I've just become yet another unfortunate victim of Godaddy's surreptitiously introduced '30-day expiry' policy.
A domain I registered at Godaddy 12 years ago was removed from my account after being put on Godaddy's auction site, and the whois shows renewal/ transfer is currently blocked (the URL itself states 'pending renewal or deletion').
As a long term member I was quite clear on the 42 day window policy and can't quite believe that this could be changed without telling us.
I am currently looking after a sick family member as well as a new-born which is why I was late in attempting to renew the domain - but that's okay I thought - after all, I can renew the domain until the 42nd day and pay the $80 'fine'.
I have searched every email sent to me by Godaddy and NOT A SINGLE communication informs me of this policy change of the reduced right to recover a domain from 42 days to 30 days.
I contacted Godaddy via phone and was told by the agent that after 14 days customers can't renew their domain AT ALL and he hadn't heard of more time than that being allowed. That doesn't seem correct either, so there's a lot of misinformation coming from Godaddy themselves.
Strangely, from what I understood on the call, it seems that the domain is apparently in processing and moving to some sort of Godaddy 'Premium domains' account - I assume for valuation by an employee.
The domain does not seem massively valuable so I assume that some metric such as age or similar has automatically triggered this selection for evaluation. Interestingly another domain registered at the exact same time is still available for recovery in my account.
I have around 220 domains parked at Godaddy over 3 accounts, with several of them registered on behalf of clients. Unfortunately the domain was indeed registered on behalf of a client and they are considering legal action - quite simply the last thing I need right now.
I've taken
@DanSanchez 's excellent advice and begun transferring names out to Namebright and will continue depending on whether or not I get anywhere with Godaddy - it seems unlikely at this point. They now seem more interested in their auction business than customers who simply register domains and pay renewals.
Godaddy are clearly happy to make fundamental changes to the domain process without considering the impact on customers. This is truly disappointing and an easily avoided situation if they simply sent all domain customers an email informing them of such changes.
I am sorry to hear that this happened to you. We made the change to 30 days quite some time ago. I know it was over a year ago but I do not recall the exact date off the top of my head. We did not send out a blast email to everyone but we did do many things in conjunction with this change to better alert people that they needed to take action to renew the domain.
While a .com had 42 days to renew other TLDs did not and while many people on this forum are very familiar with the ins and outs of each TLD and their various rules around registration and renewals, most every day customers are not. We picked 30 days for almost all domains because it could fit with most TLDs across the board as a standard renewal time. It is harder to explain to someone that this domain in your account can be renewed up to day 60, but this one is only until the very end of the month it expires in, and this one is good for 30 days, and this other one you have here is good for 42.
We also did extensive research and found that people who renewed late and wanted to keep the domain was something like less than 1% post day 14 or something. It has been a while so I don't remember the exact number but I know it was so small that we felt comfortable making the change. The number of people renewing and wanting to keep their domain between day 30-42 was REALLY small.
I'm sure that doesn't bring you much comfort at this point but it is to say we did not make the decision lightly and we still think that almost everyone who wants to keep their names is post expiration.
We didn't do an email blast like you said, but we did make many concerted changed to make people aware of the expiration. We want people to renew their domains with us so we try really hard to make sure they do.
We start by alerting you 90 days out that your domain is expiring. We send emails to the shopper account information - the email on the account at 90,60,30,15, and 10 days prior to expiration. With 5 days left until expiration we email the shopper account email AND the registrant on the WHOIS.
1 day after expiration we park the nameservers, so if there was an active site on the domain it should stop resolving. We do that to get your attention. We used to do this later in the expiration process. We moved it up when we changed to 30 days vs. 42 days for the .com to get people's attention. We also changed the wording on the emails we send customers when the domain is going to expire letting them know they will lose the domain. We changed the language on those emails to alert you to the fact that the domain would be lost.
On Day 4 after expiration we send emails to the shopper email AND the registrant email again to say your name expired you are going to lose it.
On Day 5 we email the shopper and registrant again. We also, and this is new as well as of the change, stop all DNS for the domain. So if you were not using it for a site but only for email or something else, it won't work anymore for anything. We basically break all the DNS except the parked page that says this name expired you need to renew it. This is to get anyone's attention who is using the domain in any way that something is wrong. At this point in the process now, almost anyone who wants to keep their domain contacts us and renews it because of all the emails and the fact that the domain doesn't work right anymore. This was our goal in making the changes in concert with the 30 day expiration change. We want people who want to keep their domain to know it is expired and to renew it.
If you still didn't renew and you are in the US and Canada, on days 6-7 after expiration we call you on your account phone number and leave you messages saying your domain is expired and you need to renew it now.
10 days after it expired we send more emails.
Here is an example of an old email for an expired domain I got in 2016.
The subject line is: For immediate review: DISCOUNTDESKTOP.COM expired
Joe Styler, you have expired domains.
===========================================================
YOUR DOMAINS HAVE EXPIRED
===========================================================
------------------------------------------------------
Special Message
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Dear Joe Styler,
The domain(s) below expired on June 07, 2016. If you want to renew your domain(s), take care of it before June 18, 2016 or you may incur an additional $60.00 fee.
For further information about Domain Renewals or Cancelled Domains, review the Domain Registration Agreement: (link to my agreement)
DISCOUNTDESKTOP.COM
Renews: 6/7/2016
Renewal Rate†: $8.29/yr**
Privacy - Yes
Add FREE Auto Renew: (links to my account to renew my domain I removed)
Renew Now:
Here is a recent one I got in December 2018:
The subject is: Renew your expired products before you lose them.
Urgent Notice
Some of your products have expired.
You should renew the things you want to keep as soon as possible or they'll get canceled for good (this may have happened already). Need to set up a new payment method first?
Read this help article.
Let's get back what we can.
1.
Go to
godaddy.com/renewals or click
View Expired Products below.
2.
Select what you'd like to keep and turn on
Auto-Renew to avoid future cancellations.
3.
Continue to cart and complete your purchase.
View Expired Products
Products at risk
.AGENCY Domain Renewal
.AGENCY
Expires:
12/13/2018
Add FREE Auto Renew:
Add Now
Term:
1 Year
Total:
$16.17**
We changed the wording to make it more clear that this is urgent and you will lose your domains if you don't renew.
I am not giving you all this information to make a case that you should have known. I am just trying to point out the steps we took, and do take to make it as clear as possible that you will lose your domain if you do not renew. We really want people to keep their domains.
If you reach out to me in a private message with the domain I can see if there is anything we can do to help you recover the domain with our domain buy service agents or anything else we might be able to offer.