Just last week I bought a new URL for restaurant reviews - the very awesome IEatOutALot.com and of course during the GoDaddy checkout process I was upsold to a .US domain and threw it in my cart. As usual GoDaddy automatically added private registrations which of course is great, so I left that in my cart but something bugged me at the final checkout. It appeared that private registration was only added once. I tried poking around and figured to myself, not sure what's going on but let me keep going. So I moved on - all excited about my new blog and went over to Typepad to set up the domain mapping and design..
The next day I was still playing around with the design when I got a call from a random number I didnt recognize. I picked it up - not sure why and it was from "tech support". After less than a minute I realized it was a spam call and hung up. Later on in the day, I got another call and this one was easily recognized as a telemarketer - you know, the long pause and then the crowded call center. This call mentioned GoDaddy and website support so I hung up.
I then called GoDaddy and after a few minutes with a very nice customer service rep we determined that the calls were coming from the non-private registration of the .US domain. The rep didn't realize that .US domains couldn't be private registered and of course I was a little surprised too. So, I told her I'm getting calls and emails from the registration and she had no solutions on how to shut them off. I did the only thing I could do which was delete the .US domain and asked for my $3 back.
Now you might be thinking - well how is this GoDaddy's fault? Simple - go buy some domains and see how often they cross sell you into other products. Go see how they preload the private registration in your cart (screen shot to the right) but where is the warning that the .US domain loaded in your cart CAN NOT be private registered? It's not there unless you dig into the terms and conditions which isn't very fair.
If GoDaddy pushes products and even pre-loads your cart with a private registration, shouldn't they also load up a warning that one of your cart items can't take advantage of the private registration. I think they should because the phone calls and spam emails are brutal. If you know of a better solution for .US registration, I'm all eyes and ears. If you are buying .US domain keep the non-private registration in mind because the spam calls and emails are brutal.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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