Take this step to avoid losing your domains.
I bought five domains in the GoDaddy premium domain auction earlier this month. I sold one of them in less than 48 hours, and it paid for all five, so I’m happy with my selections.
But there’s something you should be aware of if you bought domains in this auction.
Shortly after the auction concluded, I received a notice that one of the domains was due for renewal and couldn’t be renewed because there was no payment method on file for the domain.
I’ve heard of this issue before and don’t like how GoDaddy handles payments for products without assigned payment methods. There should be a default card that is charged in the event no payment method is applied to a product.
That said, if you won domains in this auction, you need to make sure to add a payment method.
To do this, log in to GoDaddy and click on your name at the top and select “Renewals & Billing”. This will show you which payment method is assigned to each product.
There is a filter button that lets you search for domains by payment method. However, when I selected “No payment methods,” it did not show the products that didn’t have payment methods assigned.
So, you’ll need to search for each domain individually. To find it, you need to enter the full name you won, including the top level domain. Then click the three dots on the far right and select “Update payment method”. See the picture at the top of this post.
How were you able to sell/transfer within 48 hours? I thought there was a 60 day transfer lock on recent auction purchases.
You can transfer to another godaddy account. The lock is only on transferring to another registrar.
It is a little confusing but there is a a way to do the default payment method to use if your primary method fails for whatever reason. This would include not having one setup like in your example. You can setup an account wide backup payment method. https://www.godaddy.com/help/set-a-backup-payment-method-724
Interesting, thanks Joe. It appears I already had a card set as backup. Does this mean that, despite getting notices that might domain wouldn’t renew without adding a payment method, it actually would have renewed using the backup?
At the end of the day yes.
Technically the system will try to charge you on a non-existent payment method, fail, and then try the backup method you chose and succeed.