GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers 222
An anonymous reader writes "A GoDaddy Vice President has been caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. The employee Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions.
Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal? Said a representative for a competitor, 'Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.'
This comes hot on the heels of news that despite earlier promises to ICANN to end their 60-Day ban on transfers, GoDaddy quietly circumvented it by forcing customers to agree to the ban anyway. ICANN doesn't appear to be investigating or asking follow-up questions about this. What can be done to force ICANN to police the registrars for which it is responsible?"
if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:5, Informative)
I would ditch my 200+ domains at GoDaddy in a heartbeat.
The company is rife with unethical business practices.
I have experienced this same thing where GoDaddy bid against me in an auction.
They will also purposely not update your contact information / credit information for certain domains where they can grab them and sell them off at a profit. Which has also happened to me.
For whatever reason, there doesn't seem to be an equal price competitor to GoDaddy. That's a shame as there are many people who want to leave.
Re:Its legal (Score:5, Informative)
Its Certainly Unethical, sometimes illegal. Where I Live, If you do it in Real Estate Auctions, you can loose any profits, and get a few fines, Auctioneer can loose their license.
Employees (Score:5, Informative)
It is common practice at GoDaddy to bid on domains and resell them. So much so that the unwritten word was to open an account under a family members name in order to make it harder to trace back to yourself.
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Recommendations for reputable registrars? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Get the word out (Score:5, Informative)
Problem is... all the domain auction sites are full of scumbags.
Virtually all of the "buy a lapsed domain" sites use a "give us a number, we won't tell you if you've beat the other bidder - or even if there is another bidder, but we will let you increase your bid if you want" bidding method. Oh... and you have to pay to for the privilege of bidding.
Fucking scumbags, pure and simple.
BTW... If you're considering Godaddy's "expiring domain" service, don't - because you might as well just take a $20 bill and burn it in a sacrifice to the domain gods.
Godaddy tells you that if you don't get the domain you want, you can try another. Of course, they virtually never win anything (as the big domain auction houses get most domains, something that GoDaddy is well aware of) and when you try to register another domain, "it doesn't qualify" or you will be told you have to try and find another domain (which, of course, you also won't get) and so on and so on. I'd be surprised if godaddy has even caught a single expiring domain (from another registrar) in their entire history.
Domain registrars are all scum.
ICANN is I couldn't. The GoDaddy list: (Score:5, Informative)
I'm keeping a list of stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date:
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions [slashdot.org] (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera [slashdot.org] (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft [slashdot.org] (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage [slashdot.org] (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat [slashdot.org] (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site [slashdot.org] (2007-01-26)
That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names [nodaddy.com]. According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com [wired.com]. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? [slashdot.org] (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? [slashdot.org] (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy [slashdot.org] (2007-05-29)
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com [slashdot.org] (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns [slashdot.org] (2008-04-08)
GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers [slashdot.org] (2008-06-29)
Any error or stories not included?
GoDaddy's reputation is not just one of a negative stories. In my opinion, GoDaddy tries to confuse non-technical people by offering services they don't need that are presented as valuable.
Here are some of the opinions of Bob Parsons, the owner of GoDaddy. He is pro-violence: Close Gitmo? No way!! [archive.org]
Re:if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Move domains from GoDaddy to ? (Score:2, Informative)
We use joker.com based in switzerland.
NoDaddy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Move domains from GoDaddy to ? (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using pairnic.com for all of mine. No jerking around, multiple warnings in advance of expiration, and I think I paid $50 for 5 years last time I renewed.
Re:Recommendations for reputable registrars? (Score:3, Informative)
See my post further up, I have tried Godaddy, Dotster, Yahoo, Google, Dreamhost and a few other but now use http://www.omnis.com/ [omnis.com] exclusively for Domain purchases.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=598685&cid=23989845 [slashdot.org]
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Where are you getting a price of $2 per year for a domain?
$2 a year is the DIFFERENCE between the $10 godaddy price, and other registrars which charge $12 a year (I know Joker.com is $12/year).
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Move domains from GoDaddy to ? (Score:2, Informative)
I use Joker.com and have done for many years - and have not had problems with them as a registrar (though see below...). They have replied to my (very) occasional emails in a timely and rational manner.
They are $12 for a .com, but if you have a lot of domains you can set yourself up as a reseller and pay around $7.20.
They did get DDOSd a few years ago, which WAS a problem for a day or two but I guess they have better redundancy sorted out now. They don't mess you around with trying to add on loads of extras when you buy a domain and there are no hidden gotchas.
The $12 includes full use of nameserver, email forwarding, etc. They are zero hassle and I have never felt that trust has been an issue.
(I have no association with them, I am just a satisfied customer)
Another option is (Pairnic.com?) who are very reputable, but a bit more expensive. than Joker.com
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:4, Informative)
I was personally burned by GoDaddy when I did a search on a name, waited to purchase it, and then came back a week later to find out that GoDaddy itself had purchased it (using a "private" WHOIS registration). Thing of it is, the name only means something if you happen to be a speaker of Japanese. I hardly think that somebody working for GoDaddy in the southwestern United States would appreciate the significance. Of course, the name still remains unused, except to generate ad revenue by showing the GoDaddy "parked domain" page.
Re:So... (Score:1, Informative)
namecheap.com offers 9.92 domains. Sounds like this person is just lazy or just talking out his @ss.
Re:Move domains from GoDaddy to ? (Score:3, Informative)
My suggestions is:
http://www.buycheapdomains.com/ [buycheapdomains.com]
It costs $8.95/year and they've been around for years. They are enom resellers so whatever happens, you will still be able to access your domains through enom.
Or if you have the money, become an enom reseller (there's a $1000 setup fee for an $8.95/year account).
Re:if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:3, Informative)
Or you could save $2/domain/year and go with omnis.com. If you have 200+ domains, they drop the price to $6.95 for .com.
Re:Its legal (Score:5, Informative)
Unethical, but not the slightest bit illegal.
You sure about that? From Wikipedia, on Shills in Auctions: [wikipedia.org]
Shill bidding may be a common practice on eBay. In his book Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, Kenneth Walton describes how he and his cohorts placed shill bids on hundreds of eBay auctions over the course of a year. While many sellers consider shill bidding a harmless act, some believe that it may violate federal or state laws. Walton and his associates were charged and convicted of fraud by the United States Attorney for their eBay shill bidding.
Yup. Sounds pretty illegal so far.
Typical cybersquatting scumbag (Score:1, Informative)
This Dicker guy is a shitball like most people in the domain business. GoDaddy should have known when they hired him. He made his fortune selling pirated satellite equipment, then after being busted parlayed his money into cybersquatting, profiting from little kids on domains like SpongebobSquarepants.com
Re:if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ICANN is I couldn't. The GoDaddy list: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ICANN is I couldn't. The GoDaddy list: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Get the word out (Score:3, Informative)
Re:if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:if there was an equal price competitor ... (Score:3, Informative)
You have a reselling account with a wholesaler that is fully accredited by ICANN. Their system allows you to run your own version of their site with your branding and domain name. What they charge you for a domain is a hell of a lot less than what you would get from NetSol, GoDaddy usually advertises domains under cost but with hooks to other products to make up the difference (hint: anyone selling you a .com for under $7, and letting you pay with a credit card, is probably losing money on every domain).
The restrictions vary with each TLD, .com and .net are usually a free for all, and I have never seen any kind of enforcement for .org. They do have rules about who gets to register a .us domain. Each TLD has its own pricing, so for example right now .info domains are $3.99 retail, while .com/.net/.org only change prices when the wholesaler's price is increased (usually once a year, less than 10% increase).
Another restriction I know of is whenever a new TLD is launched. They run a pre-registration campaign, then a quiet period where they figure out who had unique requests (instant sale) and who has to compete because more than one person asked for the same domain. This all happens before the TLD launches, once it is up and running then it is just one more TLD available for you to pick when buying a domain.
If you have a question, just email me, today there were about a dozen that read this thread and were asking me the same questions.