It was expected, so if you’re upset, perhaps it’s time to understand that just like “Fight Club“, the first rule of the game is not to talk about it.
Those that discovered the weakness, hole or lack of thought in the GoDaddy Groupon process, decided to share it with thousands of others.
When you pick a penny from the register to supplement your bill at the grocery store, that’s one thing. When thousands decide to pick quarters and dollars, that’s another.
Playing by the rules is the basic rule in life, and spare me the drivel about how not playing by the rules gets you ahead of the game. I don’t need to hear unethical blab.
The GoDaddy Groupon codes are being reversed, as we speak; as long as you used more than one for your post-Christmas domainpalooza. There is a reason why the Groupon PDF has terms and conditions on it, it’s not just so that you can game the system.
And yet, even at this point when it’s evident that GoDaddy is actually reversing the multi-Groupon credits, some fools are advising others to create new GoDaddy accounts to apply the codes that are deemed invalid. Just how soon will GoDaddy close that window as well, I’m not sure.
Human greed and gullibility both start with the letter ‘G’. So does GoDaddy and Groupon.
I think Godaddy played us! Every post I read mentioned buying Groupons from multiple cities…. it was working and Godaddy did nothing until all the Groupon offers expired. Looks suspicious.
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. I feel Godaddy should honor all the coupons their system allowed to be redeemed.
Groupon is the big loser with this deal. They’ll have to deal with all those refund requests and complaints.
This mess will probably give Godaddy a black eye as well. Thousands of unhappy domainers can’t be a good thing for them.
Mike – The issue here is this, in my opinion: did you read the “fine print” of the Groupon deal (printed on the PDF with the code), or did you simply trust the mass posting of blogs urging everyone to spend as much money as they could on more Groupons, just because it seemed possible to game the system?
I agree, GoDaddy didn’t put all the safety mechanisms in place to ensure you would not add more than one Groupons per account. So now, they are reversing the deal, because frankly, their terms made it clear it’d be one per person, per account.
I do hope that you get your money back from Groupon. Personally, I spent $25 for a single one.
I’m ok about losing the in-store credit…. it was free money anyways.
I’m not happy how Godaddy waited until all the Groupon offers expired in each city before reversing the coupons. They knew day one people were using multiple coupons. Or, they should have known, it was all over the net. If they started reversing them on the 2nd day, the promotion wouldn’t have spread as far and wide. They created the environment for many to take advantage of buying from multiple cities then take it away. Most of the people stocking up on the coupons are their best customers.
Mike – It’s an interesting argument. I think a lot of people that took advantage of this deal, fail to realize one thing: that digital or “virtual” money does not differ from tangible cash. If you were able to haul multiple sixpacks of beer out of a store for the price of one special deal, would you do it?
GoDaddy will lose customers, but I don’t think those that took advantage of the system for hundreds and thousands of dollars can blame anyone other than themselves.
Using your analogy, I saw it as going to my local beer store that’s having a promotion on 6 packs (limited one per customer). I’d buy a six pack then go to the beer store down the street to buy another at the special price, then visit another beer store etc… until my car is full. That’s how I interpreted the one per customer (per city). And, that was confirmed by Godaddy redeeming all coupons instantly.
I just feel they allowed it to promote the deal and revoke it when they were done. That benefits them not us.
Mike – That’s a great analogy, however, you didn’t go to several different stores but rather, to the same store several times. And if you changed your outfit (e.g. using different GoDaddy accounts) you’re still ‘Mike’.
I think those that found out that by changing the URL/city you can get more Groupons, really screwed it up for the rest.
Well, anything can be debated forever. 😀
Actually, Groupon treats each city as a different store. That’s why Godaddy posted an offer on multiple cities and not just one location (singular offer page).
I’d agree that people shouldn’t be surprised by Godaddy revoking the coupons, but I do think Godaddy should take some responsibility.
Mike – I just find it odd that I actually read the terms on the Groupon, and decided to stick to buying one only, which puts me in the minority of buyers.
Are people this gullible, or easily swayed when a large number of others scream “great deal!” and “spend more cash!” – I am not sure what to think.
Please let me know what happens, I do hope you get your money back from Groupon.
I would have only bought one as well, but when I saw the amount of posts online listing city links to the Groupon offers I got on the train. This was the first time I had used Groupon… I saw each city as a different offer. That’s why I didn’t feel like I was trying to game or motivated by greed. I only bought 8….seemed like a nice round number. 😀
I love GD !
I bought about about $350 worth of coupons which gave me $1,000
I used all of the money within a day.Renewals and all kind of coupons.
Guess i was lucky …
Just Luky – Check your account for credit reversals, including cancellations of renewals. If you used more than 1 Groupon, you aren’t safe.
The one at fault here is Groupon. I am sure when Godaddy did this deal with Groupon that the “rules” were understood from the beginning but Groupon failed to put in the necessary blocks. Godaddy doesn’t run Groupons software, Groupon does. The one thing that doesn’t make sense is if Godaddy created this deal than that means they allotted X number of Groupon deals to be sold so why does it matter who bought them or how many were bought. If 1000 people got 60% off or 200 people got 60% off why does it matter because they would have sold the same amount anyway because they allotted X amount to be sold whether it be to 1000 people or 200 people. I love Godaddy even if they reverse my credits. Godaddy is a great company with great service (Marc Gawith is the best rep) and I would not change anything because they do it very well.
Todd – When you buy Groupons, you pay using your card, PayPal, etc. All Groupon does is generate codes using some logic that can be validated at GoDaddy. It was obvious from the start that this worked because any valid Groupon-generated code could be used at GoDaddy.
Apparently, your favorite domain registrar kept this going for days, even after they noticed how well their Groupon offer was selling. Then, once the deal ended, they decided to revert the credit and charges – and they did so because it was within their right to do so.
Why it matters to GoDaddy who bought the credit? Because those that bought the Groupons weren’t new customers that would be expected to stay long term and spend more money on GoDaddy’s expensive services: hosting, SSL certificates, $15 rewewals etc. Nope. Those that spent the cash were seemingly veterans of the game, looking to profit from this offer en masse. GoDaddy tried to game new customers, but got gamed instead – so now they did one up for those guys. Keep praising your GoDaddy rep, even though they kept your money; you’re paying his wages with it!
When people don’t play by the rules, that’s who is to blame. Blaming Groupon for this mess, is like blaming the rainy weather when you don’t want to take an umbrella to work and get all soaked up.
Why did both Groupon and Godaddy allow the whole fiasco to continue?
It’s Groupon’s business to monitor the deals on their site – so the massive uptake (xx,xxx+ in some cities) added to the sheer breadth of the GoDaddy deal (held across 125+ North American cities) would have garnered daily attention.
GoDaddy for its part is very active in monitoring it’s daily ‘press clippings’. A few stories citing successful ‘multi-city’ Groupon crediting to GoDaddy accounts started to appear on Dec 28. It snowballed from there, and was heavily reported for over a week by media representing the domaining, coupons/deals, tech/gadgets, and webmaster/seo industries.
In addition, GoDaddy’s Marketing Department would have been monitoring the progess of the promotion; either by accessing the hourly/daily uptake stats from Groupon and/or the surveil of coupon redemptions at GoDaddy.com.
So it begs the question: What did GoDaddy (and/or Groupon) gain by failing to issue timely notification in order to stop the multiple crediting of account?
I’m going to guess that there’s going to be a lot of groupon codes for sale on forums really soon : )
When I went to Groupon to buy the deal it locked me out of buying anymore than 1 deal. I proceeded to go back to Groupon to buy another deal from the same city that I bought the first one and it locked me out again but when I decided to switch cities it allowed me to buy another deal and another and on and on. Did Godaddy create the software for Groupon to allow this? NO. Groupon is 100% responsible for the mistake but I do agree that Godaddy should have put a stop to it sooner than they did. This all occurred during the holiday season when staffing is at its lowest point so its possible that they didn’t realize everything going on until very late in the game but regardless it is what is. I am not sure why Godaddy gets knocked so much in the domaining world because
1. they are by far the cheapest registrar
2. give the best promo codes
3. have the best software to analyze your portfolio
4. have the best service (if you have a rep)
5. have the easiest format to sell names
6. easily one of the best places to buy expired names and it doesn’t cost 70 bucks like
Namejet
7. because of their massive advertising they have single handily brought domain
names in public view so you can sell more names to put food in your mouth
8. by far the most innovative company in this space constantly coming up with new
concepts to push the industry forward
9. lets you re-register your expired domain up to 25 days after expiration with no
additional cost.
Plus a hundred other reasons and the only bad thing I could say is that their parking
sucks ass in a big way but you can’t be good at everything right.
Todd – They get tossed around for a few good reasons, allow me to list some, after I’m done with your points.
1. Not true. See below:
2. They give the best promo codes to bring down retail prices from $15 to $8.67 or so. There is a plan in this madness: end users never get cheap pricing.
3. Apparently you haven’t seen that of Fabulous or eNom.
4. Why would you need a rep – glorified word for tech support with a direct extension? So that I can be talked to more polite when they screw up?
5. TDNAM is the biggest bazaar of a mess; eventually, it cost Sedo thousands of names and dollars in lost customers.
6. The quality of domains at TDNAM is a joke, compared to NameJet, SnapNames etc. The platform is just an attempt to keep GoDaddy WHOIS searches local.
7. Their massive advertising devalues women and there is nothing family-oriented about it. If you like big silicone boobs saying “GoDaddy!” then that’s fine with me.
8. They have innovated the art of providing a maze of unnecessary products, when all you want is a $10 domain. Their upselling is legendary. I call this pushy salesmen tactics, not innovation.
9. So do other companies, but if you forget renewing your domains in the first place it’s because the reminder emails end up in spam.
Plus a hundred other reasons, such as their stance on SOPA/PIPA, the way they can shut your web site for no reason responding to simple threats, etc.
But assume that all your points were true, which they aren’t. What do they have to do with the fact that they reversed the Groupons? So you’re ready to remain with a company that screws you, but because they give you candy you think it’s ok?
Not very smart, in my book.
One point you are missing is that Groupon added the terms of Limit 1 Per Godaddy Account, after January 1st. Groupons purchased before January 1st did not have this in the terms.
I’m not missing anything, because what you said is not true. Link to my Groupon from Dec. 29th. http://i45.tinypic.com/1hv30i.jpg
I’m not making this up – here is a screenshot of one of the PDFs we downloaded (all before Jan 1):
http://i47.tinypic.com/1iibko.gif
Did you take your screenshot the day you purchased it or on Jan 9th? Because I noticed that if I download the PDFs now from Groupon’s site, they now include the new terms – it has been appended automatically in their system.
Joe – Yes, I have the PDF downloaded on that day, actually. The capture I posted was to reference the date of purchase that’s not shown on the PDF. I don’t believe Groupon changed the terms after a person’s purchase; if they changed it, the terms were there to be read at purchase time. Apparently, people were busy buying tons of Groupons to bother reading the terms.
While it would be weird and wrong for them to change the terms after purchasing, they did – even ignoring the many other people online claiming the same thing, I have actual proof in the PDFs we downloaded – every single one, in fact. I absolutely read the terms pre-purchase and they were in fact, changed a few days later, and now reflect on PDF voucher downloads, for both pre-Jan 1 and post-Jan 1 purchases. And as a side note, I’m not trying to argue the ethics of purchasing more than one Groupon – just the fact that the terms were changed. I don’t know how you can refute physical [digital] evidence.
“Acroplex LLC
@acroplex I have no idea why people’s greed is justified when they end up losing money”
Oh like you’re perfect? Without sin? Never tried to get more than your share? Please. Stop throwing stones, you’re making of fool of yourself. And stop throwing “greed” around. Thats an overused and abused liberal word from 2011.
Nick – You sound like a bitter fool who lost a lot of money on this Groupon fiasco. Please spare me the “liberal” tirade, bro. Now go call Groupon/GoDaddy support to get your money back, while you can.