Go Daddy’s “Review 60” Policy is Annoying

I bought a domain name (BrandManagement.com) from someone who has it registered at Go Daddy, and when Escrow.com confirmed my wire, he pushed it to my Go Daddy account. I didn’t want to transfer it away from Go Daddy because an ICANN lock would have been added to the name, which is a problem if I decide to transfer it elsewhere.

I emailed my representative at Go Daddy to ask to have the 60 day Go Daddy lock removed and was instructed to send an email to the people in the “Review 60” department. Andrew Allemann discussed this new review process before. This is what they asked me to provide for them to remove a lock on a domain name my company bought and now owns.

Thank you for your email. To remove the transfer lock on the domain names, you would need to provide us with the following:

1. A completed 60-Day Lock Removal Request Form (attached).

2. Photo identification. Acceptable photo identification is clear, readable, and issued by the government. We must be able to clearly identify the pictured person, name, signature, and expiration date.

3. Government-issued business identification for the current registrant, Top Notch Domains, LLC. The following are considered acceptable business identification (if not based in the United States, please provide a Certified English translation of your country’s equivalent documentation):

Ø A copy of business license
Ø Tax certificate (number alone is not acceptable)
Ø Doing Business As documentation
Ø Fictitious Name documentation
Ø IRS 501(C)3 “Determination Letter” (You may request a copy of this letter by contacting the IRS at 1-800-829-4933)
Ø State issued certificate of tax exemption showing charitable status

You may scan or take a digital photo of the information and email it to review60@godaddy.com.

I’m sorry, but this is annoying. First off, I’ve been a customer for nearly ten years without any security issues, so that should count for something. Secondly, the seller also has an executive account at Go Daddy, so they can easily email and/or call him to confirm the sale. Thirdly, they can likely check the IP address from when the seller pushed it to my account to compare to prior account logins (ie if the IP address of the push from the California based seller originated in Iran, it would be a red flag).

Finally, it seems pretty silly for Go Daddy to police transfers like this. If the name was stolen or if the account had been compromised somehow and I still provided the requested information, I would imagine the owner could hold Go Daddy liable for approving the transfer after reviewing all of the information. If it was not the policy to police transfers like this, much like it is not their policy to police trademark domain registrations, they wouldn’t be responsible for fraudulent transfers like they aren’t responsible for clients registering Microsofts.org.

I am a happy Go Daddy client, but this issue is very annoying to me and I am sure it’s annoying to others, too. I can’t think of another registrar that does this, so I would assume it’s a domain retention issue in addition to a security measure, and that makes it even more frustrating.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

21 COMMENTS

  1. Aren’t they in violation of ICANN, how come TUCOWS get tagged but Godaddy can do whatever they want, ICANN picks and chooses who they go after. Clearly 99% of domainers hate this, Godaddy’s top clients are up in arms about it.

    I sold a domain on sedo, a few months back, which I had bought through godaddy, the buyer was from europe, and did not want to deal with Godaddy, godaddy would not remove the lock, as it had 30 days left on it. Lucky for me, the buyer let sedo hold the money, until the lock came off, could have cost a nice sale.

    Mr.Nicks, seriously VIP accounts, let them have some leash, we are not dogs here.

  2. “I emailed my representative at Go Daddy to ask to have the 60 day Go Daddy lock removed and was instructed to send an email to the people in the “Review 60″ department.”

    So they didn’t even cut red tape or advocate for you? Shows how important your business is or how little power he has.

    I’ll tell you what I would do. I would get back in touch with your rep and tell them to fix this problem for you or you will find another rep at godaddy (who is equally powerless) and give your business to them.

  3. So Elliot puts up a article on his blog, and gets it removed, while us poor saps have to submit this bs form, this lock isn’t even legal to begin with, godaddy forced you to accept their own internal terms which conflict with ICANN polify, yet ICANN cares nothing to enforce this policy…

    What is the deal Godaddy, any consistency, to this?

  4. @ Ron

    I filed an appeal with the company to get it overturned. I assume they looked into this particular situation and possibly even contacted the seller to be sure the account change was legit.

    I am sure it was more about me doing a whole lot of business without one iota of a problem over ten years more so than this one blog post, otherwise they may have addressed the situation when Andrew posted articles about it.

  5. Congrats on the purchase as well as the lift on the 6-day lock. However, I’m rather certain the reason you were able to get it removed (and quickly I might add) was more-so due to the publicity that your blog receives. As a domain owner, if I was curious about Godaddy’s transfer policies and I simply type “Godaddy 60 Day Policy”, you come up on the first page of Google. The bottom line is that if you’re competing with Godaddy for organic keyword traffic, favoritism will be seen. Godaddy may have had some publicity blunders in the past, but they aren’t completely brain dead.

    • @ Dev

      Like I said, I’ve been a customer of Go Daddy’s for ten years without so much as a single billing or other real problem. My dealings are above board, and based on my reputation, they can most likely surmise that this was a legitimate transaction. They also have ways to check to make sure the push was from a recognized IP address, too. I asked for them to remove the lock, and they did. This is the purpose of the “Review 60” policy rather than just rejecting people based on policy. I do wish it was a more simple approval process, but that is their business decision.

      That said, in my opinion, they would be less inclined to unlock a name for me with this blog post if they were concerned about it getting publicity. If they want the 60 day lock policy to be known and viewed as firm, they would have said “no.” There is a way to have the 60 day lock removed, and you just need to follow the protocol, which I did.

  6. I am just wondering that as more laypeople starting to register names with GoDaddy as hobbies and such, this 60day lock transfer will discourage them in particular from actually going through the process of reselling their domain names….and hence GoDaddy will get the nenewal fees or claim their hands on the expired domain names the following year. I find this tactic pretty slick and kind of unethical businesswise……..but then again I could be wrong in my assumption.

  7. #3 kills me…

    “3. Government-issued business identification for the current registrant, Top Notch Domains, LLC. The following are considered acceptable business identification (if not based in the United States, please provide a Certified English translation of your country’s equivalent documentation)”

    So I guess GoDaddy thinks the US is the only English speaking country on the planet? Do Canadians, Brits and Australians need to provide a Certified English translation of their already English documents?

    GoDaddy may want to re-write that one 🙂

  8. Hi Elliot, I’m surprised you still use companies such as GoDaddy. Why don’t you have your own website? If your names were good enough, they would be sourced via SEO. Just a thought.

  9. Forgive me I just ‘presumed’ you did not have any promotional sites. And you know what happened to presumption!

    Also, just a query about the new extensions. From what I’ve read there are some established domainers not getting involved in buying any? Do some of them interest you?

    Best Harry.

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