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

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Thank you for your time and help clarifying Joe, is truly appreciated

 

[Kenny]

@anantj,

I amended that before you posted.
Please amend yours.

Peace,
Cyberian

 

[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.

 

[anantj]

@anantj,

I amended that before you posted.
Please amend yours.

Peace,
Cyberian

Done!

 

[deez007]

@Joe Styler - Thanks for the detailed update. As far as you being trustworthy and extremely credible there is no doubt there what so ever.

The concern I had was regarding the initial response from the support team. I mentioned as well IF the op's story checks out then surely the support guys should not have responded like that. After reading your reply it appears that there is more to the story and its not just a simple case of him using his daughter's credit card that raised a few red flags.

Just to clarify though, if it was just a case of him using his daughter's credit card then his account would not have been suspended, right? Basically what I am asking is, are we allowed to use someone else's credit card without having to worry about our account being suspended? (I always use Paypal payments but just asking for future reference -better to know than not know and end up in a situation like this)

 

[Joe Styler]

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

In most cases you won't trigger anything. If you are buying from us you shouldn't have any problems and if you do for some reason as I said it is normally easy enough to work out.

 

[Mister Funsky]

Tried to edit my earlier post but unable to. Just to clarify, my post was written before/as Joe posted his response and mine was posted without reading his. It does seem there was more than one issue with the account so freezing may have been justified until clarifications were made. I still have a hundred or so names with daddy and have had no problems lately...just finding better pricing at other registrars. May we all sell a domain today at our full asking price!

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler - Thanks for the detailed update. As far as you being trustworthy and extremely credible there is no doubt there what so ever.

The concern I had was regarding the initial response from the support team. I mentioned as well IF the op's story checks out then surely the support guys should not have responded like that. After reading your reply it appears that there is more to the story and its not just a simple case of him using his daughter's credit card that raised a few red flags.

Just to clarify though, if it was just a case of him using his daughter's credit card then his account would not have been suspended, right? Basically what I am asking is, are we allowed to use someone else's credit card without having to worry about our account being suspended? (I always use Paypal payments but just asking for future reference -better to know than not know and end up in a situation like this)

I buy domains for my wife's business and my dad etc in my account and they have different billing addresses and names etc and I have never had an issue. This isn't because I work here either, if you are using someone else's card they may ask the other person to say it is ok but there would be more factors than just that in itself that would cause an issue.

 

[deez007]

I buy domains for my wife's business and my dad etc in my account and they have different billing addresses and names etc and I have never had an issue. This isn't because I work here either, if you are using someone else's card they may ask the other person to say it is ok but there would be more factors than just that in itself that would cause an issue.

Most excellent, thanks for the clarity on that.

 

[Nerevar]

@deez007 - they can still lock you out When I was a beginner domainer, GD locked me out of my account for every new credit card that I used (and all cards were on my name). I had to provide a photo / scan of the card every time.

 

[deez007]

@deez007 - they can still lock you out When I was a beginner domainer, GD locked me out of my account for every new credit card that I used (and all cards were on my name). I had to provide a photo / scan of the card every time.

Lol.. I think they just wanted a pic of you :P

Getting locked out and them requesting identity verification is understandable...I think it's probably a case of being rather safe than sorry... as long as the account is not shut down or permanently suspended

 

[LordMomo]

Hi Joe, as always thanks for the response.

I believe you could be correct about the refund vs chargeback story as although the bank said that it was finalized a few days ago, it only was transferred into my account yesterday. Could have been a clearing delay issue.

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

This is my concern as well, as I am unaware of any red flags that I knowingly caused.

I will look at your PM now and correspond with you there as I understand your concern with sharing your detection techniques with the general internet.

As always, just hoping this can be resolved.

Momo

 

[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.

 

[LordMomo]

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.

Just to confirm, as far as I know, only the final transaction was automatically refunded. The rest of my transactions over the last 3 months may have been refunded automatically or through the chargeback. Inconclusive

Your concern over the value of domains is also understandable. My transactions over the last 3 months were all hand regs and pre-registration purchases so nothing too major

 

[BrandVenue]

Just to confirm, as far as I know, only the final transaction was automatically refunded. The rest of my transactions over the last 3 months may have been refunded automatically or through the chargeback. Inconclusive

Your concern over the value of domains is also understandable. My transactions over the last 3 months were all hand regs and pre-registration purchases

Can you please share if your other domains were purchased from GD (from hand register or via auction)?

If those repossessed domains were bought from GD platform then I assume they can easily refund the amount they charged your cards.

But I am wondering what happens when I transfer my domains to GD. If I transfer $1K valued domain to GD and the repossession happens I can only think that GD will refund me $10 transfer fee. Nothing else.

 

[LordMomo]

All domains at GD were purchased at GD so thankfully I don't have that issue

 

[Kenny]

Can you please share if your other domains were purchased from GD (from hand register or via auction)?

If those repossessed domains were bought from GD platform then I assume they can easily refund the amount they charged your cards.

But I am wondering what happens when I transfer my domains to GD. If I transfer $1K valued domain to GD and the repossession happens I can only think that GD will refund me $10 transfer fee. Nothing else.

@Joe Styler
This is a legit question.

Peace,
Cyberian

 

[Joe Styler]

@Joe Styler
This is a legit question.

Peace,
Cyberian

All purchases in the account were suspicious and being watched already this last one was the straw that broke the camel's back. A transfer in of names etc would not necessitate us closing an account, normally if there is a payment issue we only deal with that one item.

 

[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]

@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?

It's hard to say hypothetically what would happen. The facts are that an account being checked further for suspicious activity is rare, most payments are fine and we have a strong team of people who have seen a lot of things over the past 19 years so they have a pretty good idea of whats out of the norm. Even then we do not normally lock a whole account we deal with the one receipt that has an issue. We can normally straighten that out. If someone has their whole account banned there is a bigger issue and it wasn't sorted out to our satisfaction. This is rare and the only other times I have seen something like this is when customers were abusing coupon codes that said you could only use them once per account. That didn't happen here but I bring it up to say it is unusually rare in most cases and even then you have an option to straighten things out. We hold the domains that are repossessed for 6 months as a standard procedure to give the customer time to work it out.
There are of course other avenues to get your names back such as versign, icann, court, etc during those six months but again, I am not aware of any time those avenues have been pursued because if there is a legitimate complaint we can normally straighten it out before things get to that point. We are in the business of helping customers succeed online and not needlessly stopping anyone from doing business or taking their products. It is simply not good business and would not be tolerated for long. If anything I have seen us incur costs as a company by being overly lenient in questionable cases (say a credit card later turns out to be stolen that was used) that then go against us rather than hurting our customers and not giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Sorry for the long answer. Hypothetically yes we could ban a whole account but realistically this is not something we make a practice of doing even when we wind up being wronged. It conflicts with our goal of trying to help people succeed online in their small business to be overly protective. We do however want a safe experience for all customers who participate in our marketplace. We also have people like myself or your account representative etc to advocate for the customer and work things out.

 

[Kenny]

I think that pretty much covers it.
Thanks Joe for the detailed explanation.
I've been a GD customer since '02 and have never once had any issues in any way, shape, or form.

Peace,
Cy

 

[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.

 

[Name Trader]

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have survived this episode

And I had done absolutely nothing wrong!

 

[Name Trader]

Repayment isn't a satisfactory compensation

I was never offered this option either. Just closed my account without any discussion about being repayed.

 

[Name Trader]

I just noticed I mispelled Joe's name. It's @Joe Styler. Please read my 3 messages above.