Another expired domain buyer was a victim of the same clawback.
A second plaintiff has joined a lawsuit against GoDaddy over expired domain clawbacks.
In August, Crisby Studio AB sued GoDaddy after the registrar clawed back the domain calor.com, which Crisby Studio had purchased for $11,405 on GoDaddy Auctions about two months prior. Crisby had already entered into a joint venture to develop the site into a business.
Now a new plaintiff has come forward (amended lawsuit, pdf) with almost the exact same facts.
Prime Loyalty acquired the domain name butane.com for $19,755 in an expired domain auction at GoDaddy. Like Crisby, it had also partnered with another company to build a business on its new domain, and GoDaddy took the domain back about two months later.
Looking at historical records, it appears Calor Gas Ltd of Great Britain was the previous registrant of these domains at 123-Reg, a registrar owned by GoDaddy.
In correspondence with Prime Loyalty, a GoDaddy representative blamed a technical error that prevented the previous registrant from being able to renew the domain. He noted:
We realize that in circumstances like this, the party we recover the domain from is not going to be very happy with the outcome. That said, we believe that fixing the original issue and returning the domain was the right thing to do. If the roles were reversed and an error on our part caused you to miss an opportunity to renew one of your domains, we would take the same actions.
GoDaddy initially offered to pay Prime Loyalty instore compensation to cover the cost of two additional domains it bought after acquiring butane.com. (It spent $1,999 to buy butane.net and $5,000 to buy butane.org, both through GoDaddy.) GoDaddy later offered to pay $10,000 as compensation, but Prime Loyalty claimed it spent much more to start building a business.
Jeffrey J. Neuman is representing the plaintiffs.
Sounds like Godadddy did the right thing for the original owner and the new customer by offering a refund and this new buyer is a crying little bitch who will lose this lawsuit.
I call bs. If there was a technical issue, GoDaddy should have never offered the domains on auction to begin with.
Sounds like you’re shilling for big corporations, or just talking out of your ass with a superficial understanding of the situation.
Obviously you have no concept of the law. The company entered into a new business venture and began business activities relying on the fact that they secured this domain. They suffered more in damages than that ridiculous 10k GoDaddy was offering.
In practice, domain name is obtained on the basis of prevalent business. But here, the man is planning a business on the basis of a domain name. Wow. Obviously, he has intentions to benefit from others’ hard earned reputation. He also deserves a lawsuit for having bad intentions
This has been an ongoing problem for GoDaddy.
They are selective in how they enforce their auction win, clawback & transfer policy.
Discovery will reveal if it was truly a ‘technical’ glitch.
Sometimes litigation is the only way to force large companies to refine and fix bad policies.
Just another reason the 60-Day transfer lock should be over-turned. The standard should be 7 days or opt-in only. Had the buyers in these cases won the domains and moved to a new registrar, this would be a non-issue.
Has it been an ongoing problem recently? There used to be a big issue with this, but I think it’s now very rare, especially this late.
I’m still dealing with this, I even bought my own domain to prove to them what they were doing. They keep pulling down my websites, hackers keep taking over my godaddy account which I can never get into. Their customer service always hangs up or “gets disconnected” they owe me thousands of dollars. I have documents proving this 3 year nightmare. I need help. I want my domains and emails back I have 8 businesses depending on this
Its been an ongoing problem. True, GoDaddy fixed the problem with expired domains registered at GoDaddy.
Yet, the external registrar clawback is as problematic as ever. Personally, they clawed back one of my paid for auction wins last year. On Twitter, there have been recent complaints. A few weeks ago Konstantinos reported a clawback.
https://x.com/onlinedomaincom/status/1834024556081652061
The remaining issue is with external partners using the GoDaddy auction system. The solution: hold external partners to the 30 day expired, sold, and gone standard.
That’s very frustrating. I think what makes this case particularly unique is the buyers had control of the names and then they were clawed back.
I note that butane.net is 100% branded as butane.com – that is going to get confusing for customers real soon!
If you won the auction and paid for the antique car,it is all yours to keep you are the new proud owner, congratulations
So what so difficult to understand this domain sh$#@it?
what if the car was taken from the original owner and sold without their permission?
It wasn’t though. It was only rented by the previous “owner,” and reclaimed once they stopped paying. Fairly standard process.
Then whoever took it is a thief and a criminal. If this is GoDaddy, yes, they have to give it back, and then should be prosecuted for participating in criminal activies.
I wonder how people keeps purchasing domains at GD after the poor business practice shown so often.
People are suckers.
I am just a small business but GoDaddy sold one of my domains to someone else and according to theirs records the site is mine,but they have let the other to transfer the dna’s. GoDaddy is corrupt.
This is godaddy’s fault entirely.