- Impact
- 27
Yesterday morning I wanted to do 2 things.
Register two domains, and in spite of the many awful reviews I have heard of their web hosting services, decided to give their $1 per month hosting plan a try.
It was for my own name as I have several published books on Amazon Kindle that sell modestly, and my name plus the title of the book that sold fairly well, but to my surprise, is on several websites illegally being distributed (on web sites which I am guessing probably spreads malware because what incentive do they have to give away a .pdf file for free) which I was not quite sure what my plans were for it for, but it would have been some sort of response to the illegal websites giving away free copies of a novella I worked very hard on and was given away illegally 4,500 times when it was only on sale for $1 and Amazon.com (maybe they should offer domain registration one day, I will suggest it to their customer service team as well as send a tweet or e-mail or letter to their CEO at their corporate office) that came with a special offer of reading it for free if you sign up for a flat monthly service where you can read all self-published books for free.
Ok, order submited. Before I begin, here is one of my pet peeves regarding GoDaddy [their CEO Blake Irving) of many, and this is just the beginning.
1) They are constantly trying to upsell you on products and services you do not want, need, or even give any indication that you wanted to buy, at absurd prices, automatically assuming you want to pay for 1-year's worth of the cross-promoted product that is annoying and irrelevant to you. And this happened many times, from the beginning to end.
2) The products are always set to 1-year commitments by default. To someone that was extremely not paying attention and clicking way too fast or any other sort of error if (if they had 1-click ordering for example, I don't know if they do) a $25 order could have turned into something over $200, had I not been paying attention. That would have not been Blake Irving (CEO of GoDaddy's fault)
3) I do not recall exactly, with completely accuracy, what happened, but included in my order was, and I do not remember the exact wording, but what I think was Microsoft services. I do not remember exactly how it written on the web site but to my recollection, at the time of my purchas for the 3 products I actually wanted, a Microsoft service (which I think was either multiple packages of it; I can't remember it may have just been 1, I will try to confirm this later) as well as possibly another GoDaddy service, possibly something like "professional e-mail" (once again I cannot recall with full accuracy, but something of that nature, I also do not know if they were all Microsoft services or multiple Microsoft and one GoDaddy service was added on to the order, without an additional upfront charge.
4. VERY IMPORTANT - I will have to go through the process of buying another domain to show exactly how it was done and how it was worded, but I was not, VERY CLEARLY, BOLDLY, AND REPEATEDLY MADE AWARE that these were trial services that would come at a charge and eventually auto-renew. Which leads in to my 5th and angriest complaint as a long time paying GoDaddy customer.
5. Those additional products that I was not clearly made aware that I would eventually be billed for, were set to auto renew on the credit card that I had used on file. I WAS ALSO NOT CLEARLY AND REPEATEDLY told that my credit card information would be force-ably saved unto GoDaddy's servers, and I do not have the option to remove this. I was told that this was in their technical TOS.
From my limited experience of contract law, a contract, when disputed in contract, will not necessarily hold up and remain legally binding, if there is a provision that was technically listed, but done so in a way where it is reasonable to believe that the signer of such contract may either misconstrue, or misunderstand, or not clearly and visibly (in a reasonable manner) that he was agreeing to such provision.
I do not want my credit card information stored on GoDaddy's servers, ESP, because of the rampant incidences of cyber crime, identity theft, and server leaks that have been happening lately.
Has GoDaddy ever had their servers compromised where customers personal information of any sort may have been compromised? I do not know the answer to that.
If the answer is yes, I do not know if it is illegal to put the provision of mandated financial and personal information being stored on a server, but it is one that I do not like, one that probably many other longtime GoDaddy paying customers (Blake Irving CEO); my personal opinion is that it is a bad requirement considering current market security conditions, and it is also my personal opinion that requirement should not be forced on me for buying their products or services for any reason I want really, but mostly my own personal security.
I will be notifying the credit card company that they have on file of their policy, and I will also be making phone calls to the Better Business Bureau, my local House Representative, the Senator of my State, to ask them about their opinion of this practice (among the other practices that they do), if it is legal or not, what other agencies they can direct me to for additional help, and to contact Blake Irving CEO of GoDaddy as well as to their 6th largest institutional shareholders (which of today's date January 10, 2017 2:37 AM in Pacific Standard Time, to the information currently listed on http://finance.yahoo.com) under "Top Institutional Holders" is:
Silver Lake Group, L.l.c. 31,811,843 Sep 29, 2016 36.37% 1,098,462,906
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. 15,517,400 Sep 29, 2016 17.74% 535,815,806
Technology Crossover Management VII, Ltd. 14,267,080 Sep 29, 2016 16.31% 492,642,258
FMR, LLC 9,094,054 Sep 29, 2016 10.40% 314,017,675
Wellington Management Company, LLP 7,650,131 Sep 29, 2016 8.75% 264,159,015
JP Morgan Chase & Company 7,006,725 Sep 29, 2016 8.01% 241,942,207
as well as their other directors and officers, which again according to Yahoo Finance as of January 10, 2017 2:37 A.M. is:
Insider Roster
Individual or Entity Most Recent Transaction Date Shares Owned as of Transaction Date
ALDRICH STEVEN
Officer
Sale
Sep 9, 2016
1,504
BIENERT PHILIP H.
Officer
Option Exercise
May 16, 2016
1,250
CARROLL JAMES M.
Officer
Option Exercise
Sep 12, 2016
263
GOLDMAN AUGUSTE
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 17, 2016
1,586
IRVING BLAKE
Officer
Option Exercise
Oct 11, 2016
1,503
JOSEFSBERG ARNE
Officer
Sale
Jul 14, 2016
84
KELLY NIMA
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 10, 2016
24,023
KELPY MATTHEW B.
Officer
Sale
Sep 9, 2016
5,582
MURPHY ELISSA E.
Officer
Option Exercise
Apr 12, 2016
1,250
RAFAEL BETSY
Director
Automatic Sale
Aug 5, 2016
17,238
RECHTERMAN BARBARA J
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 19, 2016
50,150
ROBEL CHARLES J
Director
Acquisition (Non Open Market)
Jun 8, 2016
31,723
SHARPLES BRIAN
Director
Acquisition (Non Open Market)
Jun 8, 2016
13,890
WAGNER SCOTT
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 19, 2016
1,503
YAM SPECIAL HOLDINGS, INC.
Beneficial Owner (10% or more)
Ownership Statement
Apr 1, 2015
36,058,011
***
Blake Irving can personally be reached on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/Blakei?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
I would also like to remind everyone that NameCheap and HostGator are two alternatives to Godaddy.
Thank you for your time.
P.S. Their customer service department is amazing. I was just upset at this entire experience, and I disagree with the provision of mandated credit card saving, and I hope that Blake Iriving will either read this or I may speak to him, or an officer or director, or another customer service rep, to once again ask for my credit information to be removed from their servers. Thank you.
Register two domains, and in spite of the many awful reviews I have heard of their web hosting services, decided to give their $1 per month hosting plan a try.
It was for my own name as I have several published books on Amazon Kindle that sell modestly, and my name plus the title of the book that sold fairly well, but to my surprise, is on several websites illegally being distributed (on web sites which I am guessing probably spreads malware because what incentive do they have to give away a .pdf file for free) which I was not quite sure what my plans were for it for, but it would have been some sort of response to the illegal websites giving away free copies of a novella I worked very hard on and was given away illegally 4,500 times when it was only on sale for $1 and Amazon.com (maybe they should offer domain registration one day, I will suggest it to their customer service team as well as send a tweet or e-mail or letter to their CEO at their corporate office) that came with a special offer of reading it for free if you sign up for a flat monthly service where you can read all self-published books for free.
Ok, order submited. Before I begin, here is one of my pet peeves regarding GoDaddy [their CEO Blake Irving) of many, and this is just the beginning.
1) They are constantly trying to upsell you on products and services you do not want, need, or even give any indication that you wanted to buy, at absurd prices, automatically assuming you want to pay for 1-year's worth of the cross-promoted product that is annoying and irrelevant to you. And this happened many times, from the beginning to end.
2) The products are always set to 1-year commitments by default. To someone that was extremely not paying attention and clicking way too fast or any other sort of error if (if they had 1-click ordering for example, I don't know if they do) a $25 order could have turned into something over $200, had I not been paying attention. That would have not been Blake Irving (CEO of GoDaddy's fault)
3) I do not recall exactly, with completely accuracy, what happened, but included in my order was, and I do not remember the exact wording, but what I think was Microsoft services. I do not remember exactly how it written on the web site but to my recollection, at the time of my purchas for the 3 products I actually wanted, a Microsoft service (which I think was either multiple packages of it; I can't remember it may have just been 1, I will try to confirm this later) as well as possibly another GoDaddy service, possibly something like "professional e-mail" (once again I cannot recall with full accuracy, but something of that nature, I also do not know if they were all Microsoft services or multiple Microsoft and one GoDaddy service was added on to the order, without an additional upfront charge.
4. VERY IMPORTANT - I will have to go through the process of buying another domain to show exactly how it was done and how it was worded, but I was not, VERY CLEARLY, BOLDLY, AND REPEATEDLY MADE AWARE that these were trial services that would come at a charge and eventually auto-renew. Which leads in to my 5th and angriest complaint as a long time paying GoDaddy customer.
5. Those additional products that I was not clearly made aware that I would eventually be billed for, were set to auto renew on the credit card that I had used on file. I WAS ALSO NOT CLEARLY AND REPEATEDLY told that my credit card information would be force-ably saved unto GoDaddy's servers, and I do not have the option to remove this. I was told that this was in their technical TOS.
From my limited experience of contract law, a contract, when disputed in contract, will not necessarily hold up and remain legally binding, if there is a provision that was technically listed, but done so in a way where it is reasonable to believe that the signer of such contract may either misconstrue, or misunderstand, or not clearly and visibly (in a reasonable manner) that he was agreeing to such provision.
I do not want my credit card information stored on GoDaddy's servers, ESP, because of the rampant incidences of cyber crime, identity theft, and server leaks that have been happening lately.
Has GoDaddy ever had their servers compromised where customers personal information of any sort may have been compromised? I do not know the answer to that.
If the answer is yes, I do not know if it is illegal to put the provision of mandated financial and personal information being stored on a server, but it is one that I do not like, one that probably many other longtime GoDaddy paying customers (Blake Irving CEO); my personal opinion is that it is a bad requirement considering current market security conditions, and it is also my personal opinion that requirement should not be forced on me for buying their products or services for any reason I want really, but mostly my own personal security.
I will be notifying the credit card company that they have on file of their policy, and I will also be making phone calls to the Better Business Bureau, my local House Representative, the Senator of my State, to ask them about their opinion of this practice (among the other practices that they do), if it is legal or not, what other agencies they can direct me to for additional help, and to contact Blake Irving CEO of GoDaddy as well as to their 6th largest institutional shareholders (which of today's date January 10, 2017 2:37 AM in Pacific Standard Time, to the information currently listed on http://finance.yahoo.com) under "Top Institutional Holders" is:
Silver Lake Group, L.l.c. 31,811,843 Sep 29, 2016 36.37% 1,098,462,906
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. 15,517,400 Sep 29, 2016 17.74% 535,815,806
Technology Crossover Management VII, Ltd. 14,267,080 Sep 29, 2016 16.31% 492,642,258
FMR, LLC 9,094,054 Sep 29, 2016 10.40% 314,017,675
Wellington Management Company, LLP 7,650,131 Sep 29, 2016 8.75% 264,159,015
JP Morgan Chase & Company 7,006,725 Sep 29, 2016 8.01% 241,942,207
as well as their other directors and officers, which again according to Yahoo Finance as of January 10, 2017 2:37 A.M. is:
Insider Roster
Individual or Entity Most Recent Transaction Date Shares Owned as of Transaction Date
ALDRICH STEVEN
Officer
Sale
Sep 9, 2016
1,504
BIENERT PHILIP H.
Officer
Option Exercise
May 16, 2016
1,250
CARROLL JAMES M.
Officer
Option Exercise
Sep 12, 2016
263
GOLDMAN AUGUSTE
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 17, 2016
1,586
IRVING BLAKE
Officer
Option Exercise
Oct 11, 2016
1,503
JOSEFSBERG ARNE
Officer
Sale
Jul 14, 2016
84
KELLY NIMA
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 10, 2016
24,023
KELPY MATTHEW B.
Officer
Sale
Sep 9, 2016
5,582
MURPHY ELISSA E.
Officer
Option Exercise
Apr 12, 2016
1,250
RAFAEL BETSY
Director
Automatic Sale
Aug 5, 2016
17,238
RECHTERMAN BARBARA J
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 19, 2016
50,150
ROBEL CHARLES J
Director
Acquisition (Non Open Market)
Jun 8, 2016
31,723
SHARPLES BRIAN
Director
Acquisition (Non Open Market)
Jun 8, 2016
13,890
WAGNER SCOTT
Officer
Automatic Sale
Oct 19, 2016
1,503
YAM SPECIAL HOLDINGS, INC.
Beneficial Owner (10% or more)
Ownership Statement
Apr 1, 2015
36,058,011
***
Blake Irving can personally be reached on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/Blakei?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
I would also like to remind everyone that NameCheap and HostGator are two alternatives to Godaddy.
Thank you for your time.
P.S. Their customer service department is amazing. I was just upset at this entire experience, and I disagree with the provision of mandated credit card saving, and I hope that Blake Iriving will either read this or I may speak to him, or an officer or director, or another customer service rep, to once again ask for my credit information to be removed from their servers. Thank you.
Left dormant , never accessed the account got a new card 3 months ago new number etc.. guess what on the 4th February my GoDaddy account was updated with my new card not by me and yesterday I got billed!
