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GoDaddy Scammed Me - Here's PROOF!

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I would like to let everyone know that GoDaddy outright scammed me today and after speaking with Greg Goodrich, manager @ Godaddy, he said there is nothing he can do about it. Please share with everyone, this is terrible way to do business and treat customers.

Here is the PROOF that GoDaddy scammed me:

Notice the 1st screenshot shows I won the auction fair & square, then the 2nd screenshot shows someone else won it 5 minutes later. I found out about this shortly after I won the auction, I logged into my GoDaddy account to see the 2nd screenshot below and I was absolutely shocked because they were saying I didn't win the auction, nor did they even give me the opportunity to win the auction AGAIN after I had already won it.

How corrupt is this? Especially after all their other auction scams that have happened. GoDaddy CANNOT be TRUSTED, they have no morals and do not care about scamming their customers and screwing them over.
Screen Shot 2019-04-25 at 12.33.32 PM.png

Now this is what I see in my account and GoDaddy refuses to honor the fact I won the auction and they could careless about doing anything about this corruption so it just keeps happening.
Screen Shot 2019-04-25 at 12.45.17 PM.png

Thanks GoDaddy for such a wonderful experience! It sure makes me miss NoDaddy.com which was a very popular site that exposed your corrupt company and you bought it to cover all your corruption and sweep it under the rug instead of doing the right thing.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I would like to let everyone know that GoDaddy outright scammed me today and after speaking with Greg Goodrich, manager @ Godaddy, he said there is nothing he can do about it. Please share with everyone, this is terrible way to do business and treat customers.

Here is the PROOF that GoDaddy scammed me:

Notice the 1st screenshot shows I won the auction fair & square, then the 2nd screenshot shows someone else won it 5 minutes later. I found out about this shortly after I won the auction, I logged into my GoDaddy account to see the 2nd screenshot below and I was absolutely shocked because they were saying I didn't win the auction, nor did they even give me the opportunity to win the auction AGAIN after I had already won it.

How corrupt is this? Especially after all their other auction scams that have happened. GoDaddy CANNOT be TRUSTED, they have no morals and do not care about scamming their customers and screwing them over.
Show attachment 117222

Now this is what I see in my account and GoDaddy refuses to honor the fact I won the auction and they could careless about doing anything about this corruption so it just keeps happening.
Show attachment 117223

Thanks GoDaddy for such a wonderful experience! It sure makes me miss NoDaddy.com which was a very popular site that exposed your corrupt company and you bought it to cover all your corruption and sweep it under the rug instead of doing the right thing.

I read the reactions.
In 1 reaction I saw that you can try to contact the one who will get the domain in his account.
Check the godaddywhois in a couple of days.
If it's European, you should scroll in the whois to the bottom, (the godaddywhois I mean), and you'll find a link where you can send an email to, and you send information like you did in your first post (and maybe or not threaten with making this public or sueing). The mail will arrive in the mailbox of the new owner then (I even think you will see his or her emailaddress).
Or maybe suggest buying it at the price, if it seems the person as in an auction fever, like someone suggested and didn't want the domain anyhow and regrets its purchase.
 
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High bidder is not huge names, looks be a one off unique who wanted it just as bad as you.

Who knows maybe they won't pay, and you will get a second chance offer.
 
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If you look at the page source of an existing current GD auction, you will find the text "Congratulations! Your bid won." despite the auction still being active.

Show attachment 117233

Meaning, the code is prepared to deliver a Congratulations message to the high bidder, upon the timer running out (without a refresh). There doesn't appear to be a 2nd confirmation in place before the message is delivered. Why can't GD write a line of code something to the nature of: Don't display Winning message without a refreshed, external, 2nd factor authentication of the auction ending.



@member-162055 -- Please check your email, and confirm.

I just checked the Outbid emails as I was not checking my emails during the auction and I did
receive an outbid notification @ 11:25, but the auction already ended with me being the winning bidder so I left the computer to take a break for a while before coming back to check my GoDaddy account.
 
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I just checked the Outbid emails as I was not checking my emails during the auction and I did
receive an outbid notification @ 11:25, but the auction already ended with me being the winning bidder so I left the computer to take a break for a while before coming back to check my GoDaddy account.
That just verifies someone bid in the last second. You did not hit refresh in between your last bid, and their new bid, until the auction was already over. Using Godaddy as of recent, this is something many active users know to watch out for now days.
 
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How do you recommend them doing that?

By awarding you the domain for $9,000 because the auction ended at 11:25?

But then what happens to the customer who bid $9,100 at 11:24?

GoDaddy REALLY needs to fix this bug ASAP.


Well, for starters they could actually take responsibility for the problem instead of shrugging off their errors onto their customers. Since they don't do this, they instead focus their efforts on "controlling" their reputation by buying up those who expose their corruption like NoDaddy.com

Then, if there is an error and they are at fault, they should do whatever is necessary to make things right instead of screwing over their customers.

I 100% feel that I have a legal right to this domain name!

There are many legal issues here including GoDaddy providing false & misleading auction info seriously affecting the outcome of the auction and then GoDaddy preventing me from winning the domain again since I already won it.
 
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That just verifies someone bid in the last second. You did not hit refresh in between your last bid, and their new bid, until the auction was already over. Using Godaddy as of recent, this is something many active users know to watch out for now days.
It's a bad beat, but as many active users have stated it is more of a system refresh, and status issue, than a bidding issue, the high bidder ultimately won the auction within the timeframe. What you saw was not a live screen, it is not over, until you get the email confirmation. It is a really nice name, category killer for someone who wants to control an industry, and flowers is big business online.

Who knows 1-800 Flowers might have won it.

I ran the bidder ID against a lot of recent big ticket auctions, and it did not come up.
 
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I bet that @Joe Styler will recommend all of us to always put their max proxy bid, and forget about refreshing pages. And we will not follow this advice, obviously. And the history will repeat itself many more times...
 
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I bet that @Joe Styler will recommend all of us to always put their max proxy bid, and forget about refreshing pages. And we will not follow this advice, obviously. And the history will repeat itself many more times...
Yea, put your max proxy, and get min bidded for the next 3 hours, until you get outbid, or one bid under your proxy to max you out, love those bidders who bid bid bid, and when they expose your max, bail.

In reviewing these bidder id's I just saw how many bids HugeNames is winning, about 1/4 in the $100-$500 range of the names I was bidding on. There is some big money players constantly in play at Godaddy, I wouldn't be surprised if 1-800 flowers, or their mark agents won this one.
 
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It's a bad beat, but as many active users have stated it is more of a system refresh, and status issue, than a bidding issue, the high bidder ultimately won the auction within the timeframe. What you saw was not a live screen, it is not over, until you get the email confirmation. It is a really nice name, category killer for someone who wants to control an industry, and flowers is big business online.

Who knows 1-800 Flowers might have won it.

I ran the bidder ID against a lot of recent big ticket auctions, and it did not come up.

It's a lot more than a system refresh & status issue as I actually WON the domain and the auction ended so I did not have a chance to bid again since the auction ended.

My 1st screenshot is absolute proof that I have a legal right to the domain because it shows that the auction ended at 11:25 with me being the winning bidder. You can't have 2 auction end times and not honor the 1st auction end time. The outbid came AFTER the auction already ended.
 
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It's a lot more than a system refresh & status issue as I actually WON the domain and the auction ended!
No, if you got an outbid email, the auction was still in play, someone waited until the last second to bid, that small delay in your screen, and their last bid caused it to say you won, until you refreshed it many minutes later, and saw how their last minute bid. You would have not received an outbid notice, but rather a You Won notice if you had won. This is something we have been seeing for many months with last second bids, or bot bids who countdown the clock. Joe Styler will tell you the same thing tomorrow, he will be replying for sure given the title, and responses. He has to be accountable for the auction, and if there is something that did happen, they will own up to it, but this has been happening for months, just this is your first time experiencing it.
 
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Another SERIOUS problem is GoDaddy's response to something like this happening which is VERY concerning. I called and was on the phone for an hour while their support rep went back & forth to talk to the Auctions dept. I finally get Greg Goodrich on the phone for only a couple minutes and this is all he tells me:

"You lost the auction, there's nothing we can do" instead of having even a sliver of empathy or even caring enough to have a procedure in place to deal with something like this where you would open an investigation, instead you pass it off and completely disrespect you're customers like nothing happened.
 
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As everyone here knows, each bid submitted on GoDaddy Auctions is a binding contract as it says here:
https://www.godaddy.com/help/can-i-cancel-my-bid-on-go-daddy-auctions-921

My Winning bid is a binding contract and the 1st screenshot of the auction all but proves that I have a legal right to the domain name. The wording "Congratulations! Your bid won." is legally binding part of this contract acknowledging the fact that my last bid won the auction. Auctions CANNOT have 2 different end times which in this case there ARE 2 different end times which is called Auction Fraud.

This is the reason i say GoDaddy is scamming me because otherwise GoDaddy would honor the first end time in which case I would win the auction because as you can see in the 1st screenshot I won the auction which ended at 11:25. The 2nd end time is bogus and is NOT legit!



Screen Shot 2019-04-25 at 10.03.24 PM.png
 
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@NamePros @Eric Lyon Why would you relegate my thread so it is hidden in some sub-sub forum that doesn't even make any sense, I literally have to search to find it now. You didn't do this with Dustie's thread here so why would you do it to mine?
https://www.namepros.com/threads/re...ry-and-a-warning.1132707/page-18#post-7202152



Are you trying to sweep this under the rug so a lot less people see it? Obviously that appears to be your intention here! This is NOT a review of GoDaddy so putting it in the Review section does not make any sense, in reality it makes you look bad. I am discussing a domain I won in Godaddy Auctions so the General Domain Discussion area is the best place to do so just like Dustie did.
 
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It is losing GoDaddy auction revenue. Wouldn't a company with shareholders want to maximize revenue?

This is something we have been seeing for many months with last second bids, or bot bids who countdown the clock. Joe Styler will tell you the same thing tomorrow, he will be replying for sure given the title, and responses. He has to be accountable for the auction, and if there is something that did happen, they will own up to it, but this has been happening for months, just this is your first time experiencing it.

I called and was on the phone for an hour while their support rep went back & forth to talk to the Auctions dept.

In addition to GoDaddy's lost auction revenue, the bug seems to be wasting countless hours of their support. Beyond monetary issues, it significantly dampers the customer experience to the tone of some feeling scammed.

How many more complaints does GoDaddy need to receive before they implement a fix for the bug? The standard, set your proxy bid higher, simply isn't cutting it when their page refreshes to inform the user they are the winning bidder.
 
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I am no fan of GoDaddy but it is common knowledge if a last so many minutes even seconds snipe occurs the auction time is automatically extended by so many minutes in order to give you the outbid bidder more time to bid. What were you doing during that extra five minutes?

When the snipe happens the ending clock shows the new time remaining. You should not rely on emails from GoDaddy but continue to refresh the auction page if on an app or on a computer you should have seen the new time ticking down. Apparently you did not watch the end of the auction but relied on an email.

Look I get you are mad you lost but people outbid people all the time at the last second. That’s why there is time to rebid if you are watching.
 
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@karmaco Thanks for your input! I completely understand what you are saying, but that is not the case here. This is not just a matter of being outbid. The problem here is we have an auction I legitimately won with 2 different end times and a legally binding contract saying "Congratulations! Your bid won."
 
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@karmaco Thanks for your input! I completely understand what you are saying, but that is not the case here. This is not just a matter of being outbid. The problem here is we have an auction I legitimately won with 2 different end times and a legally binding contract saying "Congratulations! Your bid won."
Read Godaddys TOS they have an out for every scenario, what you don’t get is the timer continues, but the refresh does not happen unless you manually do it. The auction never closed, your time stamps on the refresh add up. Fair enough you thought the auction was over, but seasoned bidders know of this bug, and would have hit refresh, and checked their won section to see if it is really over. The service let you down for sure, no fault of your own, technology failed you, but the high bidder is legit at $9100.
 
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Auctions CANNOT have 2 different end times which in this case there ARE 2 different end times which is called Auction Fraud.

The auction is extended by (5 minutes and 59 seconds?) every time somebody places a bid within (5 minutes?) of auction end time.

Hence, the auction end time is determined by bidding activity.

Does this thread remind anyone else of last months longest running DropCatch auction? 👇

https://www.namepros.com/threads/longest-running-drop-auction-five-nines.1126088/
 
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@member-162055 .. I hate to tell you this .. but indeed you didn't win the auction as you were not the last bidder before 11:25. Although it definitely sucks that you were told otherwise by the incorrect "congratulations statement" and that you weren't aware of the new bid.

That being said .. this almost isn't even a bug .. and almost more a result of very sloppy programming.

It happened to me shortly after the auction changes .. I reported the issue as well .. what's worse is that I know how to repeat it 100% of the time all day long if I wanted to.

The confusing customer service problem you ran into is a separate issue that is unfortunately a huge problem at GoDaddy in that it's a massive multi-department company. The first customer service agent you talked to obviously isn't aware of this bug/glitch/sloppy coding loophole. It's a big problem at GoDaddy both in terms that it gives bad info to customers like in your case when the first agent agreed that you won when in fact you unfortunately didn't .. but it's also what I feel is the root cause for there being such an unforgivably large number of bugs and issues on GoDaddy's overall platform .. simply put .. more often than not, one department has no clue what goes on in another. It's not a problem unique to GoDaddy .. in fact you'll find that in most larger companies more often than not the right hand often has no clue what the left hand is doing. It's just that when your business almost entirely takes place on a huge platform, that platform is updated and tweaked regularly .. .and often one department's changes has unintended consequences in another. So it's not an evil thing .. but you could fairly say that they could better at auditing their platform integrity. This issue is nothing compared to others both past and present.

This isn't GoDaddy out to be evil or trying to scam you .. in fact .. chances are you'd have been willing to pay more for the domain ... which would have put more money into GoDaddy's pocket's (remember that they keep 100% of auction revenue for domains that were registered at GoDaddy when it expired).

All that said .. I remember being really upset when it happened to me .. so I feel really bad for you .. maybe with this happening for a high $x,xxx it might get them to address the issue? Yeah .. ok .. lol .. maybe not. If there's one thing I will concede to you that GoDaddy is fantastic at .. it's dismissing bugs and other issues and trying to sweep them under the rug. The number of bugs and issues I've reported are well into the double digits .. and it's extremely rare that I even get acknowledgement or a request for more info .. I can still repeat a serious security issue I reported 3 years ago .. I can still repeat accessibility issues that caused me to lose domains 2 years ago! Again though .. it's not evilness .. it's just the result of GoDaddy being too big for any one person or team to truly have a grasp of everything in the entirety of their platform.
 
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The auction is extended by (5 minutes and 59 seconds?) every time somebody places a bid within (5 minutes?) of auction end time.

Hence, the auction end time is determined by bidding activity.

Does this thread remind anyone else of last months longest running DropCatch auction? 👇

https://www.namepros.com/threads/longest-running-drop-auction-five-nines.1126088/page-9#post-7170999
Bidding at godaddy is a painful and sometimes all day event, is some A hole keeps waiting 5 mins to bid the min. I’m not sure what happend here, but fivenines.com is listed on afternic for a min bid of $900 if you wish to pursue it. Still don’t get how that domain investor paid mid $30K for that domain, then stumbles on small $xxx domains for weeks after that.
 
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Read Godaddys TOS they have an out for every scenario, what you don’t get is the timer continues, but the refresh does not happen unless you manually do it. The auction never closed, your time stamps on the refresh add up. Fair enough you thought the auction was over, but seasoned bidders know of this bug, and would have hit refresh, and checked their won section to see if it is really over. The service let you down for sure, no fault of your own, technology failed you, but the high bidder is legit at $9100.


@wwwweb As you can see in the 1st screenshot the auction was ended so I don't know why you said it didn't close? Not only did it close, it said I was the Winning Bidder! Are you saying this happens all the time @GoDaddy?

Don't you see the timestamp showing the auction ended @ 11:25?
Screen Shot 2019-04-25 at 10.54.10 PM.png


It closed in the 1st screenshot @ 11:25 and then it closed AGAIN in the 2nd screenshot @ 11:30. That's 2 different end times!

 
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@wwwweb As you can see in the 1st screenshot the auction was ended so I don't know why you said it didn't close?

As you can see in your email, the auction did not end. So I don't know why you said it didn't close?

Use your head, otherwise this conversation will repeat like two windows staring at one another.
 
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@wwwweb As you can see in the 1st screenshot the auction was ended so I don't know why you said it didn't close? Not only did it close, it said I was the Winning Bidder! Are you saying this happens all the time @GoDaddy?

Don't you see the timestamp showing the auction ended @ 11:25?
Show attachment 117245


It closed in the 1st screenshot @ 11:25 and then it closed AGAIN in the 2nd screenshot @ 11:30. That's 2 different end times!
Its just bad programming the auction was still live, your page was stale dated and just ran thru. You needed to hit refresh a few times after that to see the auction was still live based on a last second bid that reset the timer. It’s a known glitch, you can’t rely on a stale bid page, it needs constant manually refreshing. A screenshot is not a closed auction, you need the confirmations that follow like an email, and the won section confirming you to pay.

Not your fault, you saw it in black, and white, and let your guard down, if you bid on many names daily you would have seen this scenario many times over, and would have known to keep checking until the fat lady sang closed.
 
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I am no fan of GoDaddy but it is common knowledge if a last so many minutes even seconds snipe occurs the auction time is automatically extended by so many minutes in order to give you the outbid bidder more time to bid. What were you doing during that extra five minutes?

When the snipe happens the ending clock shows the new time remaining. You should not rely on emails from GoDaddy but continue to refresh the auction page if on an app or on a computer you should have seen the new time ticking down. Apparently you did not watch the end of the auction but relied on an email.

Look I get you are mad you lost but people outbid people all the time at the last second. That’s why there is time to rebid if you are watching.

After WINNING the auction, I went and took a much needed break! Since you have been reading my post, I I did say that I wasn't reading my email at all, I was 100% focused on the auction.

Then you're saying I didn't watch the end of the auction when my first screenshot above is the end of the auction and I was watching it the whole time, it ended and I won. This is NOT a case of being outbid. We have a legally binding contract here that says I won the domain and I am the winning bidder.
 
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The auction is extended by (5 minutes and 59 seconds?) every time somebody places a bid within (5 minutes?) of auction end time.

That's not entirely accurate. What happens when a bid is placed with less than 5 minutes to go is:

- The new end time gets reset to 5 minutes, rounded UP to the next full minute end time.

Here are a few examples with original auction end times of 11:25:

Bid at 11:19:59 = Auction ends at 11:25:00 (nothing changes)
Bid at 11:20:00 = Auction ends at 11:25:00 (nothing changes)
Bid at 11:20:01 = Auction ends at 11:26:00
Bid at 11:20:59 = Auction ends at 11:26:00
Bid at 11:21:00 = Auction ends at 11:26:00
Bid at 11:21:01 = Auction ends at 11:27:00
Bid at 11:23:59 = Auction ends at 11:29:00
Bid at 11:24:00 = Auction ends at 11:29:00
Bid at 11:24:01 = Auction ends at 11:30:00
Bid at 11:24:59 = Auction ends at 11:30:00
Bid at 11:24:59.999 = Auction ends at 11:30:00
Bid at 11:25:00.000 = I have no clue
Bid at 11:25:01 = You get an error saying your bid isn't valid because auction ended.
 
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