Wincent Colaiuta's weblog: Fighting GoDaddy

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November 9, 2006

Fighting GoDaddy

The trick I previously described for working around GoDaddy's galling bait-and-switch scam on private registrations no longer works. I tried to remove privacy on an expiring domain and then renew it, adding private registration, and GoDaddy's interface allows me to specify privacy in the lead-up to the checkout but on getting there there is no privacy in my cart and no apparent way to add it.

Updated workaround

Search Google for 'godaddy "promo code"'.
Remove privacy on the domain to be renewed.
Renew it using a promo code. Today I was able to get a 10% discount by entering HASH3 (found here); so that's a one-year dot-com renewal for US$7.20, including the ICANN fee.
After renewal is complete, add privacy again as a separate transaction; this will work. Again, try to find the best promo code you can; today I got 10% off using SAVENOW (found on the same page), yielding private registration for US$4.49, all inclusive.

Drawbacks

The total renewal price with privacy is still too high (US$11.69) but still better than the ridiculous US$18.19 that GoDaddy wanted to charge.
The workaround requires you to perform two transactions instead of one.
Given that the workaround involves two separate transactions, your personal information is exposed in the public WHOIS database for a longer period of time; still only a number of minutes, but annoying nonetheless. An additional annoyance was that during the period of vulnerability GoDaddy/Domains by Proxy provided an out-of-date email address in the WHOIS registry (a real account, not a spam honey-pot address); I have no idea why they published this information, seeing as I updated that email address with both GoDaddy/Domans by Proxy long ago.