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GoDaddy Domain Registration Class Action Lawsuit
By Kimberly Mirando
A Florida company has filed a class action lawsuit against domain registrar GoDaddy, claiming it illegally charges for private registration services it advertises as free.
The GoDaddy class action lawsuit takes aim at the company’s practice of offering free private registration to customers when they register five or more domain names at a time. The class action lawsuit says GoDaddy does not make it clear that the whois proxy services offered as “Domains by Proxy” will renew at the full regular price rather than for free.
“By suggesting that the value of ‘FREE’ Private Registration was $9.99/yr, and that the ‘FREE’ service had ‘NO LIMIT!’, GoDaddy represented that the ‘FREE’ Private Registration services would be for the lifetime of the domain name, and Plaintiff (and on information and belief, the Class) believed this to be the case,” the class action lawsuit says.
The GoDaddy class action lawsuit goes on to say that none of the renewal notices sent to customers indicate that the privacy services would no longer be free upon renewal. It also alleges that disclaimers on the GoDaddy website were inadequate.
“Throughout the class period, GoDaddy provided wholly inadequate disclaimers on GoDaddy.com, which reiterated the ‘FREE’ offer but never mentioned to Customers that the Private Registration service would be automatically renewed by GoDaddy at the full price applicable to single domain name purchases, instead of for ‘FREE,’” the class action lawsuit states.
The GoDaddy class action lawsuit is brought on behalf of a proposed Class of all GoDaddy customers who, from March 19, 2006 to the present, registered 5 or more domains, received the “free” private registration, and then were charged a fee for the proxy services when they renewed.
Updated March 22nd, 2012
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13 thoughts onGoDaddy Domain Registration Class Action Lawsuit
Granarykitchen.com
They stole web site for my catering company and they want to sell it back to me for more than 3000+
I’ve had over 60 domains with them, always auto renewing without error. Tonight I just found out that one of my domains were taken from me and given to someone else with no justification what so ever. My credit card was fine all else was fine, Godaddy just decided to commit theft.
That is exactly what happened to me as well. Now I am out the domain and they are trying to sell it aback to me. Well they will not be in business very long once the attorneys get a hold of them with these practices.
Young punks at GoDaddy are criminals. They will say or do ANYTHING to take money from you. The company is not what it used to be. BUYER BEWARE!! RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN FROM GODADDY!!! My story is to long, but trust me, you don’t ever want to do business with these disrespectful crooks.
Need action as they migrated my emails to Microsoft 365 without my permission. Now domain email is down.
Always digitize your search plan in an rtf. or time stamped word document file. Do not alter it once it has been created. Make a file specifically for business searches you plan to execute.
Use other secure methods other than registrars for business searches despite what the registrar policy might be. You cannot plead ignorance if you ‘leave the barn door open’ for an unscrupulous employee at godaddy et als.
Do not search until you are prepared and financially positioned to make a purchase. Then immediately screen shot your godaddy search results or availability results. M A K E THE P U R C H A S E at that point. Do not risk waiting.
If you find the registrar had already sold the domain at point of purchase, something is not right. Go to WHOIS and perform a data search. This may cost, but it will ascertain for you in real time, when the domain was registered and by whom, if the individual had utilized a private registration you can still find whether there is likelihood the registrar you chose was the registrar where the domain had ultimately been purchased. Not 100 percent likely the employee was utilizing one registrar for ‘ideas/front running’ and another for purchase, but chances are this will provide you the only presumptive weight a registrar employee had likely obtained your domain idea inappropriately.
This is simply one potential solution to your singular idea lost. Be prepared before your initial search is the best advice. Do not enter domain after domain with no intention or capacity to make the purchase on the spot. Due diligence rules the day as always.
There are many ways to research your planned business under the radar. Godaddy is not one of the safe methods, since it was communicated to me directly how a search may bring attention to an idea or business. Searching in the godaddy registrar obviously puts your idea at risk. I’d found a number of domains that were safe, until I’d searched for them on the godaddy website, when I’d checked the following day, all yes all were gone and showed as ‘registered’ to a domainsbyproxy registrant.
This is what it is, and I do not condone immoral and ‘front running’ methods as they are either willful or unscrupulous. I would be happy to join a class action as I always keep screen shots of my searches and statscrop the same results in order to ascertain when the domain idea was actually purchased. You would be aghast to learn many were purchased just subsequent to my searching…and I can say I can differentiate a niche search from overwhelming, exculpatory evidentiary standard when I see it. Attorneys? Care to take issue?
Yep – GoDaddy owns Afternic.com (the domain aftermarket) and GoDaddy has numerous domain portfolios for sale – they’re absolutely scraping-up domain names, but so is every other domain registrar out there too. GoDaddy/Afternic are notorious for buying domain portfolios with 100k+ domain names at a time.
I went to register my name with go daddy I was going buy a hosting package I know the name wasn’t register but when I went to go daddy they said it was register and try to sell it back to me for 10 times more than what they register domain names I ready to contact the FBI at what go daddy is do to deceive potential customers.
Saul, that just happened to me. A week ago or so I went to see if any businesses had taken my idea for a business name and url. Fortunately, I found that my original business name had not been taken by a web address. Unfortunately, yesterday, I went to check on that soon-to-be-mine web address, and the bastards at GoDaddy took it right out from under me! Then, they tried to sell it back to me for seven times as much, claiming they would represent me by contacting the owner to buy it for a big fee plus commission. They also, offered to try to get if for me when it goes up for auction. I’m sure it’s all lies. One of their top executives stated that they have never done “front running.” But, I’m sure that they are either spying on small business ideas and searches, or having a way for third parties to get them information about soon-to-be start ups.
They’re trying to clean up their pathetic image by saying that they are for small businesses. Well, those bastards lost my business and I’ve been telling a lot of people about it. This needs to be the next class act lawsuit against them.
Haha they’ll contact themselves to see how much you can buy the domain name for. Lol
Yes your right there practices would put the average joe in jail with a felony so this needs to stop when you pay in full its done when your year comes up to secretly take out small amounts without the customer noticing is fraud and to constantly send them emails for dicounted renewals proves that
This Class Action needs to be expanded to Anti Trust, Deceptive Sales, whatever would encompass “Creative Accounting”