tregare

This is from a friend of mine in Florida, and I thought any of you that use GoDaddy as a registrar should know about this :(

Hey folks. This is an unusual one, but I need your help.

The short version: The domain name of my mom's largest customer,
registered with GoDaddy a few years ago, was just stolen...by GoDaddy
themselves. The customer is fuming, and has begun the process of migrating to
another service provider. This has the effect of cutting my mother's income
approximately in half, less than a week after signing a lease on a new
house.

The domain disappeared from the root nameservers a few days ago, and we
called GoDaddy's support people who started an investigation. A few days went
by with no resolution, until tonight when she basically got fed up and called
them again to see what was up.

Tonight, they said the domain was "unavailable", because they "received a
complaint from a third party indicating that the contact listed in the whois
database was unresponsive". Said contact was my mother, who's had the same
phone number for seven years, and the same email address for twelve
years...unresponsive, my ass. Further, this domain had just been renewed this
past December, paid in full for two years. And even further, they just charged
my mother's debit card another ten bucks due to the "query" regarding the whois
database!

They acknowledged that this is a popular scam. According to statements
by one the support people she spoke with, this is a frequent occurrence, and
involves...you guessed it, cash. It works like this.

Someone figures out that they want a domain that is registered with
GoDaddy. They hop onto GoDaddy's website, and "pre-buy" the domain...paying
money to be the first in line to get it if it becomes available. Then, they
make a complaint that they were unable to contact the current owner of the
domain (whether that is true or not), then GoDaddy yanks the domain...which then
magically becomes "available" to the person who paid to be the first in line.
And oh by the way, the previous owners' money is not refunded.

To make matters worse, they flatly refused to allow her to speak with a
supervisor, saying that she had no recourse, and if she had a problem with that,
she could go file a complaint with ICANN. They refused to provide contact
information for anyone of authority within the company.

I know GoDaddy is popular in this crowd...to be honest, until tonight,
they were popular with me too...so this probably comes as a tough pill to
swallow. But this has plainly exposed them as a bunch of suited thieves who
have just stuck a knife in my mother's back.

I humbly and sincerely request that you, my most trusted friends,
immediately dump that company like a hot rock and move your domains elsewhere.
I realize this is a pain, and may involve a few bucks (which I'd offer to pay if
I didn't foresee sending all of my spare money to my mother now), but this
company needs a whack on the back of the head. I'm counting on there being
enough GoDaddy-registered domains in the hands of people here to make them
notice a little exodus.

Again, I know this is a big pain in the ass, and I wouldn't ask if these
suits hadn't just lobbed a hand grenade into my mother's business, and her
livelihood. Please consider helping me with this by dumping GoDaddy, and get as
many people as you know to do the same.