GoDaddy Still Hasn’t Figured Out .AU

It pains me to write this, but GoDaddy still does not make life easy for anyone trying to transact aftermarket .au domain transactions through their platform.

I’ve previously written about this a few times on here, and had discussions with Tara Commerford (Vice President & Managing Director Australia & New Zealand at GoDaddy). Promises were made that the constructive criticism would be looked at and actioned where appropriate.

Well, I’m afraid to say that this simply hasn’t happened. My son Luke received an offer on a 4L brandable domain about 10 days ago from GoDaddy’s Domain Buyer Service, and he made a counter-offer. Then the “torture” started! He asked my advice – and so I was happy to try and help.

Here are self-explanatory excerpts from two emails I sent on his behalf:

Saturday:

“Apparently your purchaser accepted our counter-offer, but we have no advice of this other than this transfer email (see below).

However, when we tried to effect the transfer by following the instructions below, we kept getting an error message that the Transaction ID: 25714xxxx was incorrect. We cut and pasted; and I typed it in manually. I phoned your help desk yesterday to try and fix. No success.

Can someone please get this happening? We love GoDaddy, but always seem to have problems with .au domains.“

Sunday:

We then followed up with this directly to the GoDaddy Buy Service:

“We have emailed you separately about this. We’re not a happy customer.

1. We received no notification our counter-offer had been accepted – only a transfer of domain request.
2. We had to email buyer directly to ask if she had accepted our counter-offer. She confirmed.
3. We tried to then authorize transfer of domain, but kept getting an error message that the transaction id was incorrect (see attached).
4. We spent nearly 30 minutes with your help desk on Friday night, but they could not help. Apparently your department does not work on weekends.
5. The sale is no closer to being completed. The domain is still at Drop.com.au. Seller and buyer both unhappy.

Please can you fix as a matter of urgency?”

Here’s The Thing

In my long experience of selling domain names, the longer it takes to complete a transaction, the more chance there is of the whole sale “falling over”.

Buyers and sellers just want a quick and smooth transaction.

So come on GoDaddy – surely you can do better in Australia?

Disclaimer:

These views are mine alone, and do not represent auDA.

Ned O’Meara – 4th December 2017