As you may have heard, recently GoDaddy caused a big hubbub when it was discovered they supported SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Anyone who supports the freedom of the internet should NOT support SOPA, especially an internet-based corporation! In addition to being ridiculous, it could hinder the livelihoods of anyone working on the internet and everyone’s access to valuable information, among other things.
Anyway, when I found this out, I, along with a lot of other people, moved their domains from GoDaddy to NameCheap or another registrar. (I picked NameCheap because they seem much more transparent as a business, their prices are comparable, their customer service was really awesome and they are openly anti-SOPA.)
Once I cleared out and transferred all our domains from GoDaddy for both my personal account and our Moxie account, I tried to close my accounts. You know, delete them. Like you should be able to since they were your accounts to open in the first place. But guess what? Apparently, you can’t.
I searched high and low on that site and found nothing. I did Google searches. And finally, I called their customer support and was informed that I cannot actually delete my account. Their recommendations are as follows:
- Remove all your products and domains from your account.
- Disconnect any payment methods.
That’s it. So your account just sits there, with your personal information in it, just in case you might ever want to return. But what if you don’t want to return? I just want to delete my accounts!
I asked the customer service person — quite nicely, actually — if there’s someone else higher up I could speak to about this. They insisted no, there wasn’t and bid me a nice day. Seriously! She said, “I’m sorry, no. You can’t delete your accounts with GoDaddy and there’s no one higher than me on this subject. Have a nice day.”
Apparently, this woman is the Grand Poobah Empress of GoDaddy Account Deletions.
I hung up and went about my day, but now I’m still getting GoDaddy emails with no access or link to unsubscribe at the bottom. And the real pisser? They close every email “Thank you for being a GoDaddy customer.”
That just frosts me. I AM NOT A GODADDY CUSTOMER and I DONT WANT TO BE and STOP ACTING LIKE I AM. It borders in harassment.
With all the recent accessibility issues regarding GoDaddy, I’m concerned that accounts with our business name, personal information and usernames are just sitting there, empty, waiting to be exploited by hackers or GoDaddy themselves. This is unacceptable to me. It has my name on it, I want it deleted. It seems unethical and maybe even illegal to deny that, no? (I don’t know about the legality, but if it’s not, it’s certainly FISHY.)
I wanted to login and change my username and email address to something fake, but it wouldn’t let me. It said you have to verify the email address change — obviously I can’t do that if the email address I entered is fake.
So you’re just stuck. I suppose they probably expect us to just sit on it and forget, but I’m not forgetting. I’m going to raise a stink. I will call and demand to talk to supervisors until someone can pull their thumb out of their ass long enough to hit “delete”.
GoDaddy, you may have changed your tune about SOPA, but that was only because you were scared of losing business, which you did — a lot of it. It has nothing to do with your business ethics, which are questionable, at best.
Some might see it as no big deal, but I care about what happens to my personal information. I admit, I sign up for a LOT of stuff on the internet, but if I don’t use it, I try to go back and delete the unused accounts. I don’t like all my cheese hanging in the wind, so to speak. (Who thought of that expression?) This is no exception.
Dramatic as it might seem, I feel as though I’m being held against my will and it pisses me off.
