Brian Alvey: "Don't give us $16. Give our competitor $70 instead."

I've been using GoDaddy.com for all of my domain name registrations and as my older domains on Network Solutions come up for renewal I transfer them over to GoDaddy. If you don't renew or transfer a domain before it expires, they are not immediately released. As a service to the owner, they are held in limbo for some random number of weeks and then released — just to keep you on your toes.

Before a pair of my older domains expired, I told GoDaddy that I wanted to bring them in. That sent an email to the owner (me) asking if it's okay to transfer the domain. I use an AOL account for all of my domain registrations because you'll always be able to send it mail even if I'm having domain-related problems. I checked AOL (using their Web-mail gateway) and had nothing. I figured it would show up eventually.

Weeks later I noticed that those domains' expiration dates had passed. I checked AOL again and found tons of spam, but no GoDaddy mail. I went to GoDaddy to check the status of the transfer (which I paid for) and it said they were waiting for me to answer the email they sent. I asked it to send mail again. Again, nothing showed up in my AOL inbox.

A call to their customer service department uncovered the problem: even though dozens of spammers successfully send me spam that bypasses AOL's new automatic spam filters, GoDaddy's legitimate (critical) domain transfer email is trapped as spam. Opening the spam folder I didn't even know I had, I found tons of real spam and about a dozen important GoDaddy messages.

Here's the stupid part: GoDaddy knows that this is happening to their critical email!

Now that the deadline has passed, I have no choice but to renew both domains at Network Solutions (a minimum of $70) and you cannot transfer a renewed domain until 60 days have passed. I explained to the GoDaddy customer service representative that this could have been prevented by putting a big message on their Web site that reads:

"Warning! We noticed you are using an AOL address. AOL frequently puts our mail into their spam folder. If you are serious about transferring this domain and don't immediately see our email, please look for it in your spam folder."

AOL isn't going to correct this. Network Solutions would be thrilled to know about this. Only GoDaddy can prevent this insanity. If they don't put a warning like that on their site (not for all users — just for people using AOL addresses), then they're wasting their customers' money and fattening their competitors.

I still plan to move those domains to GoDaddy, but now I have to blow $70 at Network Solutions so I don't lose the domains. A simple warning on GoDaddy's Web site could have saved me that $70.

Comments (4)

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Mary Blakney 1289 days ago

Sorry, Brian, but it seems clear that this has nothing to do with GoDaddy. As a user, it is your responsibility not to use AOL for anything that matters. I'm not sure why you would spend the money on AOL anyway, when there are so many higher quality options with less ads for less money. It's so hard to use, it's a wonder it's number one.
Brian Alvey 1284 days ago

I use AOL for domain name mail because the service is always running. If I used a Yahoo Mail address and they had a day-long outage (which happens), that could screw with my ability to manage domain names. Even worse, if I was using a frankensite.com address to manage the domain frankensite.com and I let it expire, then I would have no way to receive frankensite.com email to get my domain working again.
If I switched to another service to avoid AOL's new overly-aggressive spam filtering, it would still probably have to be a paid one unless it was gmail, but gmail is in beta and who knows if they aren't going to just shut it down one day. ;-)
No matter what, if GoDaddy knows this is happening to AOL mail users and they don't tell you in advance, then this is a GoDaddy problem, not an AOL one. This would be like Amazon knowing that FedEx always loses packages and UPS always delivers them, but they still offer you a choice of either service with no warnings. Then you call and ask where you CDs are weeks later and they go "Did you use FedEx?" "Yes." "Oh, well FedEx always loses packages. Sorry. You should have picked UPS." That's bad business.
a 1625 days ago

Go Daddy, No Way Daddy

After reading your interview with GoDaddy president, I went over and signed up with them to get my URL and hosting. It is unfortunate, but their service has been the worst customer service I have ever had. Just the other day after sucessfully getting my email for about a year, it suddenly stopped working. After hours of being harrassed by their customer service rep about our password and some obscure signin name, we found out that they had done some sort of upgrade that they had switched all the settings for logging into the email server.
The clentcher is that I had to pay for the long distance call too.
loan-guy 1619 days ago

GoDaddy so far has been great to me

After being a Networks Solution customer for 5 years, I changed to GoDaddy last year and they have worked great for me. I just can't believe people are still paying $35 for yearly fees.
I also have the account tied to my earthlink.net account and have not had a problem getting my email thru. Too bad you are going to have to give more money to Netsol.

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