Godaddy auctions **sucjk** big time, their support staff even worse: do not use/

[mikeb]

[rant]
I buy a lot of domains and sites. A few through godaddy auctions, but I have to say even before the story I am about to tell, I have done less and less with them. Lots of reasons.

• Take the fact that the whole world has live support, but they do not, and you could send airmail in the time it takes them to respond to support tickets. They live in the past.
• Take the quirky non standard hosting, so that many standard scripts give warnings about incompatitibility if you use them. And where is cpanel anyway?
• Take the fact that if you buy a premium domains your entire account may be autorenew, but they do not by default set the new one that way , worse still even if you activate renew billing, they do not by default use your default payment method! how weird? So you end up having to make a one off payment despite the fact your card is on file. Chances are if you are transferring in it is because it is a valuable domain, yet the defaults do not reflect that.
• Take the fact that when it came to ".co" domains I went for with several registrars their percentage accepted was the lowest of those I used...

And one people seem unaware of...

• Take the fact that they claim the legal right to take ownership of your domains, as they see fit. did you know that? That alone should get people to transfer away as soon as they can.

And so on, and so forth... not what you expect of the big daddy.

For that reason I only now use them as legacy , or if a site purchase obliges me too.

But as of now , I will not even do that

Why? Because I can no longer trust them to operate in an ethical manner.

I bid on an "offer / counter offer" with a clear email telling me that my bid was binding for 72 hours, and would lapse. The seller decided to convert that to an auction, and godaddy expect me to honour that bid on an auction I never bid on, and here is what gets up my nose - for a duration chosen by the seller in HINDSIGHT of my bid. So I make the bid, he seemingly decides how long it has to be valid for.

It is not what I signed up for, that demanded accept or reject in 72 hours , without which it would lapse, as indeed it has according to the email.

I am not around when the auction completes, I will be abroad, out of internet range.

Endless correspondence has failed to get them to acknowledge the email that clearly says when my bid lapses, that email coming from them. It has cost me hours so far.

It is not just their attitude that is inane, it is the fact it took at least three responses to a support ticket (and 3 days) to get them even to read the detail of the matter in hand, so they realised what my issue was...

There email to me contained the following.
Your bid is valid through 04/17/2012 02:16 PM. After that time, your bid is
no longer binding.

Which the plonkers in their support term interpret as meaning.
"unless the seller decides he wants to change the format, change the duration, change anything else....."
And they support him not me!!

Idiots.
They are missing the bigger issue completely.

Sellers are ten a penny. Which is why they get short shrift at ebay and paypal.

It is buyers that trust you that are gold dust. So it is buyes you must look after.

And by p+ss*ng off the buyers they will have no business left.

The obvious courtesy is simple. If the seller wants to change the format, it should only be with the agrremenet of the buyer.
Quite apart from the legal issue - that their email to me clearly tells them my bid has now expired, whatever the fine print they want to drag in...

So godaddy **sucks**. I have thought so for a long time, here the final nail in their coffin as far as I am concerned! EP ers take note!

I have well over a hundred domains with them ( less than I have at other registrars)
Within a month, they will all have moved. Godaddy RIP.

[/rant]

[Bryan]

With all those horror stories out there, I honestly fail to see why so many people still keep using GoDaddy. And I'm talking about people active in the "online" industries, rather than the average joe who probably hasn't heard any of those stories or couldn't care less. Personally, I cut all ties with GoDaddy a few years back and nowadays only use them when I need to receive a domain name that is registered with them, and even then transfer it to a different registrar as quickly as possible.

[akirk]

don't disagree with you - very frustrating to deal with...

slight tangential question...
If someone is serious about domains / web / business etc. - at what point should you be controlling that aspect of your business (i.e. not relying on GoDaddy etc.) - running your own servers etc.

regards

Alasdair

[mikeb]

Domains - I know a few who have their own registrar tags, particularly with NOMINET, but I think you have to be serious league to want to go through the hoops to do it.

Even godaddy and namecheap subcontract that to ENOM.

Servers - Have to admit - I spread them about - I have a VPS on three separate networks, and goodness knows how many shared hosting accounts to get the C class variables. But - I doubt if I could get a good enough local loop backbone connection, to realistcally host my own, and the attraction of mutliple centre redundancy makes it hard to justify. Unless you are running the kinds of site that ISPs are likely to shut you down for, in which case it is probably safer trading from russia or thailand!

Or sweden coming to that, if copyright violation is your thing!...rather than XXX

[akirk]

good points - I guess it makes sense to control some aspects if not all...
we have our own physical servers - but use someone to do the 24/7 management of them...

Alasdair

[Bryan]

An important aspect to running your own servers is also that you pretty much need a 24/7 tech person on your payroll to be able to address all issues that come up. I'm also using mainly VPSs (with 4 different providers) as with a VPS you have full control over virtually everything, but at the same time you can get help from the provider should anything go majorly wrong. I would only switch to own servers if I had a corporate network to run or some very resource-heavy sites. Although in the latter case cloud hosting would probably be a better solution.

EDIT: Saw akar's post after I had hit 'reply'. Yep, another option is obviously to outsource the 24/7 tech support.

[mikeb]

Interesting.

Do you have server redundancy? are they housed at your premises or in a data center?

Trouble is the game of SEO these days is played with clusters of sites on a variety of IPs, name tags, and so on.
So only a part of the empire can in reality be "own hosted"

[akirk]

we have a local server here to which nightly backups are made - but not fall-over redundancy (no site of ours currently needs that and we have good up-time).
we went for the hosted approach as we need to run some server extensions such as ffmpeg which are tricky to install and realistically rare to be able to have without it being your own hardware...
I have used the same company to manage the hardware etc. for me for c. 11 years - which is quite a long time in internet terms - and only once had an issue - which was resolved...
ref. SEO - understand, but there are other issues to consider:
- not all websites need SEO (sometimes the traffic is controlled in other ways)
- sometimes known IP addresses make for higher levels of security
- sometimes those who play the SEO 'game' get caught out perhaps we are moving to a world where content is a higher priority so IP addresses and nametags will be of less importance?
I manage the majority of the non hardware aspects of our server - not complex We have only ever once had a hardware problem - and that was new hardware going in where it failed in testing pre-live...
modern servers are fairly robust - far more issues with folks digging up power lines outside our control!

Alasdair

[mikeb]

we have a local server here to which nightly backups are made - but not fall-over redundancy (no site of ours currently needs that and we have good up-time).
we went for the hosted approach as we need to run some server extensions such as ffmpeg which are tricky to install and realistically rare to be able to have without it being your own hardware...
I have used the same company to manage the hardware etc. for me for c. 11 years - which is quite a long time in internet terms - and only once had an issue - which was resolved...
ref. SEO - understand, but there are other issues to consider:
- not all websites need SEO (sometimes the traffic is controlled in other ways)
- sometimes known IP addresses make for higher levels of security
- sometimes those who play the SEO 'game' get caught out perhaps we are moving to a world where content is a higher priority so IP addresses and nametags will be of less importance?
I manage the majority of the non hardware aspects of our server - not complex We have only ever once had a hardware problem - and that was new hardware going in where it failed in testing pre-live...
modern servers are fairly robust - far more issues with folks digging up power lines outside our control!

Alasdair

The biggest problem is "time to restore in event of catastrophic installation destruction" eg a fire. It may be low risk, but for many it is an unacceptable risk to be down for several days. Also - backbone connection speeds. OK on low duty sites, some of mine pump out terrabytes.

As regards SEO for years it has been a multisite game. And whilst content is necessary it is not suffficient. Site interlinks are still essential, and it is inconceivable that anything will change that. Only paid networks violate either the spirit or letter of the law, because then the links are not based on relevance.

My owning good information sites in a niche that vouch for relevant money sites, can never be algorithmed out, if identity is unconnected. If they were all on hour server google would already discount the links.
So I have several VPS and many shared accounts.

[bwelford]

My owning good information sites in a niche that vouch for relevant money sites, can never be algorithmed out, if identity is unconnected. If they were all on hour server google would already discount the links.
So I have several VPS and many shared accounts.

Well done, mikeb. I get so frustrated at Google continuing to try to clean up the Tower of Babel links its PageRank process has created. Their latest round is to cut out a mass of backlinks where they can identify their related-ness. They have enough information to do a good search process without using links at all. However the marketing value of PageRank is not something you would lightly give up. It creates a huge amount of disfunctional activity on the part of webmasters and Googlers.