No, this doesn’t have anything to do with SOPA!

Today, I was doing some investigating and ran into something that I haven’t seen yet. “Repossessed by Go Daddy” in the whois data for a domain name? After doing a bit more digging, I ran into some domain names that contained Go Daddy Software but used the email address “[email protected]”.

Personally, I never like when a business has a conflict of interest with its customers and I hoped this wasn’t the case here. I wouldn’t be very happy if GoDaddy was picking from the crop (expired domains) like some domain registrars do and selling domains with starting prices that where out of range with normal expired domain starting prices or not even giving the general public a chance to bid on the domains. This is not the case!

GoDaddy actually gets “stuck” with a lot of domain names that people register and use stolen credit cards to pay for, refuse to pay the credit card bill and I’m sure about 99 other reasons the money never makes it to GoDaddy. At some point a charge back happens and GoDaddy is out of the money paid to the registry for the domains annual fee. Heck, even sometimes 10 years of fees.  In the end, the domain name gets repossessed by GoDaddy and is put up for sale!

So where are all these hidden gems?

Not really any “gems” that I noticed but a ton of TM domains, hyphen filled domains and a large range of TLD’s as well. PoopAndFarts.com was tempting but I passed and saved the $130 for some gas! (ha ha) Prices start at $10 (for a couple .ca domains) and range as high at $410 (highest I seen). Some domains were not overly bad but I thought the pricing was a bit high. I couldn’t figure out a rhyme or reason behind the pricing, so my guess is the prices reflect the amount of cash GoDaddy is trying to recoup from the transactions gone bad. I think the domains would likely do better in a buy now format or mixed in with the expired domains.

How many domains?

More than a couple! DomainTools.com whois indicates some 5,000+ with the potential of about another 2,800 based on one of the email addresses. So I think it’s safe to say a range of 3,000 to 8,000 domains currently. Each domain name is listed in an auction style format.

How do you see the domains?

The domain names are listed in the GoDaddy Auctions section of the site. Upon arriving at the site, you will need to do the following:

Advanced Search (right side of screen)

Scroll down and Click: Type (a small window will expand)

Select: Value Priced Domains

Click: Search (orange button)

All domain names displayed are owned by GoDaddy. Only GoDaddy lists domain names in the Value Priced Domains section. You can clearly adjust your advanced search features with TLD, age etc but be sure to have the “Type” as Value Priced Domains.

GoDaddy does fraud prevention but dealing with as many transactions as they do, some will clearly slip by. Some that look good, turn out not so good and so on. I’m sure some transactions are even charged back due to a spouse seeing a charge not knowing who Go Daddy Software even is but the charge was legit!

So anyway, I thought I would share what I discovered with you in case you ever wondered about the terms used in whois or what happens to domains that get paid for but the real money doesn’t arrive!

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One thought on “Repossessed By Go Daddy

  1. I can not get a hold of anyone at godaddy. they are so secretive. i registered a domain for 99 cents with a coupon code i saw on onmyminddailycom the domain name was a very nice one and I was planning to use it – there is no way i would chargeback 99 cents – that would be silly and frankly, it did not happen – so i tried to log in to my godaddy account and nothing – i then saw the whois said: repossessed by godaddy – in the past godaddy has also been known for deleting domains and my friend joel had a domain suspended and godaddy told him “we will give this domain back to you, but the fee is $385 dollars.

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