This morning I got up to check my email and to my surprise it said invalid login name or password and so I was startled because I havnt changed my password or any settings to that matter lately. So I gave them a call to see what happend, now my usual service with GoDaddy has been excellent. This conversation turned me against them.
Me: hi, I have a problem with my email.
Godaddy: Ok, let me look in your account.
Then all the login info etc went on. And finally we got to here:
Godaddy:It seems that your domain expired on 5/11 of this year.
Me:Ok thats weird I thought I had set it on auto renew.
Godaddy: Yes you did but we tried the card and something went wrong.
Me: The card is fine so im not sure what the problem is.
Then we talked about the card and aparently something happend that they "dont know".
Me: So what do I need to do to fix this?
Godaddy: Your domain has been carried over to the registry department and we charge a $80 fee to reclaim your domain.
Me: I was like O MY GOD ARE YOU PEOPLE INSANE? **I was already mad at this point
So we argued a few minutes and he said im sorry but your going to have to pay the fee to regain access to your email and your account. So I was very upset and I needed my email so I said whatever go ahead. So we went through the process and the total was like $90.19. And as a young designer I dont have alot of money to just give up like that. So Im very unhappy with them and am looking for another hosting/domain service. Any suggestions?

Well I would have argued a lot further lol! I would have simply refused!

yes. I normally do but its like they had my email and hosting hostage. lol. if I didnt pay I wouldnt get my hosting and at like midnight tonight all my email is gone. and I would have to wait for it to go through again. er

I had the same thing for one of my domains.. I cost me quite a bit to regain the domain.. thank God it was for a community that helped me out..

It's too bad they didn't contact you to let you know there was a problem with the credit card. My host will notify the client and me (administrator). So even if the client's email changes, I get an email notification. Seems that's the least they could have done.

Gosh people change credit cards all the time, they need to have a better plan in place.

I agree. Theres not much I can do now. I thought about calling the number again and ask for a manager and threaten to do what I posted but I didn't. haha. Would have been funny. But ya.

I think you should of phoned up a legal charity or the U.S equivilent of trading standards to see where you stand. If everything you have said is true then the following has happened.

- You have set your domain to auto renew
- You have a valid card with valid details
- GoDaddy had an error on their part.
- GoDaddy did not inform you of his error
- GoDaddy charged you an extortionate fee to give you back something you already had.

The first thing you should do is call up again. Speak to a manager, explain the situation and tell him that you expect to be refunded. If you feel that you cannot do this then get your dad or someone with a track record of defeating call centres. (I let my dad make certain calls for me as he speaks to them in a way that I cannot)

If these facts are all correct then I highly recommend that you contact trading standards. In the UK we have a program called watchdog. They expose bad business practice on TV. It might be worth a punt informing GoDaddy that you have been asked to be part of a program about hosting companies and bad practices. Say in a subtle way that you will not be on this show if they refund what they took.

The US will take this as a fraud case more than likely.. hey are jsut getting money out of you and if you push it no matter how olf you are they would eventually have to pay ur refund back AND your court costs... Possible get tehm shut down, HAHA.. I hate godaddy. I cannot fin anotehr domain serivce tehrefore i'm stuck with godaddy. I literally hate the business.

I like Jason's idea.

Call them back and speak to the calmly about the situation.
Don't get mad because that is not going to reap you much rewards. Speak to a manager now that the dust has cleared and find out what happened. See if you can't get the $80 refunded. If it was GoDaddy's fault in not contacting you about the problem with your credit card, then they should be more than willing to refund you. If in fact it was an error on your part, at least you would know in the future how to avoid this.

Check terms and conditions on the Auto Renew first!

Even if everything is valid they could have a clause claiming no responsibility as no money was used to purchase anything. It was just a 'Feature'

yeah.. they probably have some stupid fineprint..

No one reads terms and conditions. If there is a clause which allow's them to get away with what they have supposedly done here then the terms would conflict with the service which they are offering.

I would expect them to have a no liability clause. Fair enough, but charging someone to renew a domain because of an error on their part should result in this charge being refunded. 

With most providers, if you do not auto renew, the domain is released and it is a case of snapping it back up again for the normal registration fee before someone else gets it. Godaddy appears to register it themselves after you and charge you to buy it back. This isn't on if it was their error which led to you loosing the domain in the first place.

If all else fails threaten them with court action. The threat alone should make them back down for several reasons.
- Bad publicity
- Too much at stake if they lose. It would set a presidence for similar case's and they would be handing out refunds to everyone that this has happened to.

Well I called back asked for a supervisor and he was dead set with no refund. I told him my situation and he said that they sent three emails but I looked and I didnt receive those emails. Its not my fault that they cant get my working card to go through. Ah this makes me so mad. Because thats a big charge for something I didnt even do. I told him a was a member here and I was posting about this bad experience and he said that hes sorry I feel this way but its my faul and I argued saying that it was his but still nothing. I even said ill talk to my lawyer and go from there and he said go ahead. He said that the emails were just courtesy and it was my responsibility to check and make sure my domain was up to date and to my knowledge it was I still had email and my site one month after it had expired. I dont want to give up but I dont know where to go from here. If they have record of those three emails then I cant say anything. Yesterday when I was talking to them the guy had to send several emails before I got even one of the same message. So I think they had a catch in their system.

Well you tried. That's probably the best you can do. It's unfortunate but that's probably as far as you can go. Not worth getting a lawyer involved over $90.

Ya very true. Just cut my losses and never use them again ;]. and i told them i would give them a bad report on here and he had a smart ellic response so yes... NO ONE EVER EVER USE GODADDY OR EVEN GO TO THEIR SITE. THEY ARE CROOKS AND PENNY PINCHING PEOPLE. DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT USE GODADDY FOR HOSING OR DOMAINS I DONT CARE HOW CHEAP THEY ARE! that should get the message across ;]

Your domain expired and after 30 days went into the "Redemption Period". To get a domain back from redemption most registries (Verisign for .COM) charge a redemption fee. Most registrars (GoDaddy in your case) pass on this fee to the customer (along with an administrative fee, as reclaiming a redemption domain is usually a manual process). $80 is actually quite reasonable compared to some of the redemption fees I've paid over the years (I paid nearly $200 to redeem one particular domain).

Regarding your problems with Auto-renew, your first mistake is having your administrative email address using the same domain as the domain itself. Here is what likely happened:

Your renewal date came up.
GoDaddy attempted to renew your domain, but there was some sort of payment issue (mostly their problem, not yours)
Most registrars will re-try payment several times over the next few days.
For whatever reason, the re-attempts didn't go through either.
By now your domain is officially expired.
DNS likely stops resolving (except for anything cached).
GoDaddy tries to send an email to your administrative contact, but your domain's expired, your email doesn't resolve anymore and the message never gets delivered.

It's a scenario that isn't unique to GoDaddy.

But I think the e-mail should've been sent BEFORE the domain got expired. What's the point sending it afterwards? I agree that there's no point involving a lawyer over such a small amount of money. Too bad things went like this for you.

If this is the mistake then you are in trouble and the fault rests with you. You should always have a separate e-mail. Otherwise you are uncontactable by company. This is probably what happened here. If you had another account. Say GMail then you would have got the messages and this wouldn't have happened. Unlucky I know but live and learn I guess.

He said that the emails were sent before and after the domain was expired. I have no idea why I never got them or what happend. But I just cut my losses and start again.

And no that wasnt my mistake on the email.

This post has been edited by mv08jml: Jun 24 2008, 02:45 PM

late reply, I have the total opposite problem that its so hard to cancel domains on 1and1