July 24, 2007
Editorial Opinion

GoDaddy.com is so commercial, so hard sell, so corporate, so money hungry, and, well, so incredibly STUPID. There's ample proof that GoDaddy.com is careless with your domain names, with your account, and with your credit cards. They cannot seem to get their act together these days, at least in the Aftermarket area. (selling and buying domain names). The ah, net result, is that customers could flock away from GoDaddy.com and tdNam.com in an effort to find someone who will treat them fairly.

At the top of the corporate ladder rests the ultimate responsibility for some rather idiotic moves. Sure, they'll blame their staff or the AfterMarket site, especially a guy so proud of his work he signs his name, James K as leader of the GoDaddy.com Aftermarket site tdNam.com. Not too supportive of your last name hey, Mr. K?

There are some exceptions, Supervisor Andrea, and good old Abe on the front end. But who knows what lurks beneath the crumbling surface of the GoDaddy.com corporate structure?

Greed!

As the top officers of GoDaddy.com, the blame has to stick with Warren Aderman and founder Bob Parsons. Parsons, a former accountant, spearheaded GoDaddy.com as online business assault against Network Solutions. I thought that was pretty great. But Parsons has, apparently, turned at least part of the flagship into an embarrassing heap of wrong moves, deleted databases, angry customers, moronic customer service telephone escapades, and customers waiting and waiting and waiting to be placed on hold (sic), all the while having their credit cards charged but with no service or service interrupted.

We'll get into much of this at some later date, once we have all the information, have checked it, and have given GoDaddy.com a chance to respond. But here a small example example of part of the problem:

Customers from the Domain Aftermarket business expect to find their domains for sale listed on the GoDaddy.com home page. Guess again. When searching for a domain, GoDaddy.com should display on that page that the domain is available to purchase. It does not. Yes, there's another option, which the general public will mostly not see, where the visitor can enter a domain name and if found to be for sale, be taken to another page. But first they have to go to yet another page and key in the same domain name. Most people could just give up. That's bad news for the Aftermarket customer. The result is that listing domains for sale with GoDaddy.com is mostly useless.

Why?

GoDaddy.com can easily check their database of domains for sale and report to the visitor that the domain is available to purchase, from the home page, main option. A great opportunity has been missed. It appears GoDaddy.com is attempting to make a sale for a domain, and not service their Aftermarket customer well. Yes, one can pay for a more expensive service to list their domains on a more priority basis but the expectation is that it will be seen and not hidden from general view. The paying customer expects to see their domains for sale (from tdname.com) listed where the general public can find them, on the GoDaddy.com home via the domain search option.

I hate to say it fellow readers, but apparently GoDaddy.com may not be as interested in serving their customers as you'd like. They seem more interested taking money without always providing services to paying customers. GoDaddy.com takes many advantages from the customer and places to directly to favor themselves. Yes, know. It's the American Corporate way. And it sucks. Bob Parsons, we though you were different!

Greed, five easy lessons. Class starts Monday.

Another problem is that Aftermarket customers who have placed dozens of domains into their account to sell, have had dozens of their entered domains mysteriously deleted without any reasonable excuse other than the ridiculous explanation that the WHOIS contact info does not match their logged in account exactly. That's just stupid. No one uses their spam infected WHOIS contact info for their email addresses. Additionally moronic, when a customer does use the WHOIS contact email information with their logged in account, GoDaddy.com does not check or verify that the email address or contact information or correct or that is is fraudulent. Their logic falls apart and there's no security check. We can only assume that upper management understands the problems and is in favor of continuing this ridiculous and horribly embarrassing situation for GoDaddy.com.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, a business out of control, possibly endangering the security of the general public, treating customers like so much refuge, making tons of mistakes, wasting hours of customers time. You would not believe the shear incompetence of the GoDaddy.com staff which can only demonstrate that the people who run GoDaddy.com may be so lame as to be negligent. One wonders if policies are in effect to simply motivate staff to sell, sell, and forget about actually giving the customer what they had expected.

To be fair, not all of this is totally proven and we need to give GoDaddy.com a chance to respond. We'll be as careful as possible. There are lots of facts and incidents to organize and rethink. The net result may be that GoDaddy.com has turned into the familiar corporate greedy entity, filled with errors, problems, and pitfalls, wallowing in the comfort of their tremendous success but with inadequate policies, antiquated structures, and obsolete if not brain dead procedures. GoDaddy.com is certainly operating mostly for themselves, not the customer, screwing the customer along the way. Yes, it happens. But when it happens this much, someone has to write about it. It's a dirty job. When former Marines like Bob Parsons no longer care about clarity and quality, the result is always negative for the customer' they get short-chained and screwed.

Bob Parsons has said the main part of the online business is working the people who do not understand how to navigate online and may afraid to do so. He once said that a company with a website such as GoDaddy.com needs to make sure " ... it is actually useable. That’s done through usability testing, having people go through it and make sure that mere mortals can navigate it."

Hey Bob. I've done some testing and so far the part I saw really sucks. That's why I'm here. I hate mediocrity, especially from someone who represents the rebel. Now, just because you are that rebel does not mean you should create sites which only frustrate the user, even experienced users, make them want to go postal! Then some other business takes over where GoDaddy.com has failed.

If this is representative of how GoDaddy.com does business on a grand scale, it potentially involve millions of dollars instead of just hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, well, who knows; perhaps a class action law suit against all subjects of this article. That could be the begriming of the end for GoDaddy.com.

More on this later. We contacted CEO Bob Parsons and he returned our call.

So, let's all withhold judgment until we can sort this out. My plan is to send Bob Parsons the experience of becoming one of his customers. It's a horrible story. Let's see how he responds and more importantly, let's see if he's willing to spend some bucks to fix it.