I need some help with serious GoDaddy/Afternic issue!

[indiegrind]

I'm extremely pissed off right now.

Yesterday morning I randomly got an email that a domain I own was canceled from my GoDaddy account.

This happens sometimes when a domain is sold through afternic. Domain is just moved from my account and I get that email, then get the afternic domain sold email a few hours later. This time, a day later I never got a sold email. The domain was not due to expire and I didn't see anything in my afternic account.

Today I call my GoDaddy account rep, she looks into it. And finds out my domain sold apparently through afternic.

She reaches out to someone,don't know who, but eventually find out that someone else listed the domain in afternic for $295 dollars and it sold, and was moved out of my GoDaddy account via fast transfer.

This was a domain I wouldn't have sold for less than high 4 figures. Anyway, they let someone sell it who didn't even own it and took it out of my account, and I imagine preparing to pay the other person.

I was on the phone for about an hour trying to get to the bottom of this and get it resolved.

My GoDaddy rep comes back and tells me I need to contact afternic. So I do. On the phone and back and forth on hold about another 45 minutes. Then after talking to the afternic legal department, afternic rep came back with someone from legal on the line and told me I need to go back to GoDaddy, because afternic isn't the registrar and have them escalate the situation.

I bought the domain at GoDaddy expiring auction in September. Never even listed it through afternic myself. Afternic sold it through someone's listing who wasn't the owner and GoDaddy took it out of my account.


Now I can't get it resolved and being sent around in a circle to get my domain that was taken.

Who do I need to talk to to get this resolved. I do not have time nor should I need to get runaround about this!


Already had an extremely frustrating day at my main job, then had to spend a couple of hours on this and got nowhere and sent in a complete circle.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

Happy to hear that you got your domain back.

This is a larger problem that applies to every domainer who use GoDaddy/Afternic platform.

Do they have any system in place to deactivate fast transfer as soon as a domain ownership changes?
In some Registrars like Dynadot we can disable fast transfer within the domain management page - similar option needs to be introduced in GoDaddy.

I believe Namecheap does the same too and even when 10 or less days left to expiration, they disable the fast transfer.

 

[Sutruk]

In some Registrars like Dynadot we can disable fast transfer within the domain management page - similar option needs to be introduced in GoDaddy.

This is a basic feature that should be obvious and mandatory for every registrar.
It should be mandatory at least to show what domains on your registrar account are opted for fast transfer, if any. And also the option to opt out.

 

[indiegrind]

Not as of now, but I am extremely tied up at work and can't keep disrupting my day with this to call afternic.

 

[bmugford]

Joe, the drama continues. I still did not add this domain to my account, but it apparently was moved over with the same BIN and sold again.

Dear _,

Congratulations, pending financial verification depositcrypto.com has sold through the Afternic network.

This is a courtesy notification. As the domain owner, you will receive a detailed email outlining the steps needed to transfer this domain to the buyer.

If you no longer own this domain and did not update your Afternic portfolio, please call us immediately as we will be forced to void the sale.

As always, personalized assistance is only a call away: +1.781.839.7990

Best Regards,
Afternic Transaction Assurance

Umm...

 

[Sutruk]

There are a lot of benefits. One of the top ones is that opting in gives your domains a much better chance of selling as much as 2-1 over non opted in domains. The amount of network partners who show your domain and as a result the number of end users who see it increases dramatically. https://www.afternic.com/sell-domains explains some of the benefits. 25 million to 75 million potential end user views a month is a big difference as one example.

Thanks for the response Joe.
I have no doubt of the benefits of the Fast Transfer network, as it is clearly wider than the normal network.

What I say, is that you can set up the same network without having to push immediately the domain to another registrar. At least at registrars with the option of approving and speeding up the transfer at the domain owner's side, like Godaddy and many others have.

The buyer will just need to wait even less than 1 day to get the domain, after domain owner sends the Auth Code and approve the tranfer. And doing this everybody will be sure the domain owner is aware of the sale and aware of the domain transfer to other registrar, as he will need to approve the transfer at his registrar.

 

[capybara]

For names registered at GoDaddy at least, you could in theory include the Afternic username of the person who requested the listing, in that email.

They don't need to "include it in email" in a form of text or message of some kind, they need to have the approval action code login-dependant, with the username that has the domain. If user is already logged in with the default browser and the domain is with their username, it happens in just a single click. If user is not logged in, they have to log in first, and after login there is an attempt to do the approval action, which is a success only if the username matches the user, otherwise the warning should be issued both for the user and the staff so they could look into why the domain is listed with somebody else.

That is general security practice for email-based actions. Even a very small online store is likely going to have you log in first before showing "your order history" through an email link.

 

[Joe Styler]

We are considering several options in conjunction with each other to help customers solve for this various DNS changes would help such as txt records or nameservers.

 

[HotKey]

I've crossed bugs that make this look like a pimple compared to Mt Everest. I was forced to pay for auctions I didn't bid on .. I was then able to give a detailed report in how to duplicate the bug .. the end result .. NO action .. NO fix .. and a polite reminder that if I didn't pay for the domains (that I didn't bid on) that I would be banned from their auctions platform. But even that is nothing .. there was stuff that likely cost domainers literally countless millions of dollars in auctions. What's worse is that I'll continue to say GoDaddy isn't evil and they are NOT doing this on purpose.

Not really a pimple, Ategy, more like a tumor. Having a domain taken from your account is pretty much the Mt. Everest of fear of climbing.

But what you do you mean you were "forced" to pay for auctions you didn't participate in? At first glance that makes as much sense as a pickled pudding palindrome. I'm sure there's more to the story..

 

[BrandCollectors.com]

previous owner was BuyDomains.com?

 

[indiegrind]

In my case, it could be that the person who listed my domain was a prior owner who never flushed out their expired domains from their domain list/spreadsheet/database. But the list would have been 4+ years old.

But in any case, whether it is by mistake or done with criminal intentions, it is a huge security hole that has a solution that is easy technically, but a pain when dealing with so many external registrars.

At minimum this should be offered at GoDaddy and made available to registrar partners since the fix is trivial (to stop the issue from propagating).

There are 3 parts that consist of patching the problem to prevent new cases and identifying incorrect listings.

1. Patch the fix at GoDaddy/Afternic (small effort - only allow afternic listings to be approved by GoDaddy that are related to pre-authorized Afternic accounts)
2. Allow registrars to patch the issue via their API (small effort - just sending the Afternic account info with each domain approval. If I add my Afternic account/unique identifier at Epik, optionally send me an approval email)
3. Come up with a process to backflush the data at GoDaddy/Afternic to ensure domains are not listed by the wrong Afternic account. (Medium effort, but can be fixed by individual domain investors. For example, once the patch fixes are in place above, I would just go through all my accounts and ensure the domains I expect to be listed in Afternic, are actually in Afternic.)

All of those sound like common sense safeguards that should have been implemented before the fast transfer even went live with GoDaddy and any other registrar partners.

 

[indiegrind]

I'm still waiting on some response, and a couple of people have reached out to their contacts on my behalf which I am very grateful for.

But I am still waiting for some response.

 

[indiegrind]

Its again listed by someone?

Show attachment 156714

Ugh, I still didn't list it, but it was obviously moved to my account now.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

Joe, the drama continues. I still did not add this domain to my account, but it apparently was moved over with the same BIN and sold again.

Dear _,

Congratulations, pending financial verification depositcrypto.com has sold through the Afternic network.

This is a courtesy notification. As the domain owner, you will receive a detailed email outlining the steps needed to transfer this domain to the buyer.

If you no longer own this domain and did not update your Afternic portfolio, please call us immediately as we will be forced to void the sale.

As always, personalized assistance is only a call away: +1.781.839.7990

Best Regards,
Afternic Transaction Assurance

Is it again moved from your GD account?

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

This would be comical if it wasn't so damn frustrating. Another email.

Hello Roderick,



Congrats again on your sale! I'll be handling this transaction moving forward. Please login to your Afternic.com account and under the 'My Domain Sales' header, click directly on this domain to see the information needed to push this GoDaddy.com account registered domain to us. We can then start the ownership transfer and once that transfer has completed, we will proactively deliver your payment.


The transfer process is time sensitive so please provide this info as soon as possible. Let me know if you have any questions or issues with the information and/or push.




Thank you,

Steven B

Afternic Transaction Assurance

On the bright side, they did not move it by themselves. Either way, this is not looking good.

 

[sircc]

A third, unique, identifying nameserver could work, no? Dan.com are using this method to validate ownership now.

 

[pteracuda]

I just know that Godaddy sucks. When I first signed up I got a package with unlimited emails, was suppose to be a year hosting plan with option of renewing but very shortly after purchasing and starting to build my website, Godaddy stripped that from my account telling me it never existed to begin with despite the disappearing emails.

Had numerous scam calls which I complained about for 2 years, and Godaddy finally just states recently they'll redact whois info to help combat this (too little too late in my opinion).

Had Godaddy cut my domain reseller profits, while promising new software and never providing it.

Godaddy is one of the absolute worst. I've moved most all my domains away from there. They charge more, they steal all the time from me.

The fact you are here claiming someone stole from you, and Godaddy is mentioned, is not at all a surprise to me because they have stolen a lot from me that I've paid them for too.

 

[pteracuda]

Even had a supervisor on the phone one day making threats to change my personal information in my account. Godaddy is the absolute worst, if you're looking for trustworthy.