How stop the incessant domain renewal spam emails from GoDaddy?

celebrate said 1 year, 11 months ago:

I have been a long time GoDaddy customer, and occasionally I deliberately let an unused domain expire. The amount of renewal and expiration notices that GoDaddy sends out is frankly ridiculous, and amounts to abusive spam. I counted up the number of emails tha GoDaddy recently sent to me informing me that just a single domain needed to be renewed (and that I fully intended to let expire): 19! Nineteen is truly out of control. Most were complete repeats of prior emails; there were even 4 that said “Final Notice”/”Time’s Up” (apparently not understanding that “Final” should mean 1 final time, not 4 “final” times). GoDaddy should send a couple reminders total, and that is it. They need to address their deliberate spam issues. Sending two reminders is a good service; beyond that it is just incessant sales garbage begging me to pay for another domain, and it is quite irritating. Any way to stop this flood?

Regards,
Scott

steves said 1 year, 11 months ago:

@celebrate

We send out notices at 90, 60, 30, 15, and 5 days prior to the renewal date to ensure that customers are aware of upcoming renewal charges. If the domain is not canceled then it will go through our billing renewal process. If it fails billing due to the auto renew being turned off or an issue with payment method, you will receive an email notifying you. We make three billing attempts, so for each failed attempt you will receive an email. You can contact our support team to have all email renewal notices disabled for your account, however I would advise to just cancel the domains that you do not want as opposed to letting them expire. Canceling the domain will remove it from your account immediately and you will not receive any renewal emails.

-Steve

celebrate said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Thanks for that additional info, Steve, although it unfortunately doesn’t change the validity of my inputs.

1) You point out 8 different reminders. That is way too much.

2) I received 19 different reminder emails from GoDaddy, not 8, so you are not correctly counting all of the incessant spam reminders.

3) There is not an obvious / user friendly way to “cancel” a domain. I looked at the emails and nowhere on it does it say how to cancel the domains (the info is all about buying). I went to Help, typed in “cancel domain” and nothing relevant came up in the top 10/first page. So I believe I finally found it as “Delete Selected” in Domain Manager?

4) It’s unfortunate that the user cannot maximize the value of their full year of domain ownership with the suggested resolution, but instead has to manually delete it at some time (apparently at least 90 days in advance of actual expiration to avoid the flood of emails from starting).

For all these reasons, I still believe that GoDaddy definitely needs to get its spammy expiration emails under control.

celebrate said 1 year, 11 months ago:

And to add additional info on how poorly this is handled by GoDaddy: I just followed the instructions that were provided to me above (“You can contact our support team to have all email renewal notices disabled for your account”), and was told that these instructions are incorrect. So, I am forced to either manually remember and delete the domain and not get full value of its ownership, or else am forced to be barraged by 19 emails to just let a domain expire. Poor job, GoDaddy.

—————-
I sent the following request to GoDaddy support:
“Hello,

Please disable all email renewal notices for my account.”
—————-
GoDaddy support replied:
“Thank you for contacting online support.

We send out notices at 90, 60, 30, 15, and 5 days prior to the renewal date to ensure that customers are aware of upcoming renewal charges. These notices include information on how to cancel the name to avoid the charge.

To ensure that your domain name is not automatically renewed and that future charges are not posted to your credit card, you must either switch to manual renewal (under AUTO RENEW OPTIONS in your domain manager) or cancel the domain before the next anniversary of your domain’s registration. Follow the instructions below to do this.

Follow these steps to set any of your products to manual renewal:

• Select ‘Payments and Renewing Items’ from the ‘My Renewals & Upgrades’ menu.
• Check the box next to the item(s) you would like to disable automatic renewal for.
• Click the ‘Auto Renew’ button above the list of items.
• Select the ‘Disable Auto Renew’ option on the right side of the page.
• Click on the green ‘Save Changes’ button.

To cancel any of your domains, follow these steps:

• From ‘My Products’, click ‘Domain Manager’
• Check the box next to the domain that you wish to cancel.
• Click the ‘Delete Selected’ button located above the list of domains.
• If you have selected multiple domains click the ‘Click here to Enable Fields’ link under the warning displayed on the right.
• Place a checkmark in the box next to ‘Please Cancel Domain(s)’ to confirm that you would like to cancel.
• When complete, click the green ‘Save Changes’ button

Please note that canceling a domain name is a permanent action and will terminate your rights to that domain name. The domain will be released in due course to the appropriate Domain Registry and eventually offered to the public as an available name.

Please let us know if we can help in any other way.
Sincerely,
Arthur L.
Customer Care”

steves said 1 year, 11 months ago:

@celebrate

I apologize if you feel we send out too many renewal reminders, however we have this in place to ensure customers are aware of upcoming renewals. We have some customers who feel we do not do enough to remind them of product renewals and other who feel we do too much. We respect your opinion regarding this issue and appreciate your input.

You state that you have received 19 emails for a single domain renewal, which is more than you should receive. My suggestion would be to provide these emails to our support team so we can further investigate this issue.

You are correct in regards to canceling your domain. There are a couple ways to cancel domains, however the one you mention (using the ‘Delete Selected’ button in the Domain Manager) will cancel your domains.

If you wish to maximize the full term of your domains and not receive email renewal notices then I would suggest disabling renewal notices on your account. This is possible, and I apologize if this option was not given to you when you reached out to support. I will create a new ticket in your account request the appropriate information to make this happen.

-Steve

celebrate said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Thanks, Steve. I have re-submitted my request a second time to Support. I have also sent Support all 19 of the redundant emails that were sent for the same expiring domain (similar volume/type of emails have been received in the past for other domains).

steveo11284 said 1 year, 7 months ago:

I never post in forums, but I had to chime in because this issue has gotten on my last nerve. I get tons of emails daily from you guys asking to renew domains. I don’t need, nor want these emails. The fact that you can’t stop these emails is just plain wrong, and I hate to say it, but it says a lot about your business model as well.

I emailed support about a month, and got the same exact pre-formatted response. These emails are so frequent, that I have now started to move my domain names from GoDaddy, as well as all my clients domains (hundreds of domain names) as they are also complaining to me about the spam (yes, it’s spam.)

The 90, 60, 30, 15, 5 day emails would be fine, if that was true. I get AT LEAST 15 emails, per domain, just regarding renewals. My inbox is flooded with them daily. It’s upsetting, and really sad that the only way to stop them is to either cancel the domains, or leave Go Daddy all together.

timb said 1 year, 7 months ago:

@steveo11284

As @steves mentioned, if you are receiving 15 emails per domain name we ask that you contact our Support Team to investigate this issue. Additionally, you can contact them to disable renewal notices for your account.

Tim B

4485 said 1 year, 6 months ago:

there should be an option to opt out of this nagging renewal spam. I’m seriously considering changing to another service because of only this unacceptable issue.

andy_potanin said 1 year, 6 months ago:

I too am getting frustrated with the large quantity of e-mails regarding “renewals”. I thought setting things to be auto-renewed would make it stop, but it has not.

I had to resort to adding Gmail Filters, but this is a poor way of doing this since I don’t want to miss something important – if it ever does get send.

I think it’s fair to say most people who have more than one domain I generally busy and get a lot of e-mails – so I think adding a feature to disable nags would be widely appreciated.

timb said 1 year, 6 months ago:

@andy_potanin

Thank you for the suggestion, I will be sure to pass it along to our development team. As Steve has mentioned, you can request to disable all renewal notices, but this would have similar consequences as your current filtering method if you missed a renewal opportunity.

Tim B

brack said 10 months, 1 week ago:

I would like to agree with the previous customers that the spam associated with expiring products is excessive and unnecessary. I’ve received emails about a single expiring domain on dates: 7/12, 7/11, 7/10, 7/6, 7/5, 7/1, 6/30. All these emails state the same thing that I DO NOT WANT. I also don’t want to disable all renewal notices altogether. If there were a way to pick a total number of emails to receive per domain/service this would easily solve the problem. If this issue isn’t addressed by the time my next domain comes up for renewal I’m defiantly switching all my services (hosting, domains, vps etc) to someone else.

timb said 10 months, 1 week ago:

@brack

Thank you for the suggestion, choosing the number of renewal notices you would like to receive would be a great option I’ll be sure to let our developers know of. Please note that all domain contacts as well as the account holder will currently receive renewal notifications which could be the reason for the high frequency of notices you are receiving.

Tim B

johnnnyjohnnny said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

Totally lame, I ended up answering my own question, this was the first thread I found when I googled. 3 years and other names that I havent used. And the redemption fee is 80$ for a total of 105$
Its hard to justify that much since I havent used it but 80$ fee seems like highway robbery. Disappointed, sandwiched between all the other domains I intentionally let lapse and their notices. Friggin great

timb said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

@johnnnyjohnnny

The Redemption fee is outlined in our Domain Name Registration Agreement which is accepted during registration. You can attempt to register your domain when it becomes available again for a standard registration fee or we also offer a Backorder which will attempt to register the domain automatically when the domain becomes available if you do not want to redeem it.

http://www.godaddy.com/domainaddon/domain-backorders.aspx?

Tim B