GoDaddy is accused of transferring a domain name without authorization to a long-time registrant, transferring a domain name without proper authorization and necessary documentation. The victim spent about ten hours with customer service to get a response that there was nothing GoDaddy could do to fix the problem.
Domain Transfer Happened Saturday
It’s interesting that the transfer of the domain takes place on a Saturday, which can be an important detail because some domain registrars release their customer service on weekends and I’ve heard sometimes where errors have occurred due to poor quality control. I know of a case where high value domain names worth six to seven figures were stolen over the weekend where the attacker was able to trick customer service over the weekend into changing the email address of the account, enabling the thief to transfer all the one and two name domains to another account.
What happened with this particular site was not a case of robbery but it was very serious. A customer service person over the weekend made a mistake in processing a legitimate domain name change for another GoDaddy customer, and instead of initiating the change to the correct domain, he forwarded the victim’s domain instead.
Adding to the error, GoDaddy’s weekend customer service failed to follow protocol to prevent unauthorized transfers, thus allowing the domain to be transferred to another person.
32 Calls And About 10 Hours Of Calls
The process of getting GoDaddy to reverse its mistake was an administrative nightmare. They made thirty-two phone calls and spent 9.6 hours on the phone with GoDaddy customer service.
“Lee called GoDaddy on Sunday. They confirmed that the domain was no longer on his account but he couldn’t say where it went because of privacy issues. They told him to email undo@godaddy.com. He got it but didn’t get any kind of response when he emailed that address. Of course Lee didn’t feel like this was the right level of urgency for the problem. He asked a manager who was not at all happy to support GoDaddy. This first call took 2 hours, 33 minutes and 14 seconds.
On Monday morning, Lee and another colleague began to work diligently on the matter because there was still no update from GoDaddy. The call landed a different agent who told Lee to email transferdisputes@godaddy.com instead. By Tuesday the address had changed to artreview@godaddy.com. The orders have changed by the day. It seemed that everyone supporting the GoDaddy technology had slightly different recommendations. “
What is also wrong is that every time the victim calls GoDaddy the phone generates a new case number with no case number tied to any previous one.
GoDaddy’s answer
After four days of trying to get someone at GoDaddy to resolve the issue, GoDaddy finally responded with the following resolution:
“After investigating the domain name in question, we have determined that the registrant of the domain name has provided the necessary documentation to initiate the account change. … GoDaddy now considers this matter closed.”
GoDaddy’s response contains links to how to dispute a domain name change with ICAAN, the global organization that manages the domain name system, instructions on how to view domain name registration information and a customer support page about contacting legal representation.
That’s all.
Error Fixed, But Not With GoDaddy
The person who wrote about this issue said that they contacted his friend who is inside GoDaddy and he was able to handle this issue properly. In the end the mistake was not fixed by GoDaddy but by an innocent person who found someone else’s domain name in their GoDaddy account.
As mentioned earlier, the whole fiasco started with a mistake on GoDaddy’s part with a legitimate domain change request. GoDaddy changed the domain name to the victim’s domain name. The person who ended up with the victim’s domain name on their account contacted the victim and between the two of them they started the process of transferring the domain to the appropriate registrant.
Domain Name Ownership Not Available
A common mistake made by many developers and business owners is that they believe they own a domain name. That is incorrect, there is no owner of the domain name. Domain names are registered but never owned. Registration authorizes the registrant to use the domain name but never own it. That’s how the domain name system works and it’s part of the reason why this problem played out the way it did. However, the problem in this case was only due to GoDaddy’s fault.
The post describing the nightmare refers to GoDaddy’s “domain ownership protection” services but that’s not what it’s actually called. There is no protection of domain name ownership.
What GoDaddy sells is a Domain Protection service that protects against unauthorized transfers and accidental expiration. The victim paid for that protection but because the error was caused by GoDaddy’s own fault the protection did nothing for the victim, the domain change went through without proper documentation.
Read the blog post about how GoDaddy made a mistake and not only failed to fix the problem, they didn’t even admit they made a mistake.
GoDaddy Gave The Domain To A Stranger Without Any Documents
Featured image by Shutterstock/AVA Bitter
