April 1 - No Foolin'

 Update: 05-16-23

After my latest battle with GoDaddy a couple days ago, I got one of those Customer Satisfaction surveys from TrustPilot. It wanted to know how satisfied I was with the "service" I received. I was NOT kind, to put it mildly.

I got the following in my barely working GoDaddy webmail yesterday:

"From: trustpilot@godaddy.com <trustpilot@godaddy.com>
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2023 10:32 AM
To: (Me at my email address)

Subject: We would love to chat with you

Hi Rodney,

My name is Tom and I manage customer reviews here at GoDaddy. I am reaching out for an opportunity to get clarification on some recent feedback you have provided.

My role here at GoDaddy is to make sure our customers are heard, and their feedback is understood, and then to deliver that information to our product and channel managers.

If you would like to speak with me regarding your feedback, please feel free to respond to this email. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.

Thank you for being a GoDaddy customer and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best,
Tom
GoDaddy | Manager- Online Consumer Reviews 

Today, I sent the following response:

"Tom

GoDaddy

Manager – Online Consumer Reviews

 05/16/23

Hello, Tom.

I am writing in response to your email regarding my recent review.

I have been a loyal GoDaddy customer since 2007 – 16 years. That will end soon. Here is why.

When I first signed on with GoDaddy, your prices were some of the best out there. I had unlimited storage, unlimited websites, and unlimited emails as part of the hosting package. That was great, as I could assign email addresses for specific uses, such as an email address specifically for Ebay, or commissions for artwork, or photography, as well as direct email addresses for my wife and myself.

Creating / updating my site(s) was straightforward and easy to accomplish. At this particular time, I didn’t need much help because everything was as described in the last sentence. But the few times I did need it, it was readily available. All went well, and I was happy for about 7 years.

Then, in 2014, GoDaddy decided it wasn’t making enough money, and the decision was made to partner with, and become part of Micro$oft. And the downhill slide began.

Support became more difficult to employ. Phone-bots were the first point of contact and would just run me around in circles. It took an act of Congress to get a live human on the phone. And when a human did respond, it was always some guy in India or some other non-USA dung-heap, that could barely speak English.

In 2021 I received an email stating that the email would be switching over to Micro$oft 365. And suddenly those “unlimited” email addresses would cost me $28.68 EACH! Or for the addresses I had then, $230.00. So I cut it down to two – my wife’s and my emails. Apparently Micro$oft’s millions wasn’t enough for either them or GoDaddy.

My wife and I prefer to use Mozilla Thunderbird as our email client. We both hate MS Outlook with a passion. It’s a klunky, confusing piece of crap as far as we’re concerned. But of course that’s not good enough for either GoDaddy or Micro$oft. No. You’re going to FORCE me to use what GD and MS want me to use. To hell with what I (the CUSTOMER) wants.

Despite that, all was going well until somewhere around September / October of 2022. Someone / something made some changes in the MS365 email servers – not sure what. Suddenly my wife’s email stopped working correctly. She could receive emails, but not send. She would get the error message pictured below.

For whatever reason, my email worked properly – I could send and receive. Until now. But to continue… I tried everything I could think of to get her email working again. I am NOT a neophyte computer user. But I’m not an IT expert, either. I never could get it working right.

I tried calling your “tech support” which by this time had become an indescribable pain in the butt to even use. The phone-bot was doing its job of keeping people from reaching a human very well. And if you did get past the damn robot, the wait times were (and are) lengthy. I remember not too long ago giving up and disconnected after an hour and a half of waiting.

I finally got so pissed off I sent a letter to GoDaddy’s CEO. After sending it a SECOND and THIRD time after NO response to the first two, I finally got a call from a tech (shockingly an AMERICAN), saying he was going to get my wife’s email issue taken care of.

After an hour or so on the phone, and remotely connecting, he did get it working again. It lasted about a week, then back to the same old problem.

Then, last week, MY email stopped working! The same error message appeared. But I could neither send OR receive emails. That problem still remains.

In the meantime, GoDaddy’s pricing has gone to the moon. GoDaddy has certainly become a dedicated Micro$oft thrall by following MS’s mantra of “Charge More, Provide Less.”

I was finally able to get the outlook WEBMAIL set up where I can get my and my wife’s emails, and respond. But I feel like as my reward for being a loyal customer for 16 years, and paying your outrageous prices, I am FORCED to use the email client you and Micro$oft DEMAND that I use. I no longer have a choice or voice in the matter.

AND I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!

Please do deliver this information to your product and channel managers. Let’s see if they give a crap that a long-time customer is fed up enough to walk away and find someone else whose service is (hopefully) better.

Attachments: Jpg of Error, 3^rd email GD CEO.pdf, Email renewal.pdf, GoDaddy 02-17-23.docx, GoDaddy letter 01-29-2022.docx

Sincerely,

Rod Shelley"

 

I'm certainly not holding my breath that anything is going to improve. And even if it does, I'm still moving to another host. GoDaddy has had plenty of time and opportunities to make me a happy camper again. And they've fallen flat on their faces every time. I'm done. 

 

05-18-23

Two days, and NO response from anyone @ GoDaddy. Why am I not surprised?

05-21-23

Still no response. Yeah, they REALLY wanted to "chat" with me, didn't they? 

 

05-23-23

FINALLY, I got a response from "Tom" - he was out of the office... Uh-huh... He sent a link for me to schedule a call with him to discuss my concerns. Not that it's going to convince me to stay with GoDaddy. I've had to deal with this nonsense too long, and too many times. I'm done. We'll see what happens Friday.

As a side-note, I got a notice yesterday that I had 2 days before Microsoft would not be supporting some sort of 1st level authentication or whatever for our emails, and I'm supposed to invoke some sort of magic spell by the 26th or it won't work anymore. Hell, it doesn't work now! 😒