Bar Refaeli isn’t at GoDaddy to offer a free kiss.
Steve, owner of the domain name ALA.us, made a simple request at GoDaddy, where the domain is registered: refund the auto-renew fees.
The 11 year old domain is now in pending delete, thanks to some obscure clause that supposedly requires GoDaddy technicians to cancel a domain, when refunding the renewal fees.
Says Steve, over at DNForum:
“I have a bunch of renewals coming up and wanted to do them as a batch as they would be cheaper. I tried today to renew the name and they say I canceled the name. I never at any point said to cancel the name. They want me to pay $80.00 because their rep made a mistake. If that is GD policies, the rep should have stated if i refund the auto-renew, it will cancel the domain name. Now I am fighting with them to give me back what is rightfully mine.”
GoDaddy’s response came as follows:
“You would have received several notices that this domain was set to auto renew prior to it getting charged. I cannot refund a domain that has been renewed without canceling the domain. Upon canceling the order, you would have received another notification that the domain name had been canceled to the same email address. We have a 5 day window to recover the domain in an event that it was accidentally canceled, and we’re on day 6. You did not tell me that your intention was to renew the domain at bulk rates; if so I could have just refunded the difference back to you to reflect the correct pricing. Our department is here to assist in your account, but the domains are ultimately yours and it is your responsibility to monitor your account.”
Steve is furious, as the domain name, ALA.us was registered back in 2002 and GoDaddy has now sent it to ‘Pending delete” status.
Read the whole fiery post by Steve here.
This post is 100% true!
It takes around 3 seconds to mass-select all your domains (or a selection of your domains) on Godaddy and put auto-renewal off. You can even create an automated profile that remembers to put all your domains on manual renewal (so every time you purchase a domain name manual renewal will be on by default).
The owner paid full renewal price because of his own mistake of not putting it on manual renewal, then asks for a refund and is perplexed that after the refund is issued the domain is cancelled. (which is btw stated in Godaddy’s TOS). I don’t see how it would be ok to get a refund for an automated renewal (which you opted for) and then after the refund is issued decide to do a cheaper renewal to save some bucks.
Imagine the following scenario where someone renews 30 domains, then one week later finds a coupon code to renew 30% cheaper, asks Godaddy for a refund of the renewal fees and then renews the 30 domains again and saving 30% in the process. I’m sorry but it doesn’t work that way. You either decide to renew automatically to save yourself time and pay full renewal fees or you do a manual renewal which requires a bit more time but you’ll end up saving money.
never mind, the owner claims auto-renewal was off so my previous post can be ignored. (eventhough I find it weird that if it was truly off he got charged for a renewal automatically, that’s a bug in Godaddy’s system I never heard of).