBB must take their time and provide as much if not all information at their disposal.

The person in BBB could not say either party was right or wrong based on the information provided, the file in the BBB office is then marked Resolved
I expressed my surprise at the wording which will appear in the BBB web records.

The explanation I received is when the BBB can not take the matter further they consider the matter resolved, this explains the number of complaints registered against Go Daddy appearing as resolved when in fact there was no decision in favour of either party.

I expect the process is similar with other Registrars and Resellers, in fairness to the BBB we are expecting them to understand ICANN rules, the Registrars Terms of Service and right from wrong.

These cases are more technical than the average complaints received by the BBB, if the roof leaks or the TV does not work and the cause is manufacturer error or bad workmanship the problem can be seen and the product or service examined.

Unfortunately when it comes to how Registrars, Resellers and ICANN are supposed to work even the Lawyers can get confused.

My complaint to BBB was not time wasted as the Go Daddy respondent made a few errors in his statement which will be very useful to the Lawyers when putting the case together.

I would like to thank the people who have been immense support to me through this web site, also my new Registrar and Hosting service
Blacknight Solutions (www.blacknight.com) who could have objected to the content on the sites being hosted on their servers.

The web sites www.ecosolarheating.net and www.ecosolarheat.net have been receiving an amazing number of hits which suggests the public are interested in how The Go Daddy Group does business.

The ICANN representatives have adopted a strange attitude in that they now refuse to answer or acknowledge emails from me, all I was asking them was to confirm the next proposed upgrade / upload of information to the web sites were accurate and fair and if they wanted any changes made.

Perhaps I have touched a nerve?

Here is my interpretation of what happened in your case (correct me if I'm wrong):


DAY 1: Expiration Date/Beginning of Redemption Period.   Your two domain names, ecosolarheat.com and ecosolarheating.com expired on their scheduled expiry dates earlier this year.  This was because Wild West Domains (WWD) refused to process your annual renewal payments (approx $12 each?), which were offered by you in a timely fashion within the normal renewal period.  Therefore since no payments were received (since WWD refused to accept your renewal payments), your domain names were both set to "Expired" status and this triggered the start of the 25-day Redemption Period

DAY25: End of Redemption Period/Beginning of  10-day Auction Period.   Your two domain names were sent to GoDaddy auction on Day 25.  This was because Wild West Domains (WWD) refused to process your redemption payments ($80 each), which you offered to pay in a timely fashion within the 25-day redemption period.  Therefore, your two domains automatically rolled over to GoDaddy auctions for a 10-day auction period.

DAY35  End of Auction Period/Beginning of 7-day Auction post-processing period.  Bids were received from a third party on both of your domain names, and processing of auction payments and domain name re-registration began on Day 35.

DAY42: Transfer of Domains to Auction buyer.   Ownership of both domains was transferred to the new owner (the auction winner) and WHOIS information was updated with the auction winner listed as the new owner.  (Until Day 42, your name had been listed in the WHOIS information for these two domains.)

DAY45+: New owner set up both domains as GoDaddy parked domains containing Pay-Per-Click ads.  At the same time, the new owner placed both domains in 30-day(renewable) GoDaddy auctions.  The auction asking price for the two domains was (and continues to be) $8,000 and $9,600, respectively. If either of these domains is sold at the auction price, GoDaddy will receive a 10% commission on the sale.

Interpretation:   As I view the situation, it seems that Wild West Domains has committed three violations of the ICANN accreditation agreement. The ICANN accreditation agreement requires accredited registrars to maintain a functional billing system, and it also requires accredited registrars to keep their registry databases accurate and up-to-date.

 In the first two violations (DAY1 and DAY25), Wild West Domains failed to have a functional billing system in place to process your payments.  Therefore, Wild West Domains is non-compliant with the agreement on two separate counts. 

The third violation (DAY 42) concerns the inaccurate/illicit registry database entries that were created for the auction winner.  There never should have been such changes in the registry database.  There wouldn't have been such a changes if Wild West Domains had had a functional billing system in place for handling your billing payment and for updating your WHOIS information with the additional registration time.  According to ICANN regulations, a registrar is required to make corrective changes to the registry whenever the registry is known to contain erroneous information.

It appears that these three violations were not just random occurrences, but were highly coordinated by Wild West Domains in such a way as to deprive you of the normal renewal of your registered domains.


NOTE:

ICANN timeline for expired domains:

http://www.icann.org/registrars/gtld-lifecycle.htm

GoDaddy timeline for expired domains

http://help.godaddy.com/article/608

Hi,

Yes, your summary appears to be correct.

To add to your post the domains were being used to redirect to advertise Go Daddy.com services with a statement in the header that amounted to a notice to the owner to renew or if an interested party to buy the domains.

I have no real problem with the domains being used for Go Daddy.com advertising as the page did contain a reminder to the owner to renew the domain.

As the owner who could not get a reply from Wild West Domains or their Reseller I was actually relieved to see the pages as to me they meant that Go Daddy.com had control of the domains and I had an account with Go Daddy.com so renewal should be easy?

I clicked the link to renew however the account was the Reseller account with Wild West Domains which I did not have access to, so I went to my Go Daddy.com account and placed an order to transfer the domains and was able to email Go Daddy.com  "Customer Support" with an explanation and request for assistance with my problem renewing the domains.

The replies I received amounted to nothing more than stalling tactics and Lies claiming Go Daddy.com could not access the Wild West Domains Reseller control panel.

Renewal of the domains was impeded by Go Daddy.com and Wild West Domains by not disclosing that I needed to contact support@secureserver.net and Not Wild West Domains Customer Support to receive assistance transferring or renewing my domains, this information was only supplied when ICANN got involved.

I can prove they told Lies about the ability of Go Daddy.com to access the Wild West Domains Reseller account because they did just that to get me the EPP code for my (working website) Solar domain with an ICANN Rep contributing to and monitoring every email that passed between Go Daddy.com support and me.

I have no problem with Security measures being implemented by any Registrar there are bad people who will steal domains if there are no security measures in place, Go Daddy were not receiving a request for help from a total stranger, I had an active account with them, they had my credit card details, domains with active business web sites and they also have a PIN number that is used for extra security.

If they had Real Customer Support they could have charged the transfer fees and redemption fees, (making money is what they are about) they could then have held the domains until such time as I passed all of their security measures or their Reseller was released from Hospital.


See My Reply to Member "TRUTH"

http://forums.nodaddy.com/index.php?topic=919.0which I notice did receive a reply.

My domain name expired a month ago, I was very busy and cudnt keep track. now they are charging me $80. I am kind of new to all this. Please help.

Thanks

Hi,

As your domain is about a month out if you really want to keep it I advise you pay the $80.00 redemption fee Immediately.

Each registrar has their own rules regarding redemption charges, as soon as the renewal is passed the Grace Period they can charge what they like.

If your domain name is of a high re-sale value it may already be listed with bidding in progress in the Go Daddy Auction listings.

I understand ICANN are trying to enforce Registrars to highlight these fees at the point of sale, although $80.00 is an extortionate rate I believe it may not be the highest charge for Redemption.

Sorry I have not found a way around these charges, even though www.ecosolarheat.net and www.ecosolarheating.net were dropped by a Go Daddy / Wild West Domains Reseller I still had to pay the $80.00 each to redeem them.

You may wish to make your feelings known later at ICANN but for the moment I suggest you concentrate on redeeming your domain.

https://st.icann.org/data/workspaces/raa-policy/attachments/raa_working_group_documents:20080212125220-0-16666/original/Analysis%20for%20ALAC%20of%20Section%20F.pdf

https://st.icann.org/RAA-Policy

Although $80 may be considered "high" by some standards, consider this:

1)  YOU let your domain expire without renewal.  It's really your responsibility to stay on top of this.

2)  Some registration services charge as much as $35/year for registrations (e.g. register.com, networksolutions.com, etc.) that are less than $10/year at the discount registrars.  If you were paying that rate, then $80 is 2.28 years worth and you still get 1 year, so your penalty is only 1.28 years.


Suggestion, if you have more than one domain:  Synchronize them all so that they expire during the same calendar year (and renew them all for multiple years).

Although $80 may be considered "high" by some standards, consider this:

1)  YOU let your domain expire without renewal.  It's really your responsibility to stay on top of this.

2)  Some registration services charge as much as $35/year for registrations (e.g. register.com, networksolutions.com, etc.) that are less than $10/year at the discount registrars.  If you were paying that rate, then $80 is 2.28 years worth and you still get 1 year, so your penalty is only 1.28 years.


Suggestion, if you have more than one domain:  Synchronize them all so that they expire during the same calendar year (and renew them all for multiple years).

Hi,

I have to agree with snarkmaster, we can't blame the Registrars (even Go Daddy) for our own mistakes, their low cost model for domain registration does make $80.00 appear to be a lot of money however I have heard of higher penalties.

The best thing to do is learn from this mistake and follow the sound advice by giving yourself a years grace, pick a date eg 4th of July and renew every year on that date, keep your contact information up to date so you get to see any reminders from your Registrar.

Wrong

Your fault for letting the reseller put the domain names in their name not yours. You were not the legally registered so you could not renew them.

Wrong

Your fault for letting the reseller put the domain names in their name not yours. You were not the legally registered so you could not renew them.

Not true,

Check your files again the domains were in my name, the one's I recovered still are.