So, there's this guy, see? And he has this domain I want, see? So I asks him, "You wanna sell me that domain?" He agrees, and I try to transfer it.

Ooops.

There's a problem. The domain is registered with GoDaddy. I request the transfer to 000Domains, and they refuse it. I create an account with them, and they'll let me transfer it to that account, but not to an account at another registrar.

Not being one to leap to tall conclusions in a single bound, I wait the 60 days you have to before transferring a domain to another registrar after making a change of owners. I again put in the transfer request to switch it to 000Domains.com.

I get the following email from GoDaddy:


Dear Paul Myers,

The transfer of [DOMAIN].COM from GoDaddy.com to another registrar could not be completed for the following reason(s):

Express written objection to the transfer from the Transfer Contact. (e.g. - email, fax, paper document or other processes by which the Transfer Contact has expressly and voluntarily objected through opt-in means).

If you believe that this domain name does not fit the situation described above, please contact us at http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/support.asp for assistance.

Regards,
Domain Services
GoDaddy.com


Ummm... Nope. I never objected.

So, I check to see that the domain is not locked, and try the transfer again. Same response.

I double-check, and it's still not locked. I notice that the company name is listed as TalkBiz, not TalkBiz, Inc, which is what I put in when I took the domain over. So, I add the comma and the "Inc." (I never list the official company name as just TalkBiz. Ever.)

Note: I did not change the personal name or the address
or phone or email contact info listed. I just re-added
the ", Inc" that their system removed from my original
information.

Call the company and get a nice fellow named Andrew on the phone. He tells me it's likely because the "change to unlocked status" may not have propagated yet, and 000Domains might see it as locked. Don't know why that would stop them from sending an approval request, but okay. I'll wait and see.

I try again yesterday. Same email in response.

Call them again, and get someone who thinks the address I used for email contact is odd. I point out that it's my phone number as the username, at a domain I own, and that he's welcome to call that number and see if I answer.

He then notices that I added the ", Inc" and tells me that I'll have to wait another 60 days to transfer the domain, because I changed the registration info.

WHAT?!



So, after explaining to the gentleman who took the call this time just why I would never use a business domain while it was registered with GoDaddy, he put me on with his manager.

She told me the same thing, and started to tell me what their policy says about changes. I cut her off and pointed out that I merely corrected an omission made, presumably, by a transient glitch in their software. Surely there's someone there who can approve a transfer in such a case.

I didn't bother pointing out that the transfer had been refused before that change. No sense to it. They had their argument, and they could point to "policy." When dealing with employees, policy trumps logic every time.

By this point, you can imagine that I am not being Mr Mellow. That quit as soon as the first guy told me I'd have to wait 2 more months for the domain to be fit for legitimate business use. I'm not being abusive, but I'm hardly calm and quiet.

So, the manager tells me that, yes, there is someone who can approve it. She says, and I'm paraphrasing here, that I will have to present myself as a supplicant before the Office of the President, and get special dispensation from the Great and Powerful Oz.

Riiiight.

Let's put it this way. If Bob Parsons, the President of GoDaddy, tried to buy me a beer...

I'd send it back.


Mind you, in most cases, it wouldn't be all that big a deal to wait on a transfer. There is a very real reason I refuse to use a GoDaddy-registered domain for business.

It has nothing to do with most of GoDaddy's practices. The people I spoke with were all very professional. They have a reputation for that, and I don't know of anyone with any experience to the contrary.

Except when you're accused of spamming.

Note: Accused. You do not have to be guilty. Just accused. And GoDaddy has exactly no way to know if you are guilty or not.

It goes like this. Someone gets an email with a link to your site. Maybe you sent it and maybe you didn't. Maybe it was sent to a list of subscribers who had to confirm their request before getting any email from the sender. Maybe you didn't even know it was being sent. None of that matters.

The recipient decides they don't like it and they send complaints off to world+dog, including your registrar. If your registrar is GoDaddy, you get an email demanding an explanation of your spamming behavior, within 48 hours, or they'll shut your domain down.

If you're away for a couple of days, or you don't get the email at all, or they just don't like your explanation, they change the nameservers for your domain to point to:

SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM

Lovely.


Now, that's probably solid grounds for a libel suit if you didn't really spam.

(If any of the lawyers in the crowd want an explanation of how that can significantly damage a business, email me. I'll be happy to send you a detailed list of the harmful effects of such a listing.)

The point is, GoDaddy knows the damage it can do.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that they only use that to demonstrate to the world that they're responsible about how they handle spamming customers.

It would be easy to use a less damning name, along the lines of "domain-not-available.com." The expense and effort required to make that change would be trivial.

The resulting effect on spam volumes would be the same as what they're doing now. (Nearly non-existent.) The damage to improperly accused businesses from that part of the process would be almost entirely eliminated.

They're putting their reputation ahead of the well-being of legitimate customers.

By choice.

Yep. Them's responsible folk.

So, what's the next step?

Let's assume that the vast majority of the complaints GoDaddy gets are about actual spams. I'm sure that was true at some point, and may even be true now. That's hardly certain, given the way that spammers do things these days, but it's not hard to believe.

How many serious spammers are going to spend the personal time and effort needed to salvage one domain from the Wrath of Bob?

Not bloody many.

So, you respond to their email and they don't like the answer. They suspend your domain and require that you pay them $199 to reinstate it, and make you promise it won't happen again.

Mind you, they have no way to prove whether an email was requested or not. They have no way to know if an affiliate sent the email or if you're lying. They have no way to know anything at all except that someone complained and they made an arbitrary decision based on that complaint.

Some examples...

* A good friend of mine ran an affiliate program through Clickbank. An affiliate sent an email that drew a complaint to GoDaddy.

* I've seen a case where the complaint that triggered this came from someone on a 100%-confirmed-from-day-one list.

* I've seen reports where very reasonable business propositions, sent by one businessperson to another (1:1, not bulk), drew complaints.

What are these people supposed to promise? That no-one will ever file an unfounded complaint about them ever again?

No honest person could make such a promise.



I recently had a case where someone decided to forge my name, email address and domain into a spam run. He was mad because I was part of a discussion about how to stop him from scraping and spamming email addresses from the Warrior forum.

If the domain in question had been registered with GoDaddy, that's all it would have taken to get it pushed into this process.

Fighting spam can get you in trouble with people who claim to want to stop spam. Ain't that just ducky? And these people will cheerfully play the part of the self-righteous pawn.

The demand would have been the same of me as it is of everyone else. Pay us $199 and make a promise you can't honestly make, or lose your domain. You lose all your links, including affiliate links, your reputation suffers, you have to spend who knows how much time defending yourself from every idiot who believes "you must be guilty because you were accused," and you may even have to rename your product to avoid confusion later.

"Pay us or we'll knowingly harm you, guilty or not."

There's a word for that: Extortion.



GoDaddy claims the $199 is a fee to cover the cost of handling the situation. They rarely mention the second option: Pay us $50 and we'll let you transfer the domain to someone else.

Wait. I thought the "fee" was to cover your costs? If that's the case, and you really believe I'm spamming, why would you take $50 to let me take my "spamming ways" to another registrar?

Country folk will immediately recognize this as the south-bound product of a north-bound stallion.

To add insult to perjury, there's GoDaddy's aptly-named "abuse department."

If you're accused of spamming, do not even try to speak to someone about it on the phone who can do anything about the problem. It won't happen.

One gentleman I know was told that there is no phone in that department at all. It was later demonstrated that this is what we in the word trade call a Big Fat Lie.

Given the fact that people who are accused of abuse and threatened with total business shut-down are likely to be angry about it - especially if they're innocent - you can almost understand that.

The problem is, the abuse department is claimed to only be there from 9 to 5, weekdays. At least by some of the people who answer the phones. I'm told by someone inside the company that they have 24/7 staffing.

Based on the response times to emails on the subject, I tend to believe the phone staff. You can spend days with your site in limbo waiting for the typical response. The perceived tone is usually something like this:


"You're accused. You're guilty. Follow these steps to get re-instated. Object to our demands and we'll de-register your domain. Argue with us and you just prove you're a spamming scum. Be glad we're even willing to take your 200 bucks and let you get back in business. Worm."


The words have been nicer when I've seen them, but the tone is unmistakable. These are people who have no idea what the real world of online business is like. They have power, they have a mission, and they are untouchable by the people they affect.

To be fair, most of what they see is probably genuinely bad stuff. The spamming types will say the same things as the honest folk. And these people have no way to tell the difference. Literally, no way. They can't actually KNOW which customers are bad and which aren't.

So, they default to the easy way out. And they're praised for it. "You're accused? You're guilty. We will shut you down and feel proud of ourselves for it. Since you're evil, we can talk to you any way we like. We don't have to be nice to scum.

"We won't ever admit that we don't actually know. We don't want to think about that."

This is the exact lack-of-thought process that afflicts the majority of abuse staffers I've encountered, whether directly or through second-hand reports. It's more common among anti-spam folk than I'd like, but the experienced ones tend to allow that:

"It's *possible* that you might not be guilty, but we're going to demand proof and a half-pound of flesh anyway. Oh, and reconfirm your lists, whether they need it or not.

"What? You don't want to lose 80% of your subscribers who confirmed previously in order to avoid being blacklisted? Ooops. Sorry. You're guilty."


Okay. They're really not all like that. But way too many are.

Including some who should know better.

We could get into a debate about whether registrars should be doing things like this at all. I don't believe they should, unless they also host the domains and email services used in the sending of the emails in question. If that were the case, they'd at least be able to pretend they had a valid way to tell what is and is not spam.

Barring that, they should leave it to the web hosts and email service providers who do have access to real evidence.

We could have that debate, but it'd be a waste of time.

There's a simpler solution. One that you can use right now to protect yourself from this problem.

Don't register any business domain that might ever send email, or be mentioned in someone else's email, with GoDaddy. Or with any other registrar that reserves the right to de-register you based on unprovable complaints.

If you have domains registered with any such registrar, transfer them.

If they'll let you.

By this point in the rant, it should be clear why I refuse to use the domain while it's with No-Go-Daddy.

As far as transferring the domain, I was half expecting them to ask for $199 to make an exception and approve it. It would have made more sense than what happened.

Instead, you have to appeal to the President of the company to fix a problem that didn't exist when the process was first refused, and which wouldn't have existed later except for a glitch in their software.

This is kind of a pattern with GoDaddy, though.

I suppose they'd be safe for hobby domains, or for people who are playing the content game for AdSense or other SE traffic approaches. And the odds are, most people will get by without anyone screaming to GoDaddy when they misread, misinterpret or forget something.

I don't recommend taking the chance, though. It's not a wise business move, just to save $4 or $5 a year on a domain registration.

Just say "No, Daddy."

Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com 

About Paul Myers:
This article originally appeared in TalkBiz News' Blog. You really ought to be reading it. If you're not, get to www.talkbiznews.com and get started.


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