GoDaddy Desperately Reaching Out To Try To Win People Back

from the too-little,-too-late dept

Tue, Dec 27th 2011 8:07am — Mike Masnick

Via Tim Lee, we learn that, in the wake of the capitulation by GoDaddy, some of those who transferred domains to other providers are now receiving calls from GoDaddy customer service folks trying to win them back. Chris Heald explains what happened to him:

I just got a call from #GoDaddy. The rep said he noticed that I'd transferred my 60+ domains away... and wanted to know if I'd tell them why. I got to tell them that it was because of their #SOPA support, and that I couldn't in good conscience give my money to a tech company that would support legislation like that. I told him I was aware that they had reversed their position, but that their explicit support of it in the first place had cost them my confidence in them, as it is at the best viciously ignorant, and at worst, malicious. The rep was quite sincere in his apology to me, asked if there was anything they could do to win me back. He had a "We support IP protections, and now realize that support of SOPA is too broad" song-and-dance routine that probably came in from a PR memo today. I told him "no thanks", and that was that. I'm impressed by the customer service hustle, but it shows that this little incident really spooked them.

It really makes me wonder if GoDaddy will ever be able to win back the confidence of many who joined this boycott. Perhaps not.

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Filed Under: boycott, domains, pipa, protect ip, sopa, transfer
Companies: godaddy

51 Comments

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Cloksin (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 7:40am

Leaving for good
I've only got 3 domains, and at the moment they're all registered with GoDaddy. I've also got an SSL certificate for one of the domains from them. I've already started the process of moving them, and plan to finalize the move by the 29th. Among my reasons for moving include their initial support of SOPA, as well as their half-hearted reversal, but the other main reason I'm leaving is because they continue to accept the domain transfers of domains seized by the ICE division of homeland security. In my opinion, if they're truly opposed to internet censorship then when the DOJ asks them to accept these transfers they would simply tell them no.
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Loki, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:13am

I've yet to kow someone who didn't have a horrible experience with GoDaddy. It really comes as no surprise to me, given what others have told me of their business practices, that they had the attitude they do concerning SOPA and ICE.
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el_segfaulto (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:15am

Still Waiting
I've decided to wait until the 29th to transfer my domains. I inherited them from a guy who was "good with computers" and mostly stayed out of laziness. When the powers-that-be asked why I was switching I tried to explain to them about SOPA and they simply didn't care about GoDaddy's support, this is despite the fact that SOPA terrifies them. When I explained how sleazy GoDaddy is and showed some of their commercials, their conservative moral outrage took over. It's sad (at least to me), that that was the reason why I was given the okay to transfer the domains.
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Yankee Infidel, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:16am

how Chris Heald should have responded
He should have stated that the only way to win back his trust would be to fire those involved in suggesting to the CEO support of PIPA/SOPA and fire those above said executive all the way up to the top, replacing them with executives that not only know how to run a online business but also don't support the copyright fascism proposals like PIPA and SOPA.

If you could cut out the cancer in your company via "organ transplant", then I would maybe consider trusting you again.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:25am

Note well: GoDaddy has NOT reversed itself on SOPA
See, for example: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/nokde/it_sounds_obvious_but_godaddys_sopa_flipflop_is_a/

It's pretty obvious that GoDaddy is just lying, lying, lying in a desperate attempt to keep customers from leaving.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:32am

Ouch. They really shot themselves in the foot. GoDaddy is about to become the first victim of SOPA.

Who was it that said that SOPA was about protecting jobs and the economy?
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:34am

Re:
"I've yet to kow someone who didn't have a horrible experience with GoDaddy"

Now you have. I haven't had a single problem with them. When I used their hosting, they never gave me any problems. I use their DNS, no problems. Their support was nice and quick when I asked for them to add a MIME type. In fact, before this SOPA thing, I would have recommended them.

Now, I will also be moving my domain. Anyone have a suggestion of who I can go to?
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:38am

Re:
The Congresscritters. They keep getting paid to keep this on the table and moving forward for those willing to pay them to do it. The Tech Sector is late to the table with lobbyists and "contributions", so until they are paying as well as the Media Corps we will get more of the same.
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Dave (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:40am

GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
I moved five of my domains from GoDaddy last week when news of their SOPA support broke. The other two expire in January, and I'm just going to let them expire.

The sad thing is that this seems to be the only tangible instance where support of SOPA has lead to customers taking their business elsewhere. Box office grosses from Xmas weekend were still $125.5M, and the MPAA practically wrote this bill. There hasn't been any news of a mass exodus of Comcast subscribers, either, and... well, I didn't exactly boycott Monday Night Football last night.
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Noah Callaway, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:48am

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
It comes down to available alternatives. There are other Domain Name Providers that don't support SOPA. It's hard to find alternative blockbuster movie providers, Internet service Providers, or football providers.
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Jay (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:48am

Re: Still Waiting
You should have pointed to the Chanel case. Just tell them that if you don't GoDaddy would take over their website without them ever listening to a judge. That's the problem here.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:49am

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
> The other two expire in January, and I'm just going to let them expire.

Be careful with that and make sure the auto-renew is disabled.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:56am

and how about people giving up Comcast, which is a chief proponent of SOPA/PIPA?
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Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:01am

Re:
I already gave up Comcast not all that long ago, but I only gave it up for Verizon, so it's not much better.
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Dave (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:02am

Re: Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
Just double checked to be sure. Auto-renew was already off. If nothing else, leaving those domains there until they expire next month should keep me off their call-and-beg list for a little while.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:04am

GoDaddy should realize that it's not enough to just stop supporting something to win people back, politics can be a good example of this.

150 years ago believe it or not African Americans used to overwhelmingly support Republicans, and never Democrats. Republican president Lincoln freed the slaves after all. But eventually Republicans screwed up and overwhelmingly lost the African American vote.

A few things caused this to happen.
1) Republicans decided to go after the ultra conservative (and very racist back then) southern white conservative voters, then the democrats base of support.

2) In the 60's the Democrats decided to get serious about winning the African American vote, so Democrat Lyndon Johnson helped passed the civil rights act of 1964, knowing full well that he was turning Southern White Conservative voters against his party for at least a generation.

So if GoDaddy wants to get serious about getting their customers back then they need to do more then just revoke their support of SOPA. They need to do something that'll clearly anger the Pro-SOPA people in order to win support back from Anti-SOPA people. Something like arguing the OPEN act has similar problems to SOPA and encouraging people to oppose it and SOPA to would probably be helpful (I'm not sure if that's true or not though about the OPEN act, so they might need to think of something else).
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:04am

CEO Parsons is an AssHat
Parsons is a creepy, goofy looking, scumbag that makes your skin crawl if you have a face-to-face conversation.

Not only does Parsons think SOPA is a good thing, he thinks killing elephants is a good thing too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVH4OsfapI
(He claims the encroaching people need the space, so the elephants need to be killed to make room for the people).
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el_segfaulto (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:09am

Re: Re: Still Waiting
I had completely forgotten about that one. Fortunately for us, the barrier to entry to be a registrar is still fairly low. If the market were like U.S. cellular or broadband we'd be pretty much screwed by every unethical business practice.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:12am

Re:
Ah, the power of choice... when it comes to selecting a broadband provider, sadly there isn't much choice these days.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:13am

Go Daddy does this sort of thing for any account that transfers away more than a couple of domains. It's not SOPA related, it's business.

You guys read too much into it.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:15am

Re:
Because we wisely let them have monopolies in many areas, so it is have them or do without.
Loosing contact with the internet and multiple media sources leaves you adrift in a world where OTA "News" programs pimp themselves out offering "dating" subsites, If it bleeds it leads, if we don't cover it - it didn't happen. Want to learn more about the tax hike? Well we only had 15 seconds to cover that, but here is 2 minutes of a cute cat video that went "viral".

The corporations want what the corporations want, the people we elected are letting them have it.
I find fault with them just giving into whoever pays them enough money.
We all want change, but we are all so petty and worried someone else might "win" that we keep electing those people who keep us focused on "what is important" rather than admitting the country is completely screwed up, its no ones fault and the more time we spend assigning the blame the worse it gets.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:16am

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
The reason you're seeing such backlash for godaddy only is because SOPA pretty much directly, and exclusively, attacks people who run websites.

Godaddy outright ignored their customer base before they decided to back such a legislation - it was a pretty key indicator that they don't know what's going on around them.
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anonymous, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:25am

there's a big difference between saying they no longer support SOPA and actually not supporting it. i am yet to see real evidence of that.
no business can afford to lose customers and i think, as stated above, they are simply trying to keep that going.
i am waiting to see what happens if SOPA is defeated, how the attitude changes when it is re-introduced with minor alterations, just to make people and companies think it is better than before. i hope it will still be seen by all as an atrocious Bill and never happens. those in Congress that backed it should lose all votes and be investigated to find out how they were going to benefit from giving that backing
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SUNWARD (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:35am

too late, too little
godaddy is not against SOPA, just not supporting it at this time
http://gizmodo.com/5870920/brave-godaddy-ceo-says-hes-neither-for-nor-against-sopa

Their position on DMCA is the worst also - delete and ask questions later.

I will move my domains just before they expire during the next year. Server to follow.
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chronos (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:42am

Re: Re:
I moved to namecheap.com. They stand up strongly against SOPA and come highly recommended from many others.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 9:51am

Re: Re:
I used and liked HostMonster.com when I had sites to host but there are so many excellent hosting companies these days all you really need to do is not sign up with GoDaddy.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:03am

Re: CEO Parsons is an AssHat
Tangential tangent you have there, so:

You know how many millions of people on the other side of the globe think the same thing of you every time you eat a burger.

And those cows were intentionally put in that pasture.
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Sonikku (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:06am

Good Alternatives
So what are some good domain hosting alternatives that are as cheap as GoDaddy?
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Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:08am

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
I suppose I could pay the early termination fine and quit Comcast, but I'm afraid that my only other choice in this area is AT&T, and I quit them once already because their service sucked donkey dick the entire year I had it.

I suppose I could invest in a pair of tin cans and a ball of twine but otherwise it's dial-up for me (and I'd still be buying my phone service from either AT&T or Comcast).

I realize I'm just one subscriber, but I'm sure I'm not the only one with such limited choices.
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Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:11am

Re: Re:
I gave up AT&T for Comcast. The service is better... when it works. Which I admit is most of the time, but I'm still puzzled by this regular 8:52 pm disconnection that started again this week after a 2 month hiatus. Every time I complain they send a tech to fiddle with the wires, or blame my router. Or both.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:24am

This just goes to show ya that you don't piss in the pool of the people who pay your bills.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:32am

GoDaddy has lost thousands of dollars of business from me
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hothmonster, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:06am

Re: Re: Re:
I had a similar experience a few years ago with having a regular prime time outage and tons of irregular outages. Yes it was super annoying but I called and complained every time it happened and ended up getting about a year and a half of free service out of them. Eventually I switched to AT&T though.
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Shawn (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:13am

Re: Good Alternatives
I use Hover.com and love it.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:14am

Re:
Democrats decided to get serious about winning the African American vote

This is horribly incorrect. There was, essentially, no African American vote in 1964. Passing the Civil Rights Act was an incredibly brave move by LBJ that was done because it was the right thing to do, not because of any political gain.

The Democrats lost the next Presidential election, btw.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:17am

Re: Leaving for good
He had a "We support IP protections, and now realize that support of SOPA is too broad" song-and-dance routine that probably came in from a PR memo today. I told him "no thanks", and that was that.

I wonder if Chris Heald then admitted that he does not support IP protections...
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Violated (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:25am

If GoDaddy want to stop this avalanche against them they should have their name removed from the SOPA and PIPA support list.

Clearly their CEO still welcome SOPA provided someone else is in the driving seat. In other words no change.
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PRMan, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:36am

Re: Still Waiting
The sexually exploitative commercials from a guy who built his business selling Bible software did it for me years ago. They also called to ask me why I transferred 2-3 domains back then.

Why is one kind of moral outrage OK but another is not?
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David Jones, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:37am

"Desperately" ?
Ok, so, it was annoying that GoDaddy supported SOPA in its current form. Good on the "Internet" for slapping them! But the headline in this post is just absurdly sensationalist and obviously one sided bashing. "GoDaddy desperately reaching out.." What makes it "Desperate" ?! I'd call it good customer service that they are reaching out to their customers to fine tune their position and try to earn their business back. This is EXACTLY what any company should do!

Give it a rest.
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David Jones, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:42am

Re: "avalanche"
Yet more sensationalism. What makes this an "avalanche" ? People are posting stats on how many domains have been transferred "away" but no one is posting how many have been ADDED. With however many million domains they have under their management, this is an insignificant "exodus" unless everyone magically stopped ADDING domains. As I said in another post, it's great that they got slapped. You people just sound desperate yourselves now bashing them using just the tiniest sliver of truth to push your cause.
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PRMan, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:54am

Re: Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
You could get a Sprint or Verizon card...
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The eejit (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:03pm

Re: Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
That, and the legislation explicitly excluded them from any liability. Period.
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Stacey G., 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:12pm

Re: Re: CEO Parsons is an AssHat
Elephants are endangered/threatened species everywhere they still exist. Cows, not so much. It's not about the eating, it's about the scarcity.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 2:22pm

Re: Re: Re: CEO Parsons is an AssHat
So endangered that South Africa has to decide between a culling ( surely not the ones you adopted :) ) or becoming the only market for elephant IUDs?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-elephant-in-the-room

So endangered that Zimbabwe (where Mr. Parsons bagged his) is about 60,000 over capacity.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2011-12/13/c_131303692.htm
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TtfnJohn (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 4:04pm

too late, too little -- they're lying anyway
I think it's going to prove hard to sit on the fence particularly since GoDaddy helped to craft at least one of the bills.

So let's just say GoDaddy doesn't support them till the heat comes off and then they'll support them again and be honest about it. Or maybe continue to fib about it.

Reading Mr Adelman's comments is painful at best cause he just can't get the right spin going or an outright lie at worst.
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Glenn, 27 Dec 2011 @ 4:12pm

No surprise...
GoDaddy is now viewed as a "traitor"... and don't traitors usually get the "death penalty"? If their business dries up and they "die", isn't that to be expected by--and desirable to--those departing for more friendly environs? For those leaving, the refrain must be "GoDaddy, you're dead to me now."

Now... boycott Hollywood [et al movies and TV shows] in any way that will send money to their undeserving coffers. Let the entertainment industry dry up and fade away.
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TtfnJohn (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 4:25pm

Re: "Desperately" ?
But that's the problem, they're fine tuning a non-position which amounts to "we want it but not if it costs us too much business" all of which indicates that it is causing some pain to them.

It's likely it's the inexpensive plans that are joining up while the people talking about leaving are at the other end of the scale in the money GoDaddy gets from them.

And I don't know when the 50% off sales started but it's looking at the moment that they're practically giving the low end hosting away. If not "desperate" they seem to be trying to attract business as fast as they can. To make up for the high end sites transferring out?

(It might be coincidental because of the time of year, of course.)

Of course the number is incidental, to use your wording but we'll have to wait and see what happens as time moves on.

It appears that they've received the message but have they understood it? To read Mr Adelman they don't seem to understand it yet.
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FarmerBob, 27 Dec 2011 @ 8:38pm

This was only a straw that broke the camels back. Trust me, there are and will be more. GoDaddy has been a child run amok with tons of our money for a very long time. And as of the 16th rates with them are going up again. Why? More stupid advertising? It was only this last issue that in their time demented minds, that they thought that they could do or say anything and be impervious to backlash. Which rightfully this time they got caught. About time. Just look at those god awful commercials that they/Bill Parsons thinks are cute and "worthy" of our money. If you have ever read or heard one of Parsons manifestos, you'll know.

In the early days GD was great. But see what money can do to a susceptible mind(less). This backlash should have happened a long time ago to steer the child in the right, non-abusive direction.
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PPNSteve (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:59pm

so..
Does this mean we won't have to suffer through yet another lame, overpriced, under produced NoDaddy Super Bowl commercial?

I sure hope so.
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FarmerBob (profile), 28 Dec 2011 @ 11:28am

Lowering pricing and not spending it on those stupid commercials and Safaris could be a start. Their excuses over the years for raising pricing, when there are cheaper alternatives out there that say the increases are unnecessary, are just plain lies.
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Noah Callaway, 30 Dec 2011 @ 8:22am

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.
It comes down to available alternatives. There are other Domain Name Providers that don't support SOPA. It's hard to find alternative blockbuster movie providers, Internet service Providers, or football providers.
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