Payment processor Certegy does not hold back; when it comes down to collecting a $25 dollar fee over a debt of $13.17 at GoDaddy, they will either get their money or report you to the credit bureaus, affecting your credit score in the process.
A DomainGang reader and GoDaddy customer that wants to remain anonymous, read our previous coverage on such debt collection practices, and sent in their own personal story.
We publish it unedited, along with a screenshot which was edited by the GoDaddy customer to hide personal information.
Noticed your August 14th article on collections issues with GoDaddy.
I’m a 10 year customer of GoDaddy, and just received notification that I TOO have been sent to collections for an autorenewal. Over 13.17 cents.
To make it even more insulting? It had been FOUR DAYS from the date of transaction when they sent the charge to collections, and my account and transactions all show as being in good standing in my GoDaddy account.As it turns out, their payment provider Certegy does NOT notify GoDaddy if any payment does not process.
Their billing agreement has NO feedback mechanism in place to GoDaddy, according to their customer service team. Threatening to move my business elsewhere as well as the business of my clients was met with cold disdain from GoDaddy, they simply said that when I added my checking account they bury in fine print that the payment agreement is with CERTEGY, and not with GoDaddy at all and that it was my responsibility to resolve it with them directly.
I find it atrocious that a technology company cannot create a feedback mechanism with their own payment provider to maintain customer service and notify their customers if there has been an issue.
Now I have permanent damage to my credit report over what should have been a minor error, and I’ve been on the phone with customer service for 45 minutes. To GoDaddy’s credit, a supervisor eventually agreed to take an alternate form of payment, issue a refund BACK to Certegy, and notify Certegy of the issue to have the charge removed from collections for me. Then in 30 days I have to contact Certegy to ensure it was removed from my credit report. This after I demanded the attention of a supervisor when I was getting nowhere with the primary representative.
I actually had to reference the possibility of engaging an attorney and looking into unfair business practices and a class action suit in order to have them lift a finger.
I was disgusted with their attitude towards me. I thought it important to provide the information to you and other domain holders that their billing practices are so fundamentally broken. My advice? switch to another domain registration service. If you must use GoDaddy use a credit card and not their ACH service, or take off autorenew. Also, if you’re interested? attached is a scan of the dated notification letter from the collections company with my personal information removed, so that GoDaddy can no longer publicly deny that this is an issue.
Sending 10 year customers to collections within FOUR DAYS of a transaction without notification, doing permanent damage to their credit report is an abhorrent business practice. Other registration owners need to know this is happening. All I ask is that you do not publish any of my personal contact information, but I’m happy to answer any questions you have.
The bottom line appears to be that electronic checks that fail to clear trigger a Certegy collections notice without as much as a notification from GoDaddy.
If you have items on automatic renewal, either turn it off, or always use a credit card in the first place.
This happened to me too on my personal domains. GoDaddy attempted an echeck, it failed before I could transfer money in. I transferred the money, GoDaddy automatically tried again and GOT THEIR PAYMENT IN FULL…
Then today I get the same letter as shown above for $25.00 “returned check service fee”.
I had 7 domains with them, but not anymore. I’m going to move ALL of the commercial domains I control too.