How GoDaddy Lost A Longtime Customer

from the think-that-through-more-carefully dept

zanek writes "When an ISP that has been with you through thick and thin hits the road, something's wrong. Email Battles gives you the play-by-play on how a single phisher destroyed Go Daddy's relationship with NectarTECH, an ISP that managed over 200 Go Daddy accounts and 600 servers." We saw some news of this story developing over the weekend, but there were a lot of conflicting reports. The Email Battles account has a lot more details and both sides of the story -- though the title is misleading. It wasn't a single phisher that "lost" the account, but some bad decisions on the part of GoDaddy. It still seems worrying that GoDaddy basically completely took down this entire hosting firm over what appears to have been some sort of misunderstanding.
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  • identicon
    jon, 17 Jan 2006 @ 3:01pm

    wow..

    this is news?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      lori, 18 Jan 2006 @ 3:22am

      Re: wow..

      I took some Computer Information Systems courses over the last 18 months with Ms. Goldberg, GoDaddy's DBMA, who works presently for GoDaddy's operation in Arizona. Ms. Goldberg has had a hand in the higher level operations at GoDaddy for at least 15 months now. Ms. Goldberg had all 8 servers running at GoDaddy and taking the websurfing hits during the famous GoDaddy Superbowl 2005 commercial. Ms. Goldberg almost got expelled from our Web Server Administration class by our professor for being too sarcastic, arrogant, and condescending towards the other students in our class discussions. In those discussions, she always made it clear that no one else on this planet knew as much as her regarding anything that is computer science related. She was very arrogant about her decisions being "indisputable" on all levels. I am very curious to know how much she contributed to this latest GoDaddy debaucle of major proportions, which has caused GoDaddy's ISP provider to "hit the road."

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mike L, 17 Jan 2006 @ 3:06pm

    No Subject Given

    Thanks for the info. I was considering to move one of my business domains to their posession, but it appears that they aren't reliable anymore. This is the second time I've heard of them doing something completely stupid to their customers. Domains are a very serious business.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Rikko, 17 Jan 2006 @ 3:17pm

    No Subject Given

    I don't see where it said they lost them as a customer? It ended looking like they were still doing business.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    mike (profile), 17 Jan 2006 @ 3:47pm

    no surprises

    GoDaddy is awful. While yes, they are cheap, they do nothing to protect your site, once it is yours. GoDaddy sites are relatively easy to commandeer, because they seem to cut corners, and while no site is impenetrable, GoDaddy sites are crap. You can easily commandeer sites, and I almost did, before I thought about the repercussions, because some kid at school was pissing me off. Not to say that it is an easy feat, but for the knowledgeable person, a GoDaddy site is a prime target.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Conrad, 17 Jan 2006 @ 4:01pm

    Both sides suck

    Well - both sides are in the wrong here.

    Have you heard the mp3s? Though godaddy was clearly in the wrong for switching off the nameservers, so too was marc for not clearly stating from the beginning that the situation was taken care of. In both phone calls marc never clearly stated that he had taken care of the situation. In fact, in the second phone call, he was praticially waving around a credit card to get the site online. Frankly, anyone that is going to try to buy people off doesnt deserve to get the site online - espicially when he never clearly states that the phishing problem has been taken care of.

    In those same phone calls (really during the second call) you clearly hear the godaddy rep saying that he simply needs to follow directions in the email. The directions are 2 whole long steps: 1. fix the site 2. reply via email. Instead you have marc complaining about how long the process would take (but isnt isnt it already done??) from an email that he aparently cant find (which I suspect hes lying), and in addition praticially forces his credit card through the phone at the godaddy rep.

    Dont get me wrong - Im not standing up for godaddy support. They clearly suck, and the first phone call is a huge indicator of that. However, as a hosting company with a 'datacenter', you better make damn sure that your domain is protected - and that means calling up godaddy from day one. If you dont get a reply in an hour from the first abuse report (after you have the situation cleaned up), you better be on the phone.

    I suspect that marc will be more careful in the future.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    blahhero, 17 Jan 2006 @ 4:56pm

    godaddy

    Godaddy blocked my domain because someone thought my site was a fisching site to ebay.. i had attempted to use a program to view my auctions and display them in my home page.. it asked to login.. but did not display my auctions.. I was too lazy to fix and left it there for many months... To make a long story short it took some threats of boycotting their service along with others to turn my name back on.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Tim, 17 Jan 2006 @ 7:00pm

    No Subject Given

    sounds like to me the dude is a cry baby and should have just replied to the email that godaddy sent them. Godaddy "this conversation is longer than the procedure. Have you reviewed our procedure?" "Have you found our email?" dude- "Im looking" jeez. All he has to DO IS REPLY TO THE EMAIL! I think the NectarTECH customers should find a better host.I love when dude says "Im calling for a friend of mine" What a waste of Techdirt bandwidth for posting this.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Dave M., 17 Jan 2006 @ 10:10pm

    No Subject Given

    from broadband:
    "GO Daddy did exactly as they should have done

    Here's what happened:

    The phishing script complaints to netarch.com go all the way back to at least November. Nectartech.com had been notified, yet chose not to address the issue apparently.

    The only way at that point to get the phishing site offline was to pull the registration. Something that godaddy's TOS/AUP allows for in cases such as this.

    Put the blame where it belongs - with Nectartech.com"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Big Pappa, 21 Jan 2006 @ 1:59am

    So Dumb

    Man, I'm glad I'm the only one with hands here because now I can paste to you guys what I found in a simple internet search about NectarTECH.com. For a short cut, go here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&sa=G&q=%22NectarTECH.com%22 . You might have to look through a few pages, but it's there....

    Basically, the real emergency was that their porn websites were down and nobody could buy.

    Yes I heard both mp3's and I sympathized with the guy....until about the 10th time he said "This is an emergency!" Then I got an annoyed feeling in the pit of my stomach that this guy was trying to stall and pressure the sales rep; when something more was behind it.

    Ever notice that the guy says he's a "friend" of the owner. Like who in their rightful minds would allow their friend to call in on the behalf of their company?

    Anyhow, even though I don't agree with some of GoDaddy's spam policies, they didn't deserve the crap this guy has done to them. He basically retaliated because GoDaddy didn't provide access to their porn sites quicker when all he had to do was follow basic instructions in an email.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Wiley, 21 Feb 2006 @ 1:27pm

      Re: So Dumb

      It's not a registrars job to rename the nameservers period... but I guess if you've just started using the internet or you work at godaddy you probably missed the last 10 years of what a domain registrars role is...

      Who gives a crap if it was porn. Godaddy makes up their own rules and what they did was illegal.

      Read the EMAIL ...
      RTFM ...

      Customer Service at it's finest...






      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Garry, 13 Jul 2006 @ 11:51pm

    Suck Godaddy

    I have exchange server 5.5 which no choice to forward all my emails by using DNS. And the entire world email I manage to send but only Godaddy hosting email I CANNOT SEND OUT.

    They so call to protect from SPAM mail and virus.

    Suck!!!!!!!!!!!! if want to control above mention problem they actually can install Anti-Spam and Antivirus software.

    SUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Alec S., 27 Mar 2008 @ 12:05pm

    godaddy.com

    Im using godaddy, unfortunately its been very confusing so far. They do have very cheap deals, but im only 14 and dont have my own visa or paypal to be able to buy my own for higher prices, now that ive bought my domain (www.unboundstudios.net) and the hosting, i cant figure out how to host it!! I sent an email and they gave me 5 short steps on how to do it.. their last step was
    "Follow the instructions there and you are done!"......................................................................... WHAT?!?!

    Thats the dumbest thing ive ever heard. First of all, those instructions are worthless, for example:
    it asks me to create a totally new account just to setup my hosting! But if i make a new account, the hosting wont be available on the account with my domain.. or so i think. All i can say, is that godaddy is very confusing and their support is very low, sometimes it may help if you have alot of common sense and u understand it completely, but what about n00bz like me who just got their first domain name ever?

    its not mine... pretty obvious: unbound studios.
    i host it (big role) + animator but that has nothing to do with this. I just sent another help request asking why it wants me to create a new account, but i guess ill give it a shot.. if it screws up godady can go ****.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    The Truth, 26 May 2008 @ 9:44pm

    This story is a complete lie

    I am still amazed how this story is around, but then again this is the internet, anyone can lie and if they tell it enough then enough other people will join in and believe the lie! I've listed to all the calls posted. Along with some other information I have come across.

    Two things:

    1st: GoDaddy did not "basically completely took down this entire hosting firm". That is blatantly incorrect. GoDaddy turned off a domain name after repeated proven spam/viruses that were sent out after repeated warnings that the domain would be shut down if not resolved. The domain apparently happened to be the only set of nameservers being used by the hosting company, which was a gross error on their part to not have backup nameservers.

    2nd: In order to get the name turned back on the only thing they needed to do was respond to an email agreeing they would not send out spam any longer. Yes thats right, simply respond saying "I Agree". What if GoDaddy had been sued for allowing a domain, that had been proven to allow spam/viruses to pass through it previously, to be turned back on...well they need something to show in court that they had an agreement it would not happen again. Well instead of responding to the email, the person instead chose to argue, and refuse to check their email...instead they verbally abused the phone reps and threatened them hoping that would resolve their situation instead.

    I think this clearly shows the poor choices of the person who had their entire data center shut down due to repeated spam/viruses being sent through their only set of nameservers. Sounds like their customers are also getting the short end of the stick for not having a backup set to use in case of certain instances like this.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mike Gaffer, 21 Feb 2010 @ 4:54pm

    BUT... what about the extortion fee?

    They will ONLY tuen your site back on for $200... and even if you have nothing hosted through them and only have your domain name with them, they will take your domain name, change your DNS servers, and tell you that they will not let you change, modify, transfer, etc your domain name from GoDaddy with paying them $200 and prove to them you provide double opt in emails. This was a problem for us since we sent NO emails EVERY from out server. It was not hacked, we did not spam. A competitor sent in an email with headers changed to look like it came from our site.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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