GoDaddy GoDaddy Redemption Fee Scam Company Insider Fraud Scottsdale Arizona

I own a web development business. I bought out my partner after he had this same issue with GoDaddy last year. He was in charge of dealing with them. I assumed he just wanted out of the company and was using GoDaddy as an excuse. I was completely wrong.

My partner warned me not to continue using them. I didn't listen. I started a new account with GoDaddy, transferred the old account including all the domains and sites we develop to this new account. I set all out services to auto-renew. I triple checked that they were set to auto renew because my partner warned me that one day I would login and find that the auto-renew had been removed without consent or knowledge.

For several months the auto-renew stuck. I started to feel confident that my former partner was paranoid and/or just reinforcing he reason for leaving the company. Then, around October, it started happening, just like I was told it would.

I received the usual renewal notices for my domains as they came up for expiration. Since ALL of them were set to auto-renew I paid no attention to the notice. On 5/30/2013 one of them was auto-renewed, just like it was supposed to be. Then on 6/5/2013 and 6/7/2013 two more renewed like they were supposed to. These were domains that were all domains that were niche and would be hard to resell.

Then, on 10/20/2013 the scamming began. The first resell able domains, one containing only six letters, very rare these days, mysteriously failed to be renewed and went without notice. On 10/24/2013 and 10/25/2013 it happened again with 6 more valuable domains, again without notice. This continued thru present when I noticed that one of the notices in my email said "final notice". I was nervous because I realized the GoDaddy problems my former partner had warned me about might be real.

I immediately logged in to my GoDaddy account to make sure all my items were set to auto-renew. To my complete amazement and shock NONE of my products were set to auto-renew, not even the ones that completed auto-renew in May and June. I was immediately suspicious and contacted the support team via the ticket system. Their response was that the domains were not set to auto-renew. They quickly pasted a cookie cutter response that directed me to the redemption procedure. I requested to redeem the domains (standard renewal value of approximately $200) and was further shocked to find that the wanted over $1700 to redeem these domains and that some of them are up for auction BEFORE hitting the redemption period. Yes, they are trying to auction domains that are still in the renewal grace period (the most valuable domains).

How is it possible for a domain that was auto-renewed successfully 6 months ago to be dropped from auto-renew unless someone with access to that setting had changed it without my knowledge? I don't believe it is possible. I suspect that someone at GoDaddy in upper management has been doing this to people with valuable or old domains for some sort of benefit to themselves.

When I bought out this company from my partner I changed all passwords to everything. They are random strings that I keep on a jump drive around my neck at all times. The only explanation is that GoDaddy has been taking the best domains off auto-renew and hoping this happens so they can charge people exorbitant amounts of money to redeem the domains or hope to resell them. This is clearly extortion, although it is a type of grey area extortion, that is protected by their company policy and customer agreement, it is still extortion.

I want go daddy to give my domains back to me immediately. I also request that they provide proof that the auto-renew was not disabled from someone within their company. I understand it may have occurred by some sort of bug in their system but, I suspect that an actual individual with admin level privileges within the company is responsible.

GoDaddy has 24 hours to make this right or I will report this to every agency I can find that deals with business fraud. Then, I will seek monitory damages through legal means.

I was warned. I was fooled. Now it is to for justice.