Why you don’t want to work with GoDaddy.com
There are many reasons why you don’t want to register your domain names with GoDaddy.com or use them for web hosting. Here are a few:
1. This company is very dishonest. They pretend to be the cheapest one in the market, but they charge you extra for so many reasons. For example, it’s the only company I know who charges 25 cents more per domain per year than the price advertised. It doesn’t matter what’s their excuses, ICANN, SHMICANN, they advertise one price and they charge you another. Let’s begin with that. (I think I might saw they changed it to 20 cents, but it doesn’t matter. 5 cents don’t make them honest).
2. Also with web hosting, they offered me an incredible price of about US$ 3 dollars per month, and even gave me a discount for paying in advance for two years (24 months) and I paid only $2.50 per month (about $60 for 24 months). They had a plan for 5GB and also another plan for 100GB which was something like $6 per month and I didn’t need it. Why pay for 100GB when I need only 5? Actually I could use 10 but I don’t need 100 so I paid about $60 (don’t remember the cents) for 24 month.
Now, I was using their web hosting for backup and I wrote a script which will do it automatically and it happened that I used more disk space, something below 300MB which I calculated to be only 6% of the 5GB I asked. I didn’t even asked them to use extra disk space but when I used more disk space they sent me and email and then after a few days (I think about 5 days) they charged me extra of something like $6.79 per 100MB per month. Actually I was away from home and didn’t have a computer and when they wrote me about it I thought they were charging me extra of $6.79 for 100GB (Gigabytes!) and not Megabytes and when they wrote me they charge it 3 times I thought they meant 3 months. I still didn’t need it and I asked them to cancel it but they asked me to remove files and I was very busy with other things (actually I’m not a full time webmaster) so eventually it took me about one month and I removed the extra files, but they still charged me with extra of $20.37 per month (if I remember the cents… I never forget people who cheat me) and when I wrote them they also asked me to enter their website and remove the extra disk space myself, and when it didn’t work they asked for screen copies and I had to send them so many emails (actually it took me a few months because I was very busy with other things) and eventually I called them from my mobile phone (my Skype didn’t work properly) and after speaking to their representative he agreed to refund me most of the charges except one, he still insisted they have the right to charge me the extra $20.37 for using 6% more of their disk space for less than one month.
Now you can do the calculation yourself! I paid about $2.50 for 5GB per month (about $60 for 24 months) and they charged me extra $20.37 for 300MB which is $339.50 for 5GB or more than 100 times their regular price! Actually they charged me 4 times $20.37 which is more than $80 and the whole deal with them was $60 for 24 months! Actually if you check the prices of their “extended” web hosting it’s something like 100GB for about $6 per month (if I remember correctly) and if I paid $6.79 per 100MB extra then I would probably pay $6,790 which is more than 1000 times of their regular price!
3. There are many other cases why this company is dishonest and you can check for yourself. Nobody is able to sell at their prices without either cheating their customers or losing. They don’t lose so you can think for yourself - are they cheating their customers or not? I had more problems with them and I also canceled an affiliate account with them when I discovered they are being dishonest and are not displaying the correct prices and they also promised me to get free Google Adwords, and only after I created my affiliate account with them they told me they give free Google Adwords only to new Google customers, eventually I canceled my affiliate account with them but they are still sending me spam.
4. I opened my new website, Speedy Whois (yesterday moved from www.speedywhois.com to www.speedywhois.net), and also a free package for creating whois websited for webmasters. I also advertised it on Google and it became very famous and godaddy blocked my ip address and are displaying only the name of the registrant and nameservers without any details. I wrote them (and I also wrote ICANN about it) but they demanded me to put captcha in my website. I hate captcha and I hate turing tests and I think they are very annoying to all users and especially to users with some disabilities (blind; deaf) who sometimes are completely unable the use them and I refused to put captcha on Speedy Whois. Currently for about two years my website doesn’t work with domain names registered with godaddy and I do understand their concerns for security but they are the only registrar I know which blocked my website, mind you. They also have whois on their website with advertisements (by the way, without captcha for the first domain name) and they are doing it to force people go to their website and not mine. This is unfair competition since they are a monopoly and I don’t remember how many domain names are registered with them but I think it’s something around 15 million (oops sorry. webhosting.info says more than 23 million domain names); second registrar has 8.3 million so godaddy have about 3 times more domain names then second registrar in the world which means they ARE a monopoly. They are cheating their customers and ripping them off and I still have domain names registered with them and I hope they are not so stupid to close my websites just because I’m telling you this. It’s more important to me to tell you this then to move my domain names somewhere else and I don’t have to renew them right now but I will do it when I have time and I hope they will not shut down my websites just because I’m telling you this. If they do I assure you they WILL regret it and you can see for yourself what happened to totalnic. By the way totalnic is now using the name pacnames to cheat more people who haven’t heard of the name totalnic but I hope godaddy are smarter then them. I also host my websites with Netvision and even though I discovered they are cheating their customers big time and wrote to the members of “the state of israel” knesset (sort of a jewish “parliament”, no palestinians allowed) and some of them even replied and told me they know it and I heard they are now starting a new law against it. Every ISP will have to disconnect customers within 3 working days to their request and not 6 months like Netvision wants (sometimes a year). If you call Netvision by phone and they ask you if you are willing to commit to 6 months and you say “yes” or maybe even “ok” or even not “no” then you are committed to 6 months and you can’t cancel (by the way they may ask more than once). I was very unsatisfied with their service and told them I’m cancelling after only a week and they still wanted me to pay for the whole 6 months. They received many complaints to the ministry of communication in “the state of israel” and one of the knesset members who asked them, they replied and he sent me a copy that two thirds of the complaints were about Netvision. Although the law states a penalty (fine) the ministry of communication decided not to fine them at all and the person who made this decision is probably a very good friend or relative of somebody at Netvision. Actually cheating customers and ripping them off is very common in israel and the Unites States of America and all big companies do it (you name it) but Netvision claim they do it only to private customers (individuals) and not “business customers”. My business customer representative in Netvision told me never to be a private customer of Netvision and unfortunately I didn’t listen to his advice. They also sent me to the technical support department every time I called and asked to cancel the 6 months, actually they had many tricks and it’s a long story and maybe some day I’ll tell you more about it but we are speaking godaddy here. There was a website in Hebrew called “catolic wedding” about Netvision (cause you can never divorce) which contained horror stories about Netvision (in Hebrew) from people who were charged for 6 or 12 months without using their service but Netvision contacted the admin of this website and now I can only see “The site is under construction” (copyleft).
By the way, Netvision’s lawyer Haim Ravia used to be my friend once and gave me legal advice and by the way very bad legal advice and he told me to give up the domain speedy.net (long story). Fortunately I didn’t listen to his stupid advice and hired another lawyer (Tony Greenman) who also cheating me but eventually I represented myself and got the domain. Haim Ravia also asked me to send him updates while he’s still representing Netvision and I sent him a lot of information about me. He published a court decision about me on his website when the judge gave me a new name and he didn’t bother to mention that the new name is not my original name. Actually it’s a long story but don’t trust anybody from Netvision or israel because they will rip you off. Only if they object to the israeli apartheid you can trust them maybe but this is a long story too.
I’m telling you all this about Netvision because although everything I did Netvision didn’t disconnect my website which is on their servers and even after I said things about war crimes and many people wanted to close my website and shut me up during the 2006 summar violent conflict my website still worked and although in the past Netvision did close my website for long periods of time or didn’t do anything when it didn’t work for I-don’t-know reasons (might be intentional too), since I started criticizing the state of israel and also Netvision, although they did all sort of tricks including harrasing my relatives by phone on the weekend and refusing to comment in writing, they never closed my website (as far as I know) so I hope godaddy will not be as stupid as totalnic and will not cause my domain names to stop working suddenly for obvious reasons (me criticizing them). Anyway - don’t trust them and neither do I and when I have time I will move my domain names somewhere else.
Oh by the way Skype is also ripping you off and their excuse of deleting your credits after 6 months of not using their service for “regular business accounting” (something like that) is ridiculous! They want you to keep using their service and are threatening you you will lose your money you already paid them and they did it to me too. They charge you twice for the same phone calls (after they deleted your credits) and they are also cheating and ripping you off! You bank doesn’t close your account after 6 months “for not using” and your domain name doesn’t stop working “for not using” so what Skype / ebay are doing is called cheating in hebrew and english and they are ripping you off.
Enough for now. I’ll tell you more later.
Uri Even-Chen
Oh by the way I hope they will not put me in prison or one of their turtore instituions (”mental hospitals”) for speaking and telling you this. I’ve already been in their turtore prisons and I have been warned they will return me there for the rest of my life (I got this warning by email). But I’m not a shut upper and you have the right to know the truth and I have the right to tell you about it and I’m not afraid of their turtore prisons as much as I was before. After being there a few times and months I got used to it but personally I think they should stop using the word “hospital” because imprisoing and torturing your guests is not hospitality. Look what I wrote in my homepage about it.