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Terrible situation with GoDaddy stealing searches!

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tasaki25

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Hello guys, today was the forth time in this week that godaddy steal the domain exactly at the moment of buying. This time was a deleted domain which was available. I used the Godaddy appraisal tool and in same moment I was logged in with everything in my basket and it was only one step....proceed to payment.
After I used this damm tool, it was a nice appraisal price and I am 100% sure that these guys get informed about nice domains.
Suddenly the price changed ! Some thousands of dollars. This domain was available ! I took a screenshot. This is robbery !
Ok!!!! I can understand that this is about who is fast and who is not but they play really dirty game! Is not that 2,3,5 or 100 persons fight to grub the domain....this is like inside job and organized well. Like this is almost impossible to grab something . Godaddy you are the most terrible and dishonest registrar I ever saw.
This is the fourth time in a week, you guys be careful ! If you want to keep your idea safe don’t don’t don’t do what I did.
And if godaddy is honest I wait for an answer right here in public , and to reply and explain if I am wrong or not. I called customer service and answer was mmmmm, aaaaa’ maybe, maybe someone bought it .....how is possible ? Every time with nice domains happens this . Only with nice domains .
Pm after I received the slap with the no available anymore in 5 seconds I looked at least 6 registrars and was available . After some minutes everywhere was not available which means that this happened in that moment
 
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That would be dirty pool if it happened. It is a big company so it may not be the company but perhaps a staff member who has visibility to search activity. After all, it is a big company and it would not be the first case of a big company where a single employee has a side venture. Anyway, I would be happy to review the case and investigate. PM me the domain and will look into it and report back without disclosing the domain unless you authorize.
 
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How much was the appraisal value may I ask?
 
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all threads i ever read accusing gd of "stealing" something resulted in some other explanations or clarifications.. imo this trend will continue...4ever.
 
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It is a 4 figure domain. I am
all threads i ever read accusing gd of "stealing" something resulted in some other explanations or clarifications.. imo this trend will continue...4ever.

I am aware of the facts of this case. There is something goofy here. I am not sure it is sinister. Once @tasaki25 is able to secure the domain, I will share the findings. It is a cc TLD domain that is available for registration at the registry but the GoDaddy UI says it is taken. That much I can confirm.
 
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OK, here is the recap of what happened.

The domain is How.TV. @tasaki25 now owns it at Epik:

https://whois.epik.com/how.tv

That's cool. This was a very nice .TV that had just dropped.

However, what is not cool is that Godaddy was showing this exact domain as not available earlier this morning when it was in fact fully available for registration. See here:

116320_231d2dad73142b2bf528768014c4e0ca.png


It was a time stamp from 7:05 am PT this morning, i.e. before the domain was registered.

We might get an explanation from @Joe Styler. Love Joe. Still waiting for him to come work for Epik.
 
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It is a cc TLD domain that is available for registration at the registry but the GoDaddy UI says it is taken. That much I can confirm.

This prob gets reported over and over on here - GD saying a fresh drop is not available or asking a huge price for it when it is not even registered. Solution: register somewhere else. Which OP did.
 
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I called customer service and answer was mmmmm, aaaaa’ maybe, maybe someone bought it

This has happened to me more than once as well.

I NEVER search a name on daddy. It is best to see if it is available by typing it in thru whois...such as the one provided by epik.

The domain is How.TV. @tasaki25 now owns it at Epik:

Fantastic for the OP and hats off to Rob...awesome service for the new domain owner!
 
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This prob gets reported over and over on here - GD saying a fresh drop is not available or asking a huge price for it when it is not even registered. Solution: register somewhere else. Which OP did.
If this prob gets reported over and over on here, perhaps registering somewhere else is only part of the solution.


OK, here is the recap of what happened.

The domain is How.TV. @tasaki25 now owns it at Epik:

https://whois.epik.com/how.tv

That's cool. This was a very nice .TV that had just dropped.

However, what is not cool is that Godaddy was showing this exact domain as not available earlier this morning when it was in fact fully available for registration. See here:

116320_231d2dad73142b2bf528768014c4e0ca.png


It was a time stamp from 7:05 am PT this morning, i.e. before the domain was registered.

We might get an explanation from @Joe Styler. Love Joe. Still waiting for him to come work for Epik.
Not cool, indeed! I feel this behavior is unethical...
Who has oversight, of registrars?
 
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Dear robepik, I can’t find any words to show you how much I appreciate your kind help! It was also a good lesson all this for a newbe like me. This forum is valuable and because of your super fast answers I successfully registered this domain.
I hope that I will be able to help also some members in future like you helped .
 
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What is this?
GoDaddy getting owned by Epik?

Nice!

"Squeal like a pig"

Epik is great.
 
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A domain available somewhere else and GD shows as unavailable. That's been around.
You say it was available at GD first. Then not available at GD. At that moment you checked and it was available at 6 other registrars. 5 minutes later not available at none of those which means it was taken.
How come you have it now?
 
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GD has always been buggy, and domain availability check is not always live.

They should put a disclaimer: warning: do not trust our search results :)
 
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If I had the will I could search for a name that's live available at namecheap and not on GD. Similarly a name available on eNom and not somewhere else.
ssd.co shows available on Domain.com, but its not, it will disappear at checkout, same with airporttaxi.net & others like that. They've been there for months.
I've purchased glorious one word dictionary domains on Namecheap only to receive a refund email because ''domain 'xx' not available for registration.''
No one stole them.
Just a bug.
 
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This happens at NetSol as well. If the domain was listed with Afternic and is dropped, NetSol shows it still as premium priced and you cannot buy it for reg. fee. But if you search somewhere else it's available for reg. fee. Only way to get it at NetSol for reg. fee is to contact Afternic and force them to remove the unregistered domain and then wait a few hours or even days then buy it. I found this out the hard way when reg'ing names for $1 over there.
 
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Only way to get it at NetSol for reg. fee is
Which really begs the question - "Why would anyone want to reg, or have, a domain at NetSol?!?" :xf.eek:
 
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Which really begs the question - "Why would anyone want to reg, or have, a domain at NetSol?!?" :xf.eek:
Well for $1 .coms it's worth a shot. :xf.wink:
 
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Well for $1 .coms it's worth a shot. :xf.wink:
Until they remove it from your account or prevent you transferring it, or charge extortionate renewals. Read the horror stories. I would not buy a domain registered there - I would insist that the seller first transfers the domain out to somewhere reputable.

Godaddy might be caching whois search data so it is out of date, but that does not explain offering the domain at a huge price

Funny, Netsol used to take any domain that you searched for at Netsol and register it for 5 days or so and offer it to you for $39, then if you did not buy it they cancelled the registration. So searching for domains there was suicide.
 
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Until they remove it from your account or prevent you transferring it, or charge extortionate renewals. Read the horror stories. I would not buy a domain registered there - I would insist that the seller first transfers the domain out to somewhere reputable.

Godaddy might be caching whois search data so it is out of date, but that does not explain offering the domain at a huge price

Funny, Netsol used to take any domain that you searched for at Netsol and register it for 5 days or so and offer it to you for $39, then if you did not buy it they cancelled the registration. So searching for domains there was suicide.

I already had my issues with them and don't think they'll bother me again. Not too worried, not putting my gems in there anyway. :cigar:
 
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a few months ago, I was talking to Godaddy staff to transfer one of my domains to another registrar then the employee showed me available domains added in my cart and asked me if I want to process order at the time, I was really shocked if I searched for domains and suddenly any Godaddy employee can read my list and register them for himself
 
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Nice to see a registrar helping out @robepik ! Seems like a bug to me. I don't use GoDaddy that much but I have similar issues with namecheap all the time.

Good to see you care, also read how epik came about in another thread and it's good to know there are some great people running that company who love domains as much as all of us do!
 
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a few months ago, I was talking to Godaddy staff to transfer one of my domains to another registrar then the employee showed me available domains added in my cart and asked me if I want to process order at the time, I was really shocked if I searched for domains and suddenly any Godaddy employee can read my list and register them for himself
From what Ive understood, they only see whats in your account/cart if you contact customer support and you give them your PIN. If you contact support and tell them xxx.com is my domain, they cant link that domain to any other domain in your account as long as you've not given them your PIN number.
So yes if you contact them and you give them your PIN, they can see whats currently in your cart.
 
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