Fed up with GoDaddy

[user-7256]

I've been a customer with GoDaddy for a while now - about 5 or 6 years I suppose. I remember when their site still looked like this: http://web.archive.org/web/20030401091726/www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp?e=com

Their new marketing ploy of using women to attract business - in almost EVERY aspect of their operations - is bothering me. Without knowing him, I wonder if he has any morals and is just letting his money, wealth, and fame go to his head and to his business. We've heard all the horror stories of how they treat their customers. I haven't had the greatest time with them either.

But as far as morals go... you see this on their site now:

Anger Management --
-- "Go Daddy Girl" Style.
CAUTION: MATURE CONTENT!

8 years ago, they would have never done this - it wouldn't have even been acceptable.

What does this have to do with their business? Their market? Do they even know what kind of impression they are setting?

I wrote a letter through their "Send us a comment" form - which, by the way, took me forever to find - and I'm sure this will get tossed away after getting a sincere-looking auto response like "We can't read your letter because we're understaffed and don't really care, but hey - you wasted your time on OUR site. That's all we want."

Dear GoDaddy,

I've been a customer with you for about 5 or 6 years now I think. I needed to register a domain, and a good family member recommended me to your services for cheap costs, powerful domain management tools, and a reliable network. It is something I appreciated. The security of my work was in your hands. A seemingly good company was powering my website's domain.

Now, I'm in the process of transferring all my domains away from you.

I was impressed with the robust atmosphere of your website, the "power at my fingertips", so to speak, to do my domain business easily and with security. But since 2002, your site has become difficult to use: cluttered, and unorganized. I could smell it coming to this point by about 2005.

Another thing that bothers me is how you've handled some rather "media-potent" situations in the past with various customers. A variety of little fiascoes from locking them out of their accounts and transferring their domains away or shutting down their websites without legal jurisdiction or warning (sorry - you did give this one guy about 90 seconds) all adds into the lack of good, personable customer support I never got with you. The responses are artificial, your emails are not uniform, and besides that - they're ugly - they begin to mimic your site.

Finally, the issue that bothers me the most comes to light. Your little marketing ploys since about 2005 involving "Indy Car Star" models and presenting your CEO, Bob Parsons, as a "cool" man - trying to do nothing, it would seem, but please the world with his "such esteemed" wealth, advice, and general "popularity" image. He's played the "I'm a pimp" card by his appearance, blog/website, actions, and the focus of these models in your media.

I am appalled to see "Anger Management, -- 'Go Daddy Girl' Style. CAUTION: MATURE CONTENT!" warnings on your homepage. You sell domains! You sell website tools and SSL certificates. You sell business-oriented, website-related services. You are not an outlet for adult material!

Well, you weren't anyway...

I don't mean to be a typical "prude" but how far will your super bowl commercials get you? A bunch of drunk, overweight, white males watching the game - those that fall for your lure of flattery and erotic images - as customers?

What type of market are you serving? Are you short of male customers? Men like savings, security, and powerful features. These are appropriate and moral supplements to your services that you SHOULD be marketing, not sticking them in the corners where they don't fit.

The way you and your CEO highlight demoralizing content is not only an unfortunate indicator of how low you guys have gone, but also bad business practice. I don't want to see an Indy Car star model wearing a jacket with your logo on it. I know what your logo looks like. I want to see why I should use you guys instead.

Thank you for taking the time to read this - hopefully you did, anyway. I would not expect to get a partially sincere auto-response. But I would expect better of your CEO, management, customer support, and website maintenance team.

My business here is done.
-Matthew Holt
www.mwholt.com

 

[Ronald Regging]

I get cheap regs and no hassles, thats why I use them. Though I will agree, their customer service sucks, but I haven't had to use it very often. I buy domains, sell domains, transfer domains, change nameservers, etc... Basic stuff that requires no involvement from them.

As long as I can keep doing those things, I don't have any complaints. Except, if they are going to sell sex, they definitely need to hire some better looking girls.

 

[Ross]

I didn't see any explicit content at all. Nothing more than what you see on a daily basis on TV.

Plus studies have proven that someone is more willing to spend money or take a chance after being aroused or seeing "explicit" pictures. If you go look on ebay you will see some pictures on there with hot women and the domain name over her. Honestly i have done this and seen bids on names that are HORRIBLE!

Marketing ploy... i think so.

 

[Hurley4540]

I didn't see any explicit content at all. Nothing more than what you see on a daily basis on TV.

Exactly, so what if they show pictures of girls? You see them all the time on TV, whats it matter if they have tv commercials that are "mature only" yet show nothing.

 

[Michael]

I didn't see anything explicit either.

 

[Rubber Duck]

You must have joined Go-Daddy about the same time as me. I think I quit a few months later. Couldn't haul myself through all those Ad Pop-ups everytime I need to reg something. Not that they did IDN until recently anyway. The Godaddy experience was a bit like travelling through space in suspended animation. Fortunately my pod burst so end up wandering around the mother ship trying to work out where we were all heading.

 

[FX]

None of the other registrars need to do what Godaddy do just to get a sale

Good for you mholt for sending in that letter

 

[Michael]

None of the other registrars need to do what Godaddy do just to get a sale

Good for you mholt for sending in that letter

I wonder if that's why Godaddy is so much more mainstream than every other registrar. They are three times bigger than eNom, which is the second largest registrar.

I'm not saying taking the low road with their "sex sells" marketing strategy is OK, just playing devils advocate.

 

[namenut]

Though I empathize with your feelings I see it as more and more an acceptable approach by marketing across the board in corp. America. Women have become the safe bet. Politically and socially they are a growing presence and with a more vocal opinion. Look at the nightly news, the sport center programs etc .... women dominate the landscape of public viewing.

"Bob P." does seem to have an affinity for attractive women. But I would wager he has an even greater affinity for profits. Demographics say a pretty woman is desired by the bulk of consumers. We (consumer) like to see a pretty face and nice body holding our products in a sexy way.

The smaller percentile, of consumer opinion, such as your self (and mine) are a small enough number to ignore for now.

Having two daughters, a grand daughter and sister, I can admit to being a bit hyper sensitive to sexist content and campaigns. Being a "Man" I enjoy classy seduction, innuendo or connotations as long as it's in a "pleasant and dignified" manner.

Namenut

 

[soggyindo]

IMO the model or whatever stuff just looks tacky, and the racing car stuff just seems pretty random. i'm not sure how much crossover there is with a soft porn huntin, car racin, domain reggin crowd.



the popup stuff is a pain too - however it's handy to have names there as everyone likes the free push thing.

 

[Spade]

None of the other registrars need to do what Godaddy do just to get a sale

Good for you mholt for sending in that letter

Yet, none of the other registrars is growing as fast, or competing as strong.

Truth is simple. Sex Sells. You dont have to like it, You have a choice. But as mature adults you can let sex be the issue, or you can enjoy the quality product at the quality price and look past it.

 

[user-7256]

I didn't see anything explicit either.

I'm sorry you are disappointed. :D

Aside from all their other issues, I just kind of wonder why GoDaddy's going down this road. Call me elitist, but I think that using "attractive" (ugh?) women as lures is a derogatory practice, and I prefer to do business with non-degrading companies. If a company lacks certain morals, how "low" will they go with other non-moral issues, such as ethics, pricing, reliability, and customer support?

Anyway, I haven't seen improvements from them in the past years. I'm getting away from them before they go downhill much more.

<joke>Sex appeal, Domains ... correlation? Domains are sexy... what? Yeah, that's a great message to send about. </joke>

 

[Timewarp]

Personally Im a big fan of GoDaddy, Hot Racecar Drivers and Beautiful Women in general, no complaints here.

 

[Epic]

They could advertise with mentally challenged gophers for all I care. As long as the price is right I'll still buy from them.

 

[GF]

I'm in love with Danica Patrick. That's why my 600 domains are with Go Daddy.

 

[JayJay]

That was a well written letter I agree with you 100%. The problem is it doesnt really matter, in the end, they know how to get peoples attention and they used it to their advantage. Most domainers are men and most men want to see women on everything, it makes them happy. Happy entertained customers = good customers = more profit

 

[Rob J]

The 40 or so sales pitches they throw at you every time you try to renew or register is very freaking annoying. I usually only take pushed domains at GoDaddy now, and if they're keepers i'll transfer them away, and that's definately a part of it. I don't mind someone trying to upsell once in awhile, i've worked in sales, but seriously what they do is just plain insulting.

The other, bigger reason I don't use GoDaddy is they're sleazy scammers like way too many of the big shooters in this business and I don't trust them one bit.

 

[Hurley4540]

yeah he wrote a nice little letter but godaddy isnt going to change for a lot of people for him :x

 

[nicedomains]

... Though I will agree, their customer service sucks, but I haven't had to use it very often.

I have never had a problem with their customer service. In fact, I have called their customer service line dozens of times and each time the customer service representative was quite helpful and we resolved my issues every occasion. Also, I have never waited on hold for more than 2-3 minutes (I sat on hold for 15 minutes while contacting enom just yesterday and my problem was not even resolved).

Back to the topic. While your issue has to do with morality, I see no real problems with their marketing strategies. I have never gone to their site and seen anything that offended me or anything that I think would even offend my mom if she were to log on. The only real problem I encountered is when I went searching for explicit content after reading this post I found that Amanda Beard was wearing a one piece swimsuit in her videos instead of a much preferred bikini! :td:

 

[oblongpeg]

My father was pretty high up in the advertising industry here in Australia.

He has always said, as do others, that there is only 2 types of advertising. Really good, or really bad. The rest simply don't get talked about.

All that matters is that people remember the ad and discuss it and comment about it to others. Another form of word of mouth.

I remember years ago a well known ad guru in Australia ran some of the worst ads ever seen on tv, and sent 100 people out on the morning and afternoon buses and trains for weeks to measure the effect. People everywhere were talking about the terrible SOANDSO ads on the tele. The name of that company was embedded in peoples minds.

Their bottom line went up by over 500% within 3 months of those ads screening.

My point?

We are now talking about Godaddy, not any of the other domain registrars merely because of ad campaign.

Their name is again in posts for the bots.

Their ads work.

Re the ads. I don't take much notice of the ads but I did have a look at it after seeing this thread I in my opinion, there are a lot more offensive ads out there than that.

I wonder how many people did have a look after seeing the warning of mature content.