I cannot believe that at one point I was considering moving all my domains over to GoDaddy1. Their management interface is confusing to the point that I believe it’s intentionally confusing, so that you have a hard time figuring out exactly what charges you are incurring (there’s no single page that shows all of your charges), and when such charges will incur. When you do get one of those annoying $2.95 charges, there’s no indication on the bill as to what it was for. Well, no more! I finally bit the bullet, transferred the domains, and began trying to figure out how to cancel my account.
Like I Said, They Don’t Make It Easy
I looked and looked, and found no way to cancel my account. Searching their online help system for “cancel account” turned up nothing useful. I resorted to emailing their “tech support” - here’s the response I got, which is little more than a map through their convoluted system - hope it helps someone else out!
From GoDaddy:
How to Cancel Your Account
The following is an email I received from GoDaddy, regarding my inquiry to cancel all services:
Unfortunately Go Daddy cannot completely remove a customer account from our system for legal reasons. However, you can use the instructions below to cancel all products or services for this account, remove all payment methods from this account, and turn off all opt-in email notifications. Company policy restricts Go Daddy Customer Support representatives from making changes to customer accounts or services on behalf of the customer. You will need to make this change from within your account.
To cancel all products and services, follow the directions below:
First, log into your customer account:
- Go to the GoDaddy Account Login Page
- Log in using your account username (which may be the same as your customer number) and password
If you have trouble logging in, our password reset form may help you. You can find this form through the following link: Account Retrieval Page
Once you have logged in to your account, follow the steps below to cancel:
- Select ‘Payments and Renewing Items’ from the ‘Renewals’ menu.
- Check the box next to the item(s) you would like to cancel and click on the ‘Cancel Item’ button.
- Select ‘Cancel Now’ or ‘Cancel at Expiration Date’ in the menu that appears to the right.
- Click on ‘Save Changes’.
* Canceling now will immediately remove the service from your account. If you choose to “Cancel at Expiration Date” the service will remain active until the date specified and will not be renewed.
Please use the below instructions to remove a payment method from our system. Note that there must be no products or services in our system which are currently linked to that payment method before you can remove it.
- Select ‘Credit Card & Payment Info’ from the ‘My Account’ menu
- Select the radio button next to the desired payment method in the list.
- Click the ‘Deactivate Payment Method’ button.
- If there are any products or services currently associated with this item you will then be forced to move them to another payment method before you can continue.
- After moving any products or services to another payment method, click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
You can choose not to receive email notices by updating your customer account settings. Follow the directions below:
- Select ‘Account Settings’ from the ‘My Account’ menu.
- Click on the “Email Preference Information” link.
- Go through the choices and select your preference for each.
- When you are done, click on the green “Save Changes” button.
You can also use the “UNSUBSCRIBE” link found at the bottom of all the notices that we send out.
Footnotes:
1Note that sometimes you want to link to a website, but you don’t want that link to count for anything in terms of Search Engine value (as search engines use the total number of inbound links to a website in their ranking algorithms). To still link to a site, but not pass any SEO relevance onto it, or even to have it count as a vote against the website you are linking to, you can use the vote-link and rel-nofollow microformats, as I did with the links to the GoDaddy home page:
<a href="http://godaddy.com" rel="nofollow" rev="vote-against" title="GoDaddy site">GoDaddy</a>
Thanks,
indeed they make it hard to cancel !! Thanks for the info.
i am currently with godaddy and i am switching to hostmonster.
i have tried to follow your guide above but
”
Please use the below instructions to remove a payment method from our system. Note that there must be no products or services in our system which are currently linked to that payment method before you can remove it.
Select ‘Credit Card & Payment Info’ from the ‘My Account’ menu
Select the radio button next to the desired payment method in the list.
Click the ‘Deactivate Payment Method’ button.
If there are any products or services currently associated with this item you will then be forced to move them to another payment method before you can continue.
After moving any products or services to another payment method, click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
”
i cannot do this as it is still asking for a payment method.
any more i could do with this to remove myself from that crap hosting.
Ack - what a nightmare! I’m not quite sure how to advise, have you tried contacting them? Maybe you’ll get lucky and have your question answered. In any event, please post your findings here, perhaps it will help others too. Cheers and good luck!
Thanks a lot! Those buggers have made it very complicated.
In reference to …
“If there are any products or services currently associated with this item you will then be forced to move them to another payment method before you can continue.
After moving any products or services to another payment method, click the ‘Save Changes’ button. ”
you have to click view items to see what they are charging you for on the card, from that screen you can cancel anything still existing. once they are removed you can cancel your payment method
Thanks Matt for the tutorial. But the golden question is still open: what do you suggest as an alternative to godaddy? (In terms of domain management).
That’s a good question Manuel. From some previous work I have a lot of Dreamhost rewards credit saved up, so I tend to register with them because I can just use my credits - and their control panel is dead easy to use. However, this requires that you keep a hosting account active, so for pure domain registrations, this might might not be practical. On the other hand, their hosting is cheap, their bandwidth allotment and disk space is huge, and I like having some cheap hosting at my disposal (I just don’t recommend for biz-critical stuff).
Network Solutions is reliable, and the oldest name in the biz, but they nickel and dime their customers for things like domain forwarding. I’ve never used Register.com - but now folks who have and they seem to think it’s OK.
I guess the bottom line is about anything seems better than GoDaddy! I’d be curious to hear other people’s recommendations too.
DUGG!
http://digg.com/tech_news/How_to_Cancel_a_GoDaddy_Account
Thank you ! It’s very hard to cancel a Godaddy account. With this post, It’s easy.
You have to cancel any items that depend on a payment method, click the “items” link next to any payment method, then cancel them, note that the cancellation is weird, it puts a dialog to the right which you must check, and submit again.
Then after that make up a name, address and phone number, (or use the address and phone of a sleazy lawyers office) sign up a dummy hotmail or live account, then change all the godaddy info over to it.
Like I did :-p
Now Godaddy has bogus info and all that verifies when you give it to them. change the login name as well.
This way when they go back on their agreements or sign you up for whatever crap they make up next week, they can just suck it up.
For domain management, nothing imo beats namecheap.com The interface is incredibly straight forward and easy to use. You can do instant domain transfers to other namecheap users (should you buy sell domains), dns changes are usually pretty much instant etc.
From what they e-mailed you it sounds extremely simple to cancel your services..
They are the worst hosting service. Thank god, I already have space with other hosting services when they screwed me. Hosting is a buyers market you can find good small companies that deliver what they promise.
Godaddy is awesome and I have a feeling you’ll switch back before long. I’ve been doing the web since ‘97 and it use to be much, much worse. Just because Godaddy gives you options you’re mad? lol fail
BTW hostmonster is horrid — I hope you didn’t fall for the cheap hosting plan. If so you can count on your site going down from time to time as they reboot production servers during the workday.
I say, good show. godaddy.com can go to h*ll.
I have used godaddy ever since I started buying domains. Not sure why, but I like the interface and I have never had a problem. None-the-less I have heard from plenty of people that they have terrible trouble with godaddy.
thanks. i was trying to figure this out and never would have without your blog.
Worked like a charm, thanks.
Thank you so much for helping me out with this.
Everything on this page was amazing for me.
I’m glad I found it! :D <3
I’m insisting that they cancel my account. I’ve gone deep with their legal department and they can’t back up the claim that there is a legal reason why they can’t. The best they can say is that they need my e-mail address to reach me in case they ever need to. BUT their end-user agreements reserve the right to cancel for all kinds of reasons.
It boils down to the fact that they don’t want to cancel it. This can be a bit tough when they have your charge card number. But you can put in a PayPal number, which will let you remove your CC. THEN you can stop all payment authorization by going into PayPal.
At that point, you can poison the account: put in false information, they won’t have anything useful and they won’t be able to contact you again.
But at the moment, I am having quite a bit of fun making this as expensive for them as I can. I just keep asking them to cancel my account, and keep asking them to explain why they won’t. Every reason they send is feeble, and easily countered.
I’ve spent a total of $10 at Godaddy in 3 years, and I figure I’ve cost them $1200 or so in support costs. I can respond to their e-mails in a minute or two, and it costs me nothing. But my problem continues to escalate within their support structure. Each question costs them more to answer.
They don’t have a legal reason not to cancel the account. In fact, your personal information DOES belong to you, and they are compelled by law to stop using it … if you want to go to the trouble of making the point.
If enough of us do this, we may eventually make that point: it’s cheaper for them to provide a simple cancellation mechanism and archive old addresses than it is to keep spending support-staff money.
So I urge everybody:
1) Block all payment methods
2) Poison the information on their server
3) Continue to escalate the cancellation request and cost them as much money as we possibly can
I work for another domain registrar (which shall remain nameless since I was not given authorization to speak on here) and I can tell you we offer a close account link on our web site. I am not sure about the legal issues involved, but if we can do it, I do not see why GoDaddy can’t figure out how to do it. I am guessing the legal excuse has less to do with it than the “let’s hope an open account will = future sale” excuse.
Tuiliq, I here you man. I’ve filed a BBB complaint for the same reason and they responded with the same line that they keep the information for “legal reasons”. That’s a lie and I did not accept their response and never will. Any lawyers out there up for a class action suite against godaddy for illegally keeping OUR information?
Thanks for the guide. I was having trouble cancelling my account as well. They sure did hide the account cancellation well. I’m glad you took the time to put this up to help people out.
Their site is a maze and I just cancelled my reseller account after just a few hours. Like others have said, the cancellation process is sneaky and I had to run through it twice to get it done.
i have several websites hosted at Godaddy and i am pretty much satisfied with this domain name registrar. it is also very easy to get coupon codes for Godaddy.
Very useful. I agree with your opinion about Godaddy’s pannel. Seriously unorganized and they try to sell junk everywhere on their site. Very annoying when one is looking for important information and you see that you can buy 10 domains for .99 cents.
Thank you for this information! After 30 minutes of hunting through their site and 10 minutes waiting on hold on their long-distance, definitely not free, tech “support” phone line, I decided to Google for a how-to on getting rid of an account a customer of mine has been stuck with for four years. Greatly appreciated - as is the little snippet of linking code you offered to give GoDaddy a “no” vote.
Initially we started out small, but we now have dedicated servers.. wanted to move out from godaddy but never found the link to cancel hosting… thanks a lot!
I’m moving out other than godaddy for sure
Godaddy keeps on trying to get me back in when I quit! I hate godaddy
Okay, thanks for this Google finder with this Blog. I contact my Card Provider (Visa) and they told, the bill is on hold. And suggest to cancellation to merchant immediately..
Directly I contact GoDaddy and request Cancellation via Support Email. And the within 2-3 hours the Refund Letter has been issue. Lucky I am?
Well, I hope GODaddy have good support like to me :)
Thanks GoDaddy, I got my 99.9 dollars back to my Credit Card.
here the snapshot of my cancellation issue..
http://yfrog.com/5fgood2ljx
Thanks All, Thanks GoDaddy
I paid for a years worth of hosting which will be up in May. Does anyone know if I cancel before that, will I get reimbursed for the difference?
Thanks!
Thanks! This was very helpful.
I can’t believe how time consuming is the canceling process if you don’t search for help using google.
That interface sucks and is way to crowded.
From now on I’ll not use godaddy.com, no more!