Entire GoDaddy account repossessed!

[LordMomo]

Hi everyone,

Really in need of some help here...
So I changed payment methods about a week ago at GoDaddy. A day or two later I got an email from their Verification Office requesting that I submit some additional documents:
ID, Bank Statement showing latest transaction, Back and Front of card.

I did so.

Since I received that first email, my account has been locked. I get an update a few hours ago (after submitted all documents) saying that my account has been reviewed and is not eligible to be unlocked.

Around the same time I see the WHOIS on my domains being updated to [email protected] and I have still been locked out of my account.

In all honesty, I have done nothing wrong, and I am unable to speak to someone regarding the reinstatement (I only get computerized responses and the Call center can do nothing).

Does anyone know what I can do as I have spent a lot of money on some of the domains in that account (it is my primary account)?

I would really appreciate any advice.

Momo

 

[Name Trader]

This brings back into mind the famous statement of Christine (forgot the last name) former Legal Counsel for GoDaddy. Who said, paraphrasing from memory. We can do anything we like to any domain (and customer) with no repurcussions to themselves whatsoever. It's in their ToS. You should read it. After her statement, I immediately started moving my domains out of GoDaddy as my main registrar. It was a pity. Because I actually liked their control panel (which shows how weird I am).

I also had my account locked, fairly recently, when I changed my account name from a personal account to a company name. On the advice of my previous account manager, who said GoDaddy couldn't care less what you put in that box. But it turned out they do care. They were asking for documents which I couldn't provide because they didn't exist. So they also told me (to eff off) and refused to unlock my account. I had just about accepted I'd lose a few hundred domains in my account (bought at GD auctions). It was only the continued persistence of my current account manager (after me badgering him endlessly), that they wanted me to provide some statement to them (which was essentially, meaningless) but couched in legalese which they could accept. So I can refute absolutely that what they say about being unable to unlock an account is just BS.

As others have said, @Joe Styler is the person to talk to. But this comes at a busy time with Namescon. Everybody is so busy. But he has been called to this thread by many of us. So let's hope he clears his desk and pays us a visit here.

You should state openly what transpired. And tell them it was a genuine mistake on your part. And that you changing your payment method was an attempt by you to rectify what you had done. You should also state that there was no fraud here, and the original payments were never disputed by your daughter. But I know they are sticklers about fraud. They need to be tough on it. But not to honest customers, who admit what they've done, and GoDaddy only found out when you tried to fix the problem. If there is a mismatch between the account name and name on the credit card, this could be enough for them to lock your account.

Best of luck with your endeavours. It's going to be a long, hard, frustrating struggle. Believe me. And I hope it works out for you, in the end. Which came for me only after I'd already given up all hope of them ever unlocking my account. It's going to be tough.

 

[Nerevar]

If the topic starter was not a forum member and did not know about Joe Styler who can work magic sometimes, he would lose his domains forever. Therefore, there are other domainers, more solitary and less well connected, who probably have lost their domains forever. They did not know they can appeal to Joe Styler or to seek the support of the domaining community. GoDaddy really has to build an appeal system, so that Joe Styler, who has helped us numerous times, does not have be so often our "deus ex machina".

 

[jaydub]

Every time I read one of these where GD has shut down someone's account with no recourse the transfer train leaves the station to NameSilo ...I understand GD trying to battle fraud, I really do, but no recourse? That is downright uncivilized.

 

[Name Trader]

Truly Scary.
This makes me think which one is the best registrar to keep my most valuable domains at?

This is a difficult question to answer. But it certainly ain't GD. This type of action was exactly why I transferred the bulk of my domains out of GoDaddy years ago, and to this day I continue to transfer out every domain the day they are unlocked. And I still almost lost a couple of hundred domains. Based upon what my previous Account Manager had told me. That's really scary. IMHO. And believe me, I'm a great GoDaddy customer. But was still treated like a bum. Just imagine what would have been the effect, if all my domains had been at GoDaddy, and they decided to do this. I would have been bankrupted. Really! These kinds of unconscionable actions are really very, very scary, IMHO. And they can make these decisions, at the drop of a hat, without any prior discussion, and with a fraud department which doesn't even understand the word yes in their vocabulary. They have no respect for their customers. None whatsoever. Their word is THE LAW.

This is the first time I've ever talked about this. And it was not my intention to talk about it, except to say that it was BS of them to say accounts cannot be unlocked. They can unlock accounts. They did with me. After I had effectively given up the fight. So I was almost one of their 1/10th of 1% statistics. Through no fault of my own.

But back to the question at hand. If not GD, then who. This was done years ago. For the question in hand, there was no criteria available. Well, I evaluated about 40 Registrars. Some were dismissed relatively quickly. My shortlist ended up with Dynadot, Name, NameSilo. I evaluated as much as I could about each registrar. Price, Control Panel, Support, Account Manager (preferred). All these Registrars where evaluated. NameSilo were a good choice, but they were still in their infancy at the time of my evaluation. So I decided they were the riskiest. They've since come on in leaps and bounds. I find the Control Panel comprehensive, if a tad unique. they were the first to be eliminated. This probably would not be the case today. Name, were eliminated, finally on my dislike of their 2 lines per domain control panel. Which I think they have subsequently fixed. Leaving Dynadot. Which definitely had a Control Panel with the highest learning curve of the three. And they had a couple of unique twists, which I really liked. But they won out on Price, Flexibility, Account Manager, Support generally. After 5 years plus since I made the decision. And I'm still completely satisfied. But it doesn't exactly answer your question. I don't think your question can be evaluated.

Normally, you don't usually hear about these cases. It's my way or the highway, with no discussion, and no appeal process. Often, this is completely justified. But to just say no, without having a chance to put your case, was and is, completely unfair. Enough to know when considering GoDaddy as your registrar of choice IMHO.

 

[Joe Styler]

I understand what I am going to say will be unpopular so I ask that you keep in mind the whole of the contributions I have made during my time here and the fact that I have always been honest and worked hard to help anyone I could with any issue and share information which I think will help people as well as spearhead changes to our products and services as a result of feedback on here.

Knowing that I have tried the same thing in this case and have worked with our fraud team on this as well as investigating the details myself and I would have to say that I am convinced that this was the correct decision in this case. There are several red flags on this account that put together as a whole make it hard to unban the account as much as I would like to and understand the PR associated with not doing so. I will PM @LordMomo with some additional information I will not share publicly to see if that can help clear things up.

I would also like to state that I have examined and re-examined the payments from multiple banks and they have all been refunded before @LordMomo stated he was doing a chargeback. We automatically refunded the purchases at the time we closed the account as I stated. I am not saying he is incorrect, the money takes several days to process through the banks to show up in your account so it may be that he did not yet have the funds or they had not shown up on the various statements but I am confident the money was already refunded by us fully.

I also think it is important to understand that we have over 13 million customers and very very few ever have a fraud team issue. It is not a problem to use someone else's credit card as others have stated on this thread, there are more factors than that involved here and involved on all the purchases made which is why the entire account was closed down.

In the rare cases where there is a fraud issue we do give customers an opportunity to clear it up and a great majority of those customers are able to work with our team and do so.

I am not willing to go into detail on why we made this decision in this case as I do not want people to be able to develop a "playbook" on how to get past our team but I will say that we are in business for the long term value our customers. We also seek to have a safe and secure marketplace and look for a balance that protects everyone. As I stated, I hope that my credibility over the years has earned some trust in this case.

I will PM @LordMomo with some additional details that may help him restore his account but that I do not think should be part of a public forum.

 

[deez007]

I'm a little confused here now.

If we look at the response from Godaddy screen grab posted on this thread it completely contradicts what @Joe Styler is saying.

See Screen Grab Here: https://postimg.org/image/f58ezxcsv/

That response from the support team is shockingly arrogant and insensitive. Imagine if your investment broker, whom you have invested a small fortune with gave you a response like that? How would you feel?... exactly the same scenario here.

If this is how the support team has been trained to handle clients then I'm sorry to say @Joe Styler ,something is seriously wrong and it needs to be addressed.

 

[Name Trader]

@Joe Syler

Thanks Joe. I have always been sitting on the fence with this case, although I was being critical, where I thought there appeared to be anomalies. Which weren't being answered by anyone from GoDaddy in this thread. I, like many of us here, have been patiently waiting for your comprehensive response. Which we have, and completely accept your decision in this case. It would seem @LordMomo hasn't completely explained what happened leading up to the account closure.

However, I still see great possibilities for losing all the domains in an account, without the possibility, of recovering any/all domains in the account, not connected with any dispute. In my case. The problem was I changed from a personal name to a corporate name. A simple enough request you would think. The crunch only came (AFAIK) when I had to renew my credit card. It was still a personal credit card. I could not provide the documents you were asking for because they simply did not exist. Whammo! you closed my account. I wasn't even give the possibility to change it back to a personal account. It was only re-opened thanks to the endless efforts of my Account Manager. Who managed to convince the powers that be, that they were asking for documents, which did not exist. I had told them that, but they still insisted they needed these documents which didn't exist. They just had decided that if I couldn't produce these non-existant documents, they were going to close my account. There was no discussion about it. The stress this caused was immense. No apology was given. I would say they had "deaf ears" to my protestations of being treated unfairly. Especially as I'd asked my previous Account Manager, before making this change, who had told me, "GoDaddy couldn't care less about what you put in your account name". But it seems you do. Very much so. It's water under the bridge for me now. But I really don't think, long term customers without any history of malfeasance, should be treated so cavalierly. IMHO.

This is just my example, which was only resolved by the hard work of my Account Manager. Not everyone has the luxury of an Account Manager. There are many other reasons I imagine why you would blindly, IMHO, just close an account without a full and proper discussion. And then also, to go thru another round of discussions before actually closing an account. There was simply not enough, if any, discussion, about how to satisfy, GoDaddy's impossible wishes.

If you close an account for any reason, the customer should be allowed to transfer away any domains not DIRECTLY connected to the reason for closing the account. IMHO. Repayment isn't a satisfactory compensation. You use brute force just to to close an account, without listening to any full exploration of how to fix the problem.

So I would say, to all those honest GoDaddy customers out there. This case, may have fallen down in it's merits. But that doesn't mean you will not have your account closed without any recourse to recover you domains. Or the damage it could do to your business (including bankruptcy). This is still a small possibility, 1/10th of 1%. But it's a definite risk, that you should consider when trusting GoDaddy to be the custodian of your domains. If it happened to me. It could happen to you too. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have survived this episode.

 

[Kenny]

Update:
Still no response from GoDaddy.
Started a credit card dispute as the goods bought were not delivered. Bank assures me that most funds spent in last 3 months will be recovered.
However, the issue is that I had some domains with them that I believe to be valuable. I will only be able to get these domains by buying them back when they expire (if not sold to someone else by then).

I'm not sure I understand you here.
Do you want your money back or your domains?
If you want your domains back I think you need to put the breaks on your Panic Mode for the time being.
It's bad luck that this went down during NamesCon, but just wait a couple of days until the dust settles and see if @Joe Styler can sort this out.
Joe can go deep and get to the root of the problem, but if you start initiating irrevocable processes, then what?

If everything is as you say it is, (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) I don't think waiting a bit longer is going to make a difference either way.
I don't think it will. I could be wrong. But I don't think it will.
Nothing usually happens that fast.

Good luck.

Peace,
Cyberian

 

[Joe Styler]

Exactly! The purchase that was flagged and refunded was WHOIS protection for just $10 or so. My other purchases over the last 3 months alone were easily 50 times as much

I don't know exactly what happened until I can discuss it with the fraud team. It is rare for them to refund an order and more rare for them to lock an entire account. We'll see what happened with the account when I speak with them this week.

 

[Name Trader]

Update (probably final):

Bank has confirmed credit card dispute has been finalized. Managed to retrieve most of the money spent in the last 3 months. Probably a 0% chance of anything more happening.

I'm happy however, as at least I managed to get a "refund" when the GoDaddy support made it clear that I would get neither domains or cash refunded.

@Joe Styler and all other commenters thank you for all the help and ideas. I do not believe anything more can be done here now (since the credit card chargeback has been completed). I will probably close the thread.

In conclusion, no domains returned, account permanently locked, some purchases forcibly "refunded" and horrible support from GoDaddy. I did jump the gun by starting the chargeback with the bank and maybe Joe could have helped, but it wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

Regards
Momo

Please don't close this thread until @Joe Styler has had a chance to fully explain what happened at the GoDaddy end. There are a lot of people in this thread waiting to here his explanation, before deciding whether they continue to hold their domains at GoDaddy. I would have thought you would be interested to hear his explanation also.

You must have a good cc/bank The few times I have asked for a refund, it takes them approx 2 months before the money is refunded into my account. I'm glad to hear you have got your refund. And yes, I agree you have jumped the gun. Waiting another week, could only have been more beneficial to your case. But now it's cut and dried

 

[LucidDomains]

I always transfer out of GoDaddy because of stories like these. I made a decision a year and half ago to pick NameSilo as my go to registry.

 

[Joe Styler]

Sorry for the delay. I've been slammed with some things such as names con. I have about 50 alerts and 10 messages.

I can look into it for him and have asked for the domain. If you are flagged for a fraudulent transaction it's pretty easy to remedy.

When they repossess the domain name they send an email saying so and saying they would like to figure it out. They ask for some info such as your ID and proof you can use the credit card etc. Nothing very hard for someone who is able to use the credit card to provide.

You can easily contact the fraud department since they send you an email and tell you how to resolve the issue. They and support provide you with the email address to use. Your answers from support sound unusual.

If you are flagged your payment method is automatically refunded. So I am not sure why you say you have no refund, but again I am able to look into it once I get the domain. Even if your credit card company thinks the card was compromised and cancels it we still are able to give the money back to that issuing bank and they in turn to you on the new card account.

 

[jaydub]

But I can see why OP "jumped the gun" with a chargeback. He got a "no way, no how" nasty email from GD , and not knowing Joe, he just thought he had better get his money back.
Perhaps Joe could have helped but OP wasn't aware of him at that time and knee jerked it.

I too would like to hear from Joe as to what happened here and I do appreciate his involvement to help clarify this for the OP and us that may have domains with GoDaddy, even though this matter had nothing to do with him.

Again... Cheers Joe

 

[Joe Styler]

I am back on the forum and should be again for the foreseeable future. I have spoken with the fraud team and looked over the details of the account in question. I think most people here know me to be a fair and honest guy who goes out of his way to help anyone he can. I hope that I have earned enough credit over the years to draw on some now when I say looking over the account details it is very suspicious and I would have to side with our fraud team. I am not willing to go over the details for two reasons, we do not publicly discuss customer's account details, and I do not want to give people a look into what we look for.

I can state that in no uncertain terms, we did refund all purchases on that account when we shut it down so there is nothing to dispute as the funds were sent back to the banks that issued them.

Using a credit card of a relative is not a fraudulent case. I have done it many times to buy a number of different purchases over the years. I have used my partner's card, parents' card, brother's card. I have never ever had an issue myself.

P.S. I haven't read this thread entirely, unsure if there was more the OP did or didn't do which caused the fraudulent alarms.

By the way, I know @Joe Styler is away for a couple of days... in case you're waiting for his reply.

Thank you I was away. My son has been very sick and I had a business trip. I am back now.

 

[Nerevar]

I do trust Joe. I would, however, like to be aware if there are red flags that we can trigger without having bad intentions.

 

[Name Trader]

Well I had an account manager at the time, but it seemed to me that he was much down the pecking ladder compared to the forces at work who had decided to take my account and domains away. You should PM Joe Styler and get a conversation going with him. He will be honest with you, even if he toes the company line. You have a big hill to climb. The claims against you are not always clearly defined, so you are going to have to "imagine" every scenario which may have caused them to think that you deserve this punishment. I can tell you that by my last claim, my confidence of winning was probably below 20%. But you have to keep going even when they say the decision is final.

On a more broader note. If you had not had your hosting with the same company as your domains, it is unlikely that you would be in this position today. You, EVERYBODY, should ALWAYS separate the companies doing your domain registration and hosting. GoDaddy are legendary at giving you 24hrs, on the weekend, to fix a problem, or your account is toast. They certainly feel they are in the right, all the time. And express their position forcefully. Which you should expect. I don't use GoDaddy today apart from their expiring auctions. I don't trust their decision making. Because if I wasn't 1000% dedicated to being right, I would have lost 360 domains and my GoDaddy account. And probably I would not be a domainer today.

 

[Domains - Wanted]

Scary thread

 

[carob]

However, the issue is that I had some domains with them that I believe to be valuable. I will only be able to get these domains by buying them back when they expire (if not sold to someone else by then).

I would raise with ICANN the issue of Godaddy changing ownership of the domains. If the WHOIS shows your name you can force transfer even without access to your account
https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/registrars/standards-complaint-form
https://www.icann.org/compliance/complaint.


Does Godaddy have formal complaints procedure or an appeals procedure? Ask them, if they say no that in itself is useful evidence for later. Make sure they have stated a reason for their actions.

If Godaddy have an issue with a payment on a domain surely they would only freeze/repossess that domain?

What if you were a web developer or PR agency with client domains in your account?

 

[LordMomo]

https://postimg.org/image/f58ezxcsv/

^^this is the reason that I gave up on trying to get back my domains and instead decided to salvage as much money spent in the last 3 months as possible.

That is their response after I explained the entire situation with all documents resent. I also asked them again for the reason why my account is locked.

 

[Kenny]

Give the man a chance to do his job

Peace,
Cy

 

[BrandVenue]

Nice to see @Joe Styler explain however I am still confused.. OP stated that he only used his daughter's credit card to purchase whois protection for a domain. in that case why entire account with other domains was repossessed by GD? Why you couldn't give him option to transfer out his domains?

I understand you have said that ""We automatically refunded the purchases at the time we closed the account as I stated.""

Does it mean you refunded for all domains his account had? Or you refunded only the transaction of whois privacy protection which triggered fraud alert (which would be funny I guess).

I don't understand how refund for every domain in account would work. Suppose I transferred some very valuable domains to GD and some days later my entire account repossessed by GD for a fraudulent transaction and now I am entitled to have $10 transfer fee for each domains refunded to my account while GD possess my very valuable domains.

I hope @Joe Styler will clear this. If my account repossessed by GD for a a fraudulent transaction trigger, will I have an option to transfer out my valuable domains to another registrar or will I lose all my domains. What amount will you refund me if I don't get to transfer my domains. Thanks very much for your time.

 

[Kenny]

@Joe Styler
I think the question is, if ANY account gets locked for whatever reason, and the domains in the account get repossessed, do any domains that got transferred in from another reg house get repossessed as well, and if so, would the refund be reg fee on the transferred names or would you be able to transfer them out?
I think I said that right.

Peace,
Cyberian

Or, If an acct gets locked do all the domains get locked or only those in question.
Say I transferred in a 3L com years ago.... how do we deal with that?

 

[Joe Styler]

From what @Joe Styler said, repayment follows automatically. Nowadays, at least

Sounds above board and reasonable. Except it is not. Like many here, it seems, I remain not reassured about the safety of any assets entrusted to GoDaddy in the event of any "misunderstanding". I still don't understand what really transpired in @LordMomo's case. While I fully understand and respect both sides' need for discretion, this only serves to confuse me (and others here, I expect) further.

Well, here's my take away from this thread: it is GoDaddy policy to reposesses all assets in a client's account under any circumstances they deem suspicious. Conveniently for them, there are no clear rules governing such actions. The client is left with no recourse, except @Joe Styler's or other kind souls best efforts. The other avenues mentioned, like ICANN and the courts, don't merit serious consideration (read: very expensive and unlikely to resolve the issue within a short period of time measured in days). This is woefully inadequate and unsatisfactory. Hence best to keep interaction with GoDaddy to a minimum and deny them assets to reposess, by transferring-out any acquisitions post haste. Problem solved. Time to move on to other topics...

I'll answer you and @stub in one response. I am sorry to hear about what happened to @stub and think that we have refined our processes over time on fraud to be smarter. We are not all powerful, there are relatively free ways to complain such as ICANN, Verisign, BBB, local govt etc. We don't normally have that type of issue as in most cases we can work out the issue with the customer if it is legitimate and if not they are unlikey to pursue it with a third party complaint as it will result in a worse outcome for them. I can't honestly say this could never happen to a legitimate customer, we are human and make mistakes, but I have been here 11 years and can say they are very rare and there are options for people to pursue outside of us without paying for a lawyer. At the end of the day we work very hard to help and protect our customers and I can think of countless examples where we have gone above and beyond to do so at sometimes great expense to ourselves. Of course I am biased but I believe us to be a good company that has many people working together to help our customers succeed online and to protect their assets. We have recovered stolen domains for customers who have let others into their account through password sharing or phishing even though this is not an easy process. I have also seen us take a customers side against a foreign govt at potentially large losses for ourselves because we believe in protecting and helping our customers. There are many companies to choose from when registering domains and there are edge cases that can happen anywhere. Over the past decade I have seen large scale hacks, insiders taking advantage of their positions, bankruptcy, lawsuits, you name it from other registrars that had large scale impact on their customers. The grass isn't always greener. From what I have seen though I would want GoDaddy on my side protecting my assets and I feel safe with them with my most valuable domains because of the years of the reputation we have built by helping customers and what I have seen personally that is not always publicly reported.

 

[carob]

I would like to know what happens to the domains where Whois shows Cancelled by Godaddy.

Do Godaddy directly offer them for sale? Do they let them expire, so they enter their expiring domain sales process? Do they cancel them, so they become free without going through their expiring domain sales process? Or do they quietly renew them and passively take unsolicited offers on them?

If you close an account for any reason, the customer should be allowed to transfer away any domains not DIRECTLY connected to the reason for closing the account.

I agree with this. Which makes the forced change of Whois more significant. Because, as said, if it is your name in the Whois you can force transfer out as per ICANN rules even if you have no access to the account holding the name.

 

[Nerevar]

I will be staying in GoDaddy with over 1,000 names because I still think it is a very solid registrar. I think that the risk of losing domains is negligible, since if you make no haste, contact your rep, ask Joe Styler for help etc., you can resolve any issue. Delays are bad for business, but unless there is a holiday or event, it will not be a big delay. There are lots of domainers on this forum, and if they had really lost domains, I suppose we would know it by now.

However, if Joe Styler left this forum, I would perhaps reconsider my relationship with GoDaddy. This shows to me that GD has yet much to implement in terms of customer service.