I am on day 8 of trying to set up a website with GoDaddy hosting, not counting a weekend. As of now I still cannot access that website. I am working past a deadline that has already been pushed forward and which we are now going to still be late on.
To summarize, GoDaddy’s support is as quick as possible to get you off the phone, and has no idea what the next-step in any resolution is. They will get you off the phone waiting for e-mails that are never going to be sent, or tell you to go to URLs which will never work. They very simply do not know what they are talking about.
I work for a company that designs webpages for small businesses. We were given a project to re-design someones website.
I started out trying to move a domain name from one GoDaddy account to another. I was told this would be an easy process as it’s just from account to account. No, I would not be charged anything, and it would only take about an hour.
We were going to do the domain transfer after, but all of GoDaddy’s hosting solutions REQUIRE you have the domain name on the account or you cannot set them up. We were trying to set up a Quick Shopping Cart and a WordPress Blog, and neither would finish the setup process because the domain name was not on the account. The entire process will not work until the domain is in the account. We are stalled.
When I actually went to transfer this domain name, it turned out to be more complicated than originally projected. For starters, I am on a reseller account. The company I work for has set one up so they make a small amount of money for the webhosting space they sell. On GoDaddy, reseller accounts are technically under a different Domain Controller, “WildWestDomains”.
What they do not tell you is that support for WildWestDomains is the same support as GoDaddy. It’s literally the same people. However they do not let their technicians admit this. If a call comes in from a reseller account, they have to pretend like they have no idea how GoDaddy ‘works’, can’t admit they’re GoDaddy and speak vaguely about how GoDaddy will handle things on their end. Even though they are GoDaddy and are the exact same people.
While this is still GoDaddy, WildWestDomains is technically a separate company for liability reasons. So the domain actually had to be transferred, which then cost us money. Fine, okay, that’s complicated but it extends the domain name for another year so it’s not so bad.
The first tech I spoke to said he was adding the domain transfer to our account and that an E-Mail was being sent, right now, to the Account Manager on the ‘losing’ side of the transfer. That’s our client. The client had to be called so we could get this authorization number from him so we could start the transfer. We were told this was all we would need.
For starters, no e-mail was sent. We lost a day on this, while he tried to find it. I called another technician. It turns out no e-mail was sent. We have to purchase the transfer, and THEN an e-mail gets sent. I ask if we’ll need anything else, they give me a vague “it depends on the losing domain and how they handle things” and they spend 10 minutes denying they’re GoDaddy and know EXACTLY what the ‘losing’ domain will do in this specific situation.
Okay fine, we purchase the transfer and we bug our client again to forward this e-mail. It takes them a few hours to get back to the office and forward this e-mail to us. Okay. By the time we enter in the authorization codes, it’s in the evening. The account says ‘pending transfer’ and we decide to wait for it and check back the next day.
It is now day three, and I make my fourth phonecall. The domain has still not transferred. It still says ‘pending’ in the account. I call again. I am told that the previous tech was incorrect, and that YET ANOTHER e-mail has been sent to our client to ‘confirm’ this transfer, and this is why things are held up. I am told this e-mail will contain a link to accept the transfer and that all I have to do is click on this link. I call our client. They are setting up for a concert, in the rain, and will not be back to their office until very late. They cannot forward us anything until late into the evening.
I get these forwarded e-mails on the morning of day 4. None of them contain any links to anything. I make a fifth phonecall. The previous tech was incorrect, and there is no link being e-mailed. Instead, we need to log into the clients account and accept the transfer from there. We could have done this yesterday and not hassle our client yet another time. Every single time I call, the technician I speak to does not know what the next step is and leaves us waiting for nothing.
I log into this account, which we have the information for. I accept the transfer. I am told it can take a few hours but it should be ready ‘soon’. We spend day 4 trying to set up the WordPress account and the Quick Shopping cart. Both do not work, at all. They say the domain name is already in use. The domain name shows up in our account, but is inaccessible to use to set up products. We assume it is still transferring.
The morning of day 5 we stop assuming and call a sixth time. It turns out that while the domain is in our account, and we should have full control over it, it is ‘linked’ to another GoDaddy account and thus we cannot do anything to it. This other account is the client’s previous account. Why it did not remove this ‘link’ when we did the transfer is not explained to me. We remove this ‘link’ and I am told it should be ready in ‘another couple of hours’.
It is not done by end-of-day. We come back the following Monday finally able to access the domain name that is in our account. We set this up, but it is ‘pending DNS change’. This is day 6, not counting the weekend. We are due to show the client some progress to the design changes this afternoon. We still do not even have access to the account. Day 6, call 7. I am told that it can take up to 48 hours for a server to go live. I ask, when it is live, can I use this IP address I see here to access it? I am told yes. We can FTP into the IP address and see the files for wordpress, but when we enter the IP address into a browser we get a 404. I am told it is because the server is still setting up and that once it is set up we will be able to use that IP address to view the site.
We spend day 7 refreshing the site, waiting for it to go up. We were told it could take up to 48 hours. I have been calling support frequently so I decide to be patient. By the end of day 7 the site is still not working by that IP address.
At the beginning of day 8 the site is still not functioning. It is Wednesday. Our due date for showing design changes has been pushed to today, and we still do not have access to our server. I call again, now the 8th phonecall to technical support. I am told that the previous tech was incorrect, and that the IP address listed will not resolve into the website. I will need to set up a preview DNS in order to view it. This could have been done 2 days ago but the tech said the site was still being set up. The previous tech told me I could view it by the IP address that was already listed. The previous tech was wrong. The preview DNS should take ‘a couple of hours’. I have heard ‘a couple of hours’ quite a few times before. I’m still waiting for the preview DNS.
Every single time I call, the technician is entirely incorrect about what my next step should be and what I can do right now to get this website working. I always ask ‘What is my next step, what am I waiting for, what is my expectation.’ Everytime I am told to wait for incorrect details. They are as quick as possible to get me off the phone and waiting for a solution that will not come because it is entirely incorrect.
On two separate occasions, I asked for a manager. I have never spoken to one.
If this was my project, I would have demanded a refund by now. I am just a designer; I do not get to make those decisions. But under my own power, I will never use GoDaddy hosting for any reason ever again. Their support is terrible and always leaves me waiting for things that will not happen.
I can only hope that now, finally, within a few hours, I should be able to preview this server. However given that every time I called there has been some missed ‘next step’, I am fully expecting to still not see this website by friday.
Do not use GoDaddy hosting for any reason.
Biggest Con: Their technical support does not know how their own system works
This person does NOT recommend Go Daddy.
