Godaddy just can’t get it right. Just when they win the hearts back of many of the people back that called them assholes because of their SOPA stance, elephant shooting, and sexually driven advertising, they are back to looking bad.
Godaddy spends millions on TV advertising over the course of the year. The Godaddy Groupon was a phenomenon. People everywhere were talking about their Groupon code and what a deal it was. I heard people on Reddit say “maybe I need to go back to Godaddy” It was the best kind of advertising money can’t buy. The savings they gave out probably paled in comparison to what they pay in advertising. If they simply would have managed the program they could have come out smelling like roses. Now they smell like the stepped in dog shit. If they wanted to set up limits then SET UP LIMITS. You can set up a limit on groupon at one. The coding required to limit the Groupons accepted at Godaddy to one would take 5 minutes as well. And yet they let it all fly. They simply tried to stop it with words. “One per person…..please” Now they’ve reversed all the Groupons (but not returned the money). But let’s say they let it fly. Here’s what they COULD have done.
Change what customers can spend it on. Limit what they can spend it on. Yes that would have taken a bit more coding but it’s possible. Allow people to spend it on deleting auction. They don’t have a dime invested in the auctions. It’s all free money. The bids would certainly got higher if they are playing with free money. Godaddy loses NOTHING because it costs them nothing. Or let people use it on renewals but only at full price, no coupons. Again, not costing Godaddy much. All this could have been done and we’d be talking about the sweet deal that Godaddy .
Don’t get me wrong, I love Godaddy. I have almost all my names with them, I talk them up, but their marketing department needs an overhaul. Yes the company is doing fine, but I truly feel they could do better with an improved marketing campaign. The Groupon fiasco is just another example of something that could have been a real positive.
For the record: Yes I had a lot of Groupons but didn’t spend them because I knew this was too good to be true and that Godaddy would fumble at the goal line.
They could have limited one Groupon per Godaddy account from their Groupon redeem page. Wouldn’t take much code for that. Instead, they allowed unlimited amount of redemptions, only to reverse them after. They reversed the coupons after all the Groupon offers expired. They milked the promotion until the end…Suspicious!
If you knew Godaddy was canceling multiple coupons on the second day of the promotion, would you be buying from multiple cities or spreading the word about this deal?
Godaddy played us for the free buzz.
total choke. watch namecheap or name.com pull something similarly
Godaddy could have at least credited the $25 per redemption instead of nothing. Emailed Groupon for a refund so can’t wait to see how this goes. Only bought 3 so I will really only be out $5.
Good time for namecheap, name, and others to have a transfer promo deal, many will migrate, as they have messed up a lot of goodwill with this delay, and lack of transparency, always one move that kills a company.
Another funny thing is godaddy monitors these blogs, and usually comments when servers go down, or their is an issue, nobody did that, they let the deal go on, how many people will even notice their credits are gone, and will ask for a refund, they might end up making money off this…
C’mon,You all knew it was too good to be true.And now you guys are saying you are leaving GoDaddy for Name and Namecheap.Whats going to happen when its time to renew at Name and you have to pay $2 more per renewal for your 500 domains?GoDaddy may have caught you out but these things happen.
5 days ago Name issued a renewal code XXOO that gave $0.00 renewals when used.The code worked and what do you know it was an error and quickly fixed and I was charged full price.I knew it was going to happen.
NAME are no better, don’t be a sucker and fall for their transfer codes.GoDaddy is still the best, sometimes you dont know what you have until its gone.
Alan,
You didn’t hear that from me. I love Godaddy. Their prices are the cheapest and the make it easy for me to handle my own account. I just hate how lazy they were with this promotion. I like Name.com for their creativity and the fact it looks like a fun place to work. They get lots of attention because they advertise on a lot of blogs. I’m not sure whether the other sites are saying they like them because they really like them or because the give them monthly money. They don’t advertise here so I really haven’t had any reason to explore what they do because I’m happy with Godaddy. And by the way, I get money that is “too good to be true” every day in this industry.
The real loser here is Groupon. They allowed people to purchase multiple groupons from one account / credit card. Groupon loses because they are a publicly traded company. The PR mess with them is about to begin. They’re already in hot water and this wont help. Godaddy….. well they should have known better than to throw money out on the street and then with a loud speaker say “only one dollar per person please”.
Class action is what I am seeing happen. Agree with litigation or not, consumers were not prevented from buying multiple groupons AND since “stops” are available to both Godaddy and to Groupon, but neither elected to utilize them, if they dont reverse the reversals – both will be sued big time. You watch.
Class action sounds good, where do I sign up?
JO what would the class action be about ? Just so long as everyone gets their refund there will be no loss.
Name.com is awesome and does not advertise on a lot of blogs, I have only seen them on elliots blog and hybrid domainer.
They are very social and outgoing.
Deano,
I agree . The talk of class action is silly. Stupid moves aren’t criminal. As for Name , I agree. They are a great company .
Am I missing something here?
How is godaddy cheapest?
Last time I checked .com renewals were $ 15
Dex,
If you have more than 300 domains ( or a large number) it’s much cheaper. I’ve never paid more than $9
Why do I have to read about this stuff from the Blogs? Between the 2 of these companies they have Billions in market cap & private business evaluations. You think that they can hire competent people who can anticipate things? I read some of these people make well into the 6 figures. Really for what? Why hasn’t my rep or a general email or account message in my account appear? This one is Ugly & I imagine its not going to be good news for either of these companies goodwill wise. I mean what’s the slippage cost from all those coupons vs trying to undue something that they had to have known can and does occur.
If two of the smaller guys team up, and copy the business model, they could gain traction, for every satisfied customer their is one unsatisfied customer there right now.
We should see consolidation within this industry very shortly, it could be pointed out they were padding end of year sales, and reverse them out later, not sure why they didn’t stop it, when everyone was talking about it, and those 6 figure guys are sitting there reading blogs, and news feeds all day. Very strange indeed, and it only takes 1 to start a class action suit, I have seen lamer cases go forward. It is all about PR though.
Still gotta love those 99 Cents (before ICANN’t fees) .COM Promo Codes… Wish they would put more out for .NETs too…. also dig those $5.99 Transfers In Codes… Hope the Big Daddy floats some out more out real soon.
Using multiple or mega amouts of the “$25 for $70” GroupONs truly seemed too good to be true….so I only bought one..and thus pretty much avoided the aftermath chaos & dissappointment
the thing about it is that if you spent the groupons you are in the clear its only the people that have not that are disappointed.