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GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers
An anonymous reader writes "A GoDaddy Vice President has been caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. The employee Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions.
Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal? Said a representative for a competitor, 'Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.'
This comes hot on the heels of news that despite earlier promises to ICANN to end their 60-Day ban on transfers, GoDaddy quietly circumvented it by forcing customers to agree to the ban anyway. ICANN doesn't appear to be investigating or asking follow-up questions about this. What can be done to force ICANN to police the registrars for which it is responsible?"
... and it is, roughly speaking, illegal as hell in many jurisdictions.
Pay a Congressman.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
At a minimum, get the word out so everyone knows about it. Also, vote with your dollars by taking your business elsewhere.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I would ditch my 200+ domains at GoDaddy in a heartbeat.
The company is rife with unethical business practices.
I have experienced this same thing where GoDaddy bid against me in an auction.
They will also purposely not update your contact information / credit information for certain domains where they can grab them and sell them off at a profit. Which has also happened to me.
For whatever reason, there doesn't seem to be an equal price competitor to GoDaddy. That's a shame as there are many people who want to leave.
What an appropriate last name!
Wow, if Charles Dickens were writing today, he'd be all over that name.
Adam Dicker, quicker with the clicker than the clients he dicks o'er
Mr. Pinchloaf, known as a tight-ass most horribly, whose pucker snaps shut audibly
Nadia Rotchacokoff, who gives her love freely and her diseases venerally
Steve Ballmer, a rabid wombat would be much calmer, screaming, hurling chairs against the wallmer
President Bush and Vice President Dick, with names like that, someone's getting fucked right quick
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Its Certainly Unethical, sometimes illegal. Where I Live, If you do it in Real Estate Auctions, you can loose any profits, and get a few fines, Auctioneer can loose their license.
More like ICANN'T!
Why is anyone surprised at unethical behaviour by GoDaddy?
It is common practice at GoDaddy to bid on domains and resell them. So much so that the unwritten word was to open an account under a family members name in order to make it harder to trace back to yourself.
In other words, you would take a stand on principle, but not if it costs you a bit more money. Heh.
it should be illegal (depends where you live).
if you want a minimum price then set a reserve, not all this BS.
or just make this a law; if you are in any way financially associated with the auction, it must be declared on every bid you make.
otherwise, how is this not bait and switch or thuggery?
thug: "give me $10!"
person takes out wallet containing $30
thug: "give me $30!"
The whole domain name market has gotten out of control. Most unused domain names are now being used as nothing more than garbage linklists to generate ad revenue, while they sit at auction sites for $1,000 or more. It amazes me to think these garbage sites can generate more revenue than it costs to register the name. And then to sit on these names waiting for thousand dollar payoffs is outrageous. If ICANN intends domain names to be like real-estate then they need to provide permanent ownership. Otherwise they need to raise their own registration fees to prevent this kind of domain abuse. I for one tire of Google searches that return a list of b.s. sites.
:T:R:A:N:S:
With this recent disclosure, I can no longer trust them. In my opinion, unethical is not a strong enough word to describe the act being reported.
In my very limited experience, I've had no problems with domaindirect.com.
They've got to pay for those Superbowl adverts somehow. :)
I used GoDaddy to register two domains and the whole process was spread on too many steps because at each step they bombard the buyer with advertisements for extra paid services in a very persistent way. This approach along with the site design look so chabby that it's not surprising the least that they would engage in such practice. Whether it's legal/ethical or not is a different story after all an auction is a process designed to reach a fair price that the buyer agrees to pay. It does not make a lot of difference who bid against the buyer because no one forced to him to pay this price. The big problem is that in this case GD have big advantage because if they bid too high and the real buyer does not increase the price then they do not lose a lot but in a real auction if you bit on your items and no one overbids then you would have to buy the item and pay the auction house commission out of your own pocket which might be a substantial percentage of the sale price.
ICANN is a TERRIBLY badly managed organization, in my opinion.
I'm keeping a list of stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date:
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site (2007-01-26)
That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names. According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy (2007-05-29)
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns (2008-04-08)
GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers (2008-06-29)
Any error or stories not included?
GoDaddy's reputation is not just one of a negative stories. In my opinion, GoDaddy tries to confuse non-technical people by offering services they don't need that are presented as valuable.
Here are some of the opinions of Bob Parsons, the owner of GoDaddy. He is pro-violence: Close Gitmo? No way!!
I have about a hundred domains with GoDaddy.
This is the last straw - the company is entirely unethical and I wish to no longer support them, or take chances that their unethical bullshit will one day burn me.
The reason I originally chose GoDaddy (which was quite a while ago when they were smaller) was because they had good prices and seemed reputable enough. If anyone has any auggestions on where the best place to move my domains to would be I woluld love to hear it.
I would like to avoid Network Solutions and their ilk, between their pricing, alphabet agency ties (and other things) it does not appeal to me - I would also like to avoid small fly-by-night "register your domain for 69 cents" places that may disappear or be purchased by other companies. Basically I am hoping to find a reputable, ethical registrar.....Any suggestions?
http://nodaddy.com/ has plenty of GoDaddy horror stories, along with recommendations and experiences for alternative companies. I say that we should all boycott GoDaddy.
Don't set a reserve, set the minimum bid. I never got he point of a reserve, its just a hidden minimum bid. Buyers should be able to see the minimum amount they would have to pay for something. Hiding it is just dishonest.
See my post further up, I have tried Godaddy, Dotster, Yahoo, Google, Dreamhost and a few other but now use http://www.omnis.com/ exclusively for Domain purchases.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=598685&cid=23989845
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Transferred my last seven domains away from that awful place. I can't stand their attitude and customer-unfriendly literal interpretations of ICANN's rules.
The last straw was when they were going to cancel my domains because my phone number was invalid. "Update immediately or we will seize your domains!" an ominous email reported.
Well, my area code changed and well -- there you have it!
Rather than let them "seize" my domains, I moved them over to another registrar. They are much smaller (only maybe half a million domains), but they are so less bullshit than GoDaddy...
The question is whether it's just for the government to enforce "ethical" or "moral" behavior that doesn't directly harm others. Examples include bidding on one's own auctions, lying, and cheating on one's spouse.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
GoDaddy keeps all the spoils to themselves Which means that his bidding was driving up the auction house's income. It's illegal as hell in any state I can think of.
At least to me, your minimum/starting bid is the same as what you said.
I think that reserve amounts are set in the hope of getting a 'bidding war' started, get more people interested and bidding, and therefore end up running the price above what the item would have sold for with a minimum bid.
I don't read AC A human right
It may be legal, but it is unethical.
And when you are a registrar, by far your most important asset is trust. GoDaddy no longer has mine, and I will no longer recommend them.
I can't believe GoDaddy is still in business. I can't remember ever reading anything good about them and every time I do see some article, it's always about their unethical business practices.
However, I think the core of the problem is that something ICANN needs to sort out by forbidding the resale or auction of domain names. They should only be allowed to be leased from accredited registrars at a fair price, with clear restrictions on artificially inflating the price. IMHO, the auDA has got this right for all .au domains.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Indeed. I was a big GoDaddy fan until I found out they are the largest domain squatters in the world. Then I did some shopping around and found out I was paying $20/year for WhoIS privacy protection that my webhost / registrar includes for free with every domain.
I've attempted many times to migrate my main domain away from GoDaddy to my current webhost and for some reason it fails. The webhost says that GoDaddy is blocking the transfer - even though I've unlocked the domain and followed the rules.
Come to find out, it's due to the fact that I renewed it less than 60 days ago... now I get to wait.
This story is just another reason to suspect the largest and most visible company in the particular market - absolute power corrupts.
Well, in the simplest terms you are wrong, but the explanation is more complicated.
Knowing allowing shill bidding (whether by yourself or others) is cause for revocation of an auctioneer's license or fines by state regulators. The state law most often says that a business cannot conduct auctions without an auctioneer's license, so the leverage for fines and punishment is generally against continued ability to conduct auctions and not strictly a legal matter aside from maybe breach of contract claims or similar.
Shilling itself may or may not be illegal state by state, but just because you can't go to jail for it alone does not preclude you having your ass handed to you in a courtroom. Again, you can be sued under breach of contract or for violation of the UCC for which law may allow certain claims.
In this particular case, ICANN probably has some type of contract governing the auctions that GoDaddy is probably also violating. I would imagine that their hole is pretty deep in this matter.
I generally am never on the owning side of an auction. I'm typically on the bidding side with the exception of one thing that went through a real auction house which I got roughly 200 times what I expected.
But from my perspective, a reserve means I need to cover at least this much or I take a loss. A minimum bid says it is worth this much at least. Perhaps it is more perspective then anything and some could be wanting to start a bidding war. And your right in that the reserve promotes bidding were it wouldn't be possible with a minimum bid. All the auctions I have been to, the reserve price has always been a secrete until after the item has been auctioned too. It might be different at some auctions but from my perspective, I see it differently. I can see however, where your opinion is just as valid if not more giving some insight into the owner's mental workings as mine.
BTW, the piece I auctioned was an antique dresser I got as partial payment for helping the family of an elderly neighbor clean up after she passed on. I only took the thing because they were talking about not having any place to store it and they didn't like the looks of it. I traded $25 of the $125 I got for moving stuff into a truck after they packed it up and it sold for $7,000 plus at auction because the maker was local and in demand. I though it would bring a couple hundred or maybe even close to a grand if someone was crazy. I never saw seven grand coming from it.
That's pretty much what I said, right?
I put item X up for auction. I want at least $20 for it. If I put a minimum bid on it I get one guy who puts $20 down on it. Or I set a $20 reserve, bidders 1-10, smelling a deal start bidding, it quickly exceeds $20, but since 1-10 were already looking at it, at least some have their competitive side awake and are looking for a 'win'. Next thing you know it sells for $50.
I don't read AC A human right
What can be done to force ICANN to police the registrars for which it is responsible?
What can be done to police ICANN?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Unethical, but not the slightest bit illegal.
You sure about that? From Wikipedia, on Shills in Auctions:
Shill bidding may be a common practice on eBay. In his book Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, Kenneth Walton describes how he and his cohorts placed shill bids on hundreds of eBay auctions over the course of a year. While many sellers consider shill bidding a harmless act, some believe that it may violate federal or state laws. Walton and his associates were charged and convicted of fraud by the United States Attorney for their eBay shill bidding.
Yup. Sounds pretty illegal so far.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
If domain names were covered by the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) there might be imputed into the contract an obligation on the part of GoDaddy to engage in good faith behaviour. But it is unclear whether domain name rental falls under the UCC, and the UCC is not all that U(niform) across the states.
Reserves are just a play on words to try to trick buyers. The only difference is whether the bid is rejected before or after the auction is completed. It is dishonest, and it should be illegal. The people using reserves can tell themselves how they are not lying about what the real minimum bid is, but since there is no other reason for a reserve other than to trick people into thinking that their bid is valid, the people setting reserves are just rationalizing their immoral behaviour.
Reserves are the main reason I quit even bothering with e-bay. I got tired of bidding on something, and then 3 days later, finding out that the person selling the item had dismissed my bid before I even placed it. This prevented me from placing a bid on another auction for the same thing.
My name is Elizabeth L. Driscoll/Go Daddy PR VP. I am posting this comment on behalf of Go Daddy General Counsel, Christine Jones. "Go Daddy has reviewed the auction and found nothing improper. Adam Dicker's knowledge on the auction was no different from what any customer coming to our TDNAM site would have had. To ensure customer confidence and to avoid any possible future questions of impropriety all GD employees are now and in the future prohibited from participating in TDNAM auctions, purchasing, sales & back orders." - Christine Jones, Go Daddy General Counsel & Corporate Secretary
I've taken a lot of shit over the years for suggesting Netsol is still the only safe place to
have domains.
And you will catch a turd from me.
NetSol, also known as Verisign back when domain wild cards were an issue. While they have since sold off NetSol, I have no way of knowing who took the idiots that thought of answering up all queries to *.com etc. The DNS issue was circa 2003.
When they tried that stunt, I went to BuyDomains and transferred my domains away from Verisign and NetSol. Since I was responsible for about 250 domains at the time, that cost them. I also wrote a letter to Verisign and NetSol. I didn't get a reply.
To this day, I don't deal with either.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My boss had this happen to him too. They tried to bill an outdated card, instead of the good card numbers that they had, didn't notify him, and sold the domain to a cyber-squatter. He wasn't very happy with GoDaddy at the time.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Summary: "We didn't do anything wrong, but we're going to stop doing it."
Quit being a weasel. Take a stand. Make a choice and stick with it.
Either say that it was ok and you are going to continue to allow your employees to do it, or say that it is not ok and that Mr. Dicker did something wrong.
And if you [ go under a bus / get blown up / fall out with your customer / get overwhelmed ] all your customers will bitterly wish that they had gone with godaddy.
I had a friend do what you did and he totally frazzed out under the stress, his "micro" business went under.
One of my associates, his customer, had to go to the hosting company and pay them so he could get his servers out; but before that it was a mad drive across country to find the guy who had just dropped off the map.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
You are right. I must have gotten confused with some other auction site I was using at the time. It has been a while. I humbly withdraw the part about not knowing that the reserve wasn't met for 3 days concerning e-bay. Although having a reserve that is lying about what the true minimum valid bid is.