They misspelled vague. On purpose? Hmmmmmm.. . .

while i am aware of less expensive web hosting companies out there. godaddy's customer service is actually pretty remarkable, i've never experienced long hold times, their CSRs are easy to understand, etc. I'm willing to pay more because I know they're going to give me 1 on 1 service pretty quick. I wish my cable company would take notes.

@hiland: I've had the same experience as you hiland. They usually answer in two or three rings. No computer phone tree to navigate. They all speak perfect English, know a lot about their services, etc. Many times they have steered me away from buying services I didn't need when they knew of a better/cheaper way to do it (with what I already had). Great way to create a life-long customer.

I ran into this years ago. I was having issues with a domain that got transferred to someone else (it turned out my previous hosting company screwed up) and one of my coworkers, who was also a GoDaddy reseller who I had tried to transfer the registration to, called up their support. The CSR said he would have to contact GoDaddy (who the person who snatched it up had registered it through), and my coworker/reseller was like "but you are GoDaddy" and eventually the guy admitted it and that they don't say it so that the people who are resellers don't get identified.

Ah, yes, GoDaddy. A fine place to get your domain names, but not much else.

I bought several domains there, and used to use them for email and web hosting, but there were constant problems. The capper was a few years ago, when GoDaddy hosted enough spammers to get its servers on one of the blacklists. When I called GoDaddy's tech support, they could hardly have cared less. It may not have been important to them, but as a consultant, my livelihood was at stake. So now I use a service that specializes in email, prides itself on its uptime and customer service, and is happy to discuss how it stays off blacklists.

GoDaddy is the Dollar Store of internet services. If you need something professional, look elsewhere.

I have huge respect for godaddy's customer service. Each time I've needed to contact them I was quickly connected to an intelligent CSR who listened to the issue I had, thought through how to fix it and then did proceeded to do so. No scripts!

I work in the outsourcing/call center industry ... these guys simply rock.

@bobert: Its not that the CSRs dont care, its they cant do anything about it, and in some cases dont understand the issue.

Blacklisting is an issue that all providers have to deal with and is hard to prevent becasue of how easy it find people who set their servers up wrong, but also set up your own server or infect a server.

Guess I'm in the minority.
I actually just called them last week, trying to figure out how to get into my email since it was sending all kinds of legit email to my spam folder and not to my macmail.
The guy I got on the phone was completely incompetent. He didn't understand my question or didn't care, and kept telling me to reset my password. [Useless since I KNOW the password]
I have on several occasions inquired as to HOW exactly one accesses their webmail, since strangely enough when I click on "check my webmail" that is not where it actually is. I have to go in through my domain and usually find it simply through trial and error.
No one at godaddy has been able to explain this to me either.
Anyone here know?

I have a hosted server with GD as well as some Domains, SSL, etc. Nothing but a great experience so far. Solid uptime and never a long wait for support. Questions pertaining to the hosted server (not a single site, an entire server) or DNS have been answered promptly and intelligently.

I would have no problem recommending them for the right user or client.

With over 500 domains registered with GoDaddy, I speak from experience. Specifically, they are the lesser of registrar evils [as compared to other domain registrars]. Notwithstanding this somewhat backhanded compliment, the competence of the company's technical staff, is, how shall I say, less than sufficient. We have begun migrating our sites, and of course, the requisite domain registrations as well from the company. Regardless of Parson's stance on outsourcing, prevaricating on representation [via interstate communications] is suspicious and unethical, as well as potentially unlawful.

@veronykah: Here's how I get to my webmail version of my godaddy email account:

[email.secureserver.net]

This is all one line and you would replace 'yourdomain' with, well, your domain value. And if it's not .com change that too.

hth.

The fact that GoDaddy has American customer service doesn't make them any less scummy of a company.

@scootinger: Please provide some examples of their scumminess.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: In this case, the GoDaddy CSRs' *attitude* was that they didn't care.

I administered my own email server from 1990 until 2003-ish, and still have a Class C static IP block from when they were giving them away. Eventually, it sunk in that it was silly to be administering my server when I could be getting paid for programming. So I went with GoDaddy on the theory that they would be at least as competent at email hosting as I was. Whoops! Was I wrong.

When I called up GoDaddy, and explained that their customers' outgoing email was going in the bit bucket, the CSRs' response was that it wasn't GoDaddy's problem. After several go-arounds with them, I finally decided that the income I was losing arguing with them would more than pay for a real email hosting service run by professionals.

Regarding blacklisting, there are a variety of means to keep email servers off blacklists. I did it, and many, many other people manage to do it. I expected a company the size of GoDaddy to be doing that, but clearly they weren't.

Also, at a professional email hosting service, if a customer tells a CSR, "You're blacklisted by Spamhaus/SORBS/DSBL/etc., here's the evidence", the CSR should be trained to know what that means and hit the big red button on the wall. Then the sirens go off and everybody starts working like crazy until the blacklisting is removed. You don't just blow the customer off.

Anyway, this was a few years ago. Maybe GoDaddy has improved since then.

What I didn't like about registering with godaddy was the constant upsell attempts on something like 10 different pages they stretch the registration out.

I found namecheap.com on a blog by someone complaining about godaddy and I've been using them like crazy. About the same prices as godaddy for registration without all the upsell crap and they somehow found a way to register a domain with just 2 pages.

@nybiker: How was I never able to find that?
Can you get to that login page from the godaddy.com page?

I've been using GoDaddy for many years now, I have 12 domain names. I also use them to host some of the domains. The CSRs are great. I have called many times over the years, sometimes in the middle of the night. Everytime I've been impressed with their courtesy and knowledge. I know some folks dislike their upsell efforts, the company's just trying to maximize profits and really how hard is it to click "Cancel?"

I wonder whats the "one minor exception."

@slappie: You guys should try canceling their service. They won't let you. I had to go through hell and back to stop them from auto-renewing a domain name and hosting account I had with them. I did in the end manage to cancel it, but I had to jump through several hoops and put up with all kinds of shenanigans before they did it.

I switched to Go Daddy several months ago, for web hosting and email, and so far it has been a surprisingly good service. After my last experience with Yahoo, and a few negative comments that I found on Consumerist when conducting some due diligence on Go Daddy, I wasn't expecting much. But, despite all of the upsell attempts early on, I managed to sign up for just the bare-bones services I wanted, and I've been surprised at how good the service--and the live 24/7 customer phone support--has been.

@WeAre138: I found namecheap back during the Registerfly debacle. It was highly recommended by several people as a good place to move my domains to rather than doing nothing and letting them get reassigned to GoDaddy.

GoDaddy is just an utterly inane name also.

I've had nothing but good experiences when it comes to GoDaddy customer service. Even if their website is an absolute mess.
---
[asylum-photo.com]

Trying to deal with a copyright issue (use of pictures from my flickr account) via a domain name bought by GoDaddy has been a real pain in the ass for me.

GoDaddy has been billing me three bucks a month for the past 2 years despite me cancelling everything and I can't get them to stop. I can't get any help from customer service...they may as well be in Timbuktu for all the help they are.

What's wrong with outsourcing? Isn't the real issue [redacted]'s unhelpful CSR's?

@YOXIM: Really? I've let domains come and go without any problem at all. I've never put any on auto-renew -- just keep an eye on them and do multi-year renewals on the only important one.

@hiland: Better yet ... I've had to contact GoDaddy customer service once in six years. One thing better than good customer service is good service.

As the original Tipster, I'm glad this was all clarified. Some issues of note in the reporting and comments:

1) Let's applaud Consumerist for their due diligence in investigating the details here.
2) That said, the notion of "outsourcing" is not ALWAYS about overseas - outsourcing of OP responses to another company in the US would be just as egregious.
3) THAT said, buried in this story and not commented about is that it appears GoDaddy is being OUTSOURCED TO for OP services.
4) The same issues I raised originally apply: When OP is just another Customer Service Dept, is language being warped for corporate convenience, and does our Corporate Responsibility lose meaning? Further, if OP comes to mean a Dept whose sole function is to apologize for Corporate Failings (and HEY ... we'll do it for your company too!), does it all become a Kabuki Dance without ANY meaning?!
5) Finally, let's distinguish between Customer Service and Technical Support. My experience with GoDaddy's Tech Support has been very positive. Yes, they are not staffing the First Tier with the most informed folks. But they are US based, reliably answer within 2 minutes 24/7, and have a pretty good Back Bench for the difficult issues. One really cannot ask for more from a company, and one often sees FAR less.
6) Customer Service is another matter entirely. My issue had to do with Billing. Took ONE HOUR to discover why GoDaddy had deposited a sum of money in my Checking Account. Turns out it had to do with Cash Parking. Turns out there is is NO ACCOUNTING OF PAYMENTS AVAILABLE TO CUSTOMERS, BILLING DEPT, or CUSTOMER SERVICE! Like I said, took ONE HOUR to get to the bottom of it. So I sent a letter to the President. Arrived in this Professional Apology Dept. They said they were sorry. Apparently the LARGEST Domain Register, with arguably the MOST Parked Domains, BY DESIGN, did not feel the need to provide Customers, it's own Billing Dept, or its Customer Service a way to account for Payments. How strange?!
7) It would be great if Consumerist looked into the all the issues raised here with a comprehensive article.

I find it difficult to support a company with such insipid advertising.

@genegemperline: insipid was probably the wrong word. let's go with moronic.

GoDaddy is awesome. I registered a domain with them a while back but hadn't gotten to setting it up for around a week. They gave me a follow up phone call to make sure everything was working okay and see if I needed any help. Plus, they have great prices too :)

Danica and the poker gal actually answer the phones when they aren't out competing. It's in the contract.

Screw Danica Patrick... I'm tired of seeing her face all over ATL!