Is Your GoDaddy Account at Risk?

(Thanks James)

What does the average Asian man / woman have to do to run an honest business on the Internet today without being bullied?

I thought I had heard enough about some big dumb US company’s total lack of understanding towards Muslim / Asian / Third World country (remember Paypal?), and today I get another shocking news..

I was just alerted of an ambiguous clause in the terms and conditions of GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain registrar. If you’re in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam or even China, it seems that your account may be at risk of termination by them.

Here’s the article:
http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=219&topic_id=&&

I took a screenshot of it just in case it’s modified later, to show what was originally stated:

Although the issue mentions “web hosting”, it might also apply to other services offered by GoDaddy. As stated, GoDaddy doesn’t allow web hosting registrations from:

“Countries whose governments have been declared sponsors of international terrorism by the United States Department of State”

Ok.. yeah.. whatever.

We all know who the real “terrorist” is. But lets keep that aside as it’s an argument that can’t be won. Let’s move to the next section, that says:

“We also block the following countries from purchasing our services due to fraud:

• Bulgaria
• China (including Hong Kong)
• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• Pakistan
• Philippines
• Singapore
• Vietnam

That’s the part that pisses me off. If it is indeed true that GoDaddy has blocked these countries (suprised to see Singapore included), then why did they allow me to buy a domain name last week?

If you ask me, this is just a safety tactic employed by GoDaddy. When they find something wrong with your account, they will terminate or freeze it, and then just refer you to this statement of policy and tell you “But you’re not allowed to register with us in the first place”

To me it’s really simple. If you don’t want me to use your services, don’t allow me to buy at all. The fact they they allowed me to buy with my Malaysia / Singapore credit card means that this statement is already void, and if they terminate my account for this reason, it’s not only unethical, but ILLEGAL as well.

Here’s the email I sent to GoDaddy today (25/09/06):

———————————————
RE: Why Do You Ban My Country – Please Clarify – URGENT

Hi,

One of my customers alerted me of GoDaddy’s policy for not accepting Malaysia and Singapore in their list of countries. Here’s the statement:

http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=219&topic_id=&&

Please clarify what you mean by this. I have used GoDaddy for years
and I have over 50 domains registered. I continue to add 2-3 domains
per month and I also recommend GoDaddy to all my customers and
blog readers.

Is my account at risk? If it is, then I reques full explanation as to why
I am allowed to register with your company in the first place? I don’t
think it’s fair business practise and surely also illegal to be contradicting
your own terms of service.

If you do indeed ban Malaysia and the other counties as mentioned, please
inform me. I will transfer all my domain names and stop using your service.
I will also discourage others from using GoDaddy as I do not want my
recommendation to put my own reputation at risk in case your company
decides one day to just put my account on hold.

Furthermore, I expect that if I decide to move my domains to another
service, no charges be levied against me.

Please reply immediately.
———————————————

I’ll post their reply and come to a conclusion soon. Please subscribe to this post if you want updates. You can do so below..

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Update 2 October 2006

GoDaddy customer support rep replies:

Thank you for contacting Online Support. I apologize for the confusion on this matter. We currently block ISP’s that have a higher rate of fraudulent activity from many foreign countries. Unfortunately we can not guarentee that this will not effect your customer account at some point in time. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

I asked them if the rule also applies to Domain Name Registration, and I’m waiting for their reply.