[treitnauer]

GoDaddy's dashboard might be bloated which can be confusing but I doubt they deliberately delete domains after removing the credit card info from your account (as long as a domain hasn't reached the expiration date of course).

As the GoDaddy representative correctly mentioned, it is the registries who are to blame for any restore fees. It's bad enough that you as a customer lost domains so Verisign, PIR, Afilias or any other gTLD registry shouldn't ask for anything else but the normal renewal fee.

[kintamanimatt]

GoDaddy do all kinds of things you wouldn't expect, and often they're just one of many frequent snafus. I had a domain go dead for months because they weren't pushing changes to the underlying registry, and they had no idea what was going on. They didn't fix the issue until I'd called dozens of times. Their staff are poorly trained and it appears as though they're prone to lying to get people with complex issues off the phone as quickly as possible.

They're a horrific company and you'd be surprised how badly things can go wrong and how little recourse you have.

[wpietri]

Yep. A while back they sent me an email saying one of my domains, one not even registered with them, was listed for auction.

It turned out it was all a scam to get me to sign up for some sort of protection or monitoring service. And the sales rep was obviously an experienced scammer, not just some hapless phone operator. He eventually swore at me and hung up.

If those guys were on fire, I wouldn't piss on them to put it out. And as far as I'm concerned, anybody who works there is complicit in a (possibly technically legal) criminal enterprise.

[azifali]

I cannot believe it is the registry issue because

a) I renewed the domain before expiry. Before that I had unlocked it for transfer but did not complete it since I realized that this might take a couple of days

b) Godaddy charged me for the domain renewal which effectively confirmed me as the owner for another year.

c) After 2 days, godaddy abruptly cancels the domain and transfers it to the registry even though my ownership is confirmed for the next one year.

It doesn't sound like any body else is here to blame except Godaddy.

From what I understand, they either

a) Did this because I initiated the transfer or b) I removed all credit cards from the system because I did not want renewals to happen without notice.

[treitnauer]

Just saying that GoDaddy can't do anything about the restore fees imposed by the registries. If they screwed up it should be carried out at the firm's expense but I highly doubt they would delete a domain without being explicitly told so.

[azifali]

I think the delete domain behaviour is linked to the deletion of the credit card..that is not acceptable is what I have been saying. Looks like someone else has also had the same experience....(in comments)

[nitinag]

Registrar here (Misk.com). Wanted to share some information on the restore fees discussion. Yes, registries charge hefty restore fees. Using .com as an example (since it can be different for each extension), there is a renewal grace period that can last up to 45 days (we delete at 40 days). Once the name is deleted, the name goes into redemption for 30 days after that. This is where the high fees are hit due to the registry. The thing to note is that some registrars no longer delete names after the renewal grace period ends and pass the name into an auction system. Hence the name never goes into the real redemption period. In those cases the name is still in the renewal grace period and charging higher redemption fees is a business decision by that company. You can tell if this is the case if after a registrar's redemption period, anything happens to the name except becoming available to register by the public (after a 5 day pending delete at the registry). The real redemption period is 30 days and is reflected in the whois record. Domains should still be renewed before expiration since things could change at any level and there is no reason to risk it.

Here are the expiration policies I could find for GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Misk.com (us):

http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/608/what-is-your-pro...

http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/...

https://www.misk.com/kb/domain-expiration-policy

[Osiris]

GoDaddy's dashboard might be bloated which can be confusing but I doubt they deliberately delete domains after removing the credit card info from your account

The bulk of GoDaddy revenue comes from renewals and it's cheaper and easier to keep a customer as opposed to acquiring a new one.

It's much more likely that there's a bug in the code or some other non-malicious technical problem that's involved here.