OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
While Go Daddy was busy preparing a replacement ad for the Super Bowl, its website was malfunctioning.
I got several reports from people that searched for a domain name at Go Daddy, found that the domain name was available and purchased it. After payment was done they would receive an email that the domain name was not available for registration.
Go Daddy had trouble distinguishing between available to register domain names and already registered domains. The issue was in effect on Friday the 31st of January and on Saturday the 1st of February. Not sure if this has been fixed since that. Please let me know if you are having trouble in the past couple of days.
Here is an example. A Go Daddy customer tried to purchase the domain names zoo1.com and move1.com and he saw that the domains were available and paid for them and got an order confirmation:
YOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION
| Order Number: ******** |
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Product
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Quantity
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Term
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Price
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.COM Domain Registration
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1 Domain
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1 Year
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$8.37
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.COM Domain Registration
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1 Domain
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1 Year
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$8.37
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Subtotal:
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$16.74
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|||
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Tax:
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$0.00
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|||
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Total:
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$16.74
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|||
BTW the already registered domains were not registered at Go Daddy. The domain move1.com is owned by Nike since 2000 and zoo1.com is also registered since the year 2000.
A few minutes later he got another email from Go Daddy telling him that the domains were not available:
Subject: Domain Name Registration Unsuccessful: REGISTRAR: MOVE1.COM ->
Dear **********,
Unfortunately, the following domain name registration was unsuccessful:
MOVE1.COM
Error: MOVE1.COM: cannot register – already registered
We will evaluate the error and retry the registration if appropriate. If we are unable to successfully register the domain name, your account will be credited accordingly (allow one business day for the refund to be processed).
Someone else tried to register a different domain and got the same results. I found out that this other domain is in redemption status so I can’t reveal the domain name.
The orders above were done on Saturday, so on Sunday while people were watching the Super Bowl ad they had not yet received the refunds. I wonder how many people had pending refunds from Go Daddy while watching the Super Bowl.
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I think they had one of the most boring superbowl commercials ever $4M for that, heads have to be rolling as of Monday morning.
The other week I had boston.tv in cart checkout and progressed with processing… But was denied, of course already regged; thinking how could that slip through the drops? Nothing exceptional but!
Anyway, same process has happened to me a few times but not as you’ve posted.
Totally Agree. Beyond boring. I was actually surprised it was a real screwup. Thought they’d do a two part that played off the puppy commercial. Wonder who the marketing drop-out was that green-lit the puppy commercial. Incredible no other staff tried to talk them out of it.
I’ve seen the same thing at Godaddy lately, especially with .tv and .io domains showing as available, but actually registered. I’ve taken to double checking at DomainTools and other registrars if its an available domain that seems too good to be true. Seems they are in the middle of giving the website a new look so that might have something to do with it.
Yes, if you do a search at godaddy for cars, cars.io, cars.systems etc all show available when you go to click them, they go cannot be added, they just need to clean up their coding, a bit sloppy, or maybe they are trying to make load time faster.
they are still having issues when dealing with list of domains. enter sarah – you’ll see that sarah.net is available. if you click select, GD will figure it out. But for some domains, it walked me all the way to the basket. If you just enter sarah.net – you’ll see that it’s taken so looks like availability field is not coming across properly when doing multiple search. I can fix it for ’em 🙂
Had the same thing happen to me tonight. Kind of a bait and switch… surprised no civil lawsuit doesn’t arise from such..
Yesterday, i’ve got this error too.
“Unfortunately, the following domain name registration was unsuccessful:
blahblah.info
Error: Domain failed availability check: Domain cannot be registered because another domain was found in a restricted status”
This is the first time for me since being customer at godaddy.
Still waiting their refund or another good news
Yes Ive just recieved the same message after being told it was available and paying I then recieved an email about “restricted status”
Not happy…
This just happened to me. It is 10/5/16 on Godaddy, which is why I searched the topic.
10/14/16 and still broken … really sad because I thought I got a 3 letter domain and damn near shat myself.
Thank god for the internet saving articles from 8 years ago – it’s now 2023 (29/03/2023) and it’s happened again. Same issue, Domain is available for sale – I part with cash and it appears for a moment in my portal then vanishes.
I then get an email with the same details “Error: Domain failed availability check: Domain cannot be registered because another domain was found in a restricted status”
Not really all that great a customer service – unless they are just raking in the money and making interest on it?