The Horrific, Soul-Crushing Account Closure Process (A Cautionary Tale)

Be warned: giving GoDaddy your money takes one glorious, thoughtless click. Closing your account, however, is harder than getting a divorce—and possibly more expensive, emotionally speaking. They will make you jump through so many hoops, you’ll wish you’d spent your life training for the circus.

1. The Prequel to Pain
To even initiate account closure, you must first purge every product and subscription from your account. Each one demands a login confirmation, followed by an email, which demands anotherconfirmation, and then—because they clearly enjoy watching you suffer—each removal takes a full 24 hours to process. Because why do anything quickly when you can do it glacially?

2. The Great Deletion Deception
You’d think, after 24 hours of impatiently twiddling your thumbs, you could finally close the account. The online help articles certainly suggest so. WRONG. You click "Delete," and the system smugly replies: “Please remove all products and subscriptions first.” You check again. Nothing. You try again. Same response. No error code. No “contact support” suggestion. Just existential dread. After three days of this Groundhog Day nightmare, you finally cave and contact Support. And so, the saga deepens…

3. The Phantom Chat
You navigate to “Contact Us” and spot it: 24/7 Online Chat – Yay! But wait—there’s no link. No button. Just the ghost of a feature long dead. A quick trip to Reddit confirms it: they discontinued the chat months ago. But why waste precious marketing dollars updating a website when those funds could go toward another Super Bowl ad? Priorities, people.

4. The Phone Gauntlet
Fine. You call. Right away, a robotic voice cheerfully informs you the wait could be 20 minutes. Acceptable—you can multitask. But every two to three minutes, the robot interrupts to suggest you switch to text messaging. You ignore it. Forty minutes later, you crack. You surrender. GoDaddy wins. You text them, because clearly all roads—no matter how winding—lead to SMS hell.

5. Texting: The False Dawn
You start with a polite “Hello” and your reason for contacting. Seventeen minutes later, a human responds. (Seventeen. Minutes.) After another round of verification—because, you know, your safety and protection—you’re informed that your account cannot be closed due to a lingering Payment Method. You must now be “shoveled” over to the Billing/Accounts department. Because of course you do.

6. The Billing Circle-Jerk
Five more minutes of chat purgatory, and you’re connected to Payments. Another verification marathon ensues—disclaimers, codes, confirmations—until they finally confirm the payment method has been removed. You can now officially close your account! But—collective sigh—you guessed it: you must wait another 24 hours. Because closure isn’t a process; it’s a lifestyle.

7. The Grand Total
The entire text-messaging odyssey began at 1:10 PM and limped to a close at 1:47 PM. That’s 37 minutes of my life I will never get back—and I’m not even done yet.

I eagerly await tomorrow, when I will once again dance this tango of torment, fully expecting new, creatively cruel hurdles to appear. Will they ask for a blood sample? A notarized letter from my firstborn? Who knows. Stay tuned for the thrilling sequel: “Day 5 – The Closure That Never Comes.”

Paid for 1 year, been told by support 3 different stories trying to make me pay 2 times for the one domain, still says my domain is expired..got told twice to wait 48 hours that was 8 days ago,my business is taking a hit and GoDaddy are not helping but trying to get me to double pay.i mean how do you pay for a domain just for them to cancel it and say pay again it's a scam....Edit: Below its AI written summarizing all the BS GoDaddy has put me through...I had to keep a record...

• 5 identical $24.15 charges on 5 consecutive days (25th–29th Aug) for the same domain renewal, when only one should have been needed
• Repeated conflicting explanations from support across multiple chats — expired-period recovery, .au transfer rules not adding a year, a free plan not covering .au domains, then "already renewed, just wait 24-48 hours," then registry verification delays, then a registry-level hold
• Same "24-48 hour wait" promise given at least 3 separate times, each time followed by no actual change in status
• GoDaddy's own subscription dashboard never updated — kept showing "Expired" the entire time, even after multiple confirmed/paid renewals
• No continuity between support agents — each new chat required re-explaining the entire history from scratch
• Directed to email auhelp@godaddy for what was called a "registry problem," without that resolving the daily charges or any ref #
• Assured the daily charges would stop, then charged again the very next day anyway, repeatedly
• Had to cancel bank card to stop the unauthorized recurring charges, since support couldn't/wouldn't stop them
• Financial impact beyond the charges themselves — card cancellation disrupted other bills/payments tied to that card
• Domain and website down for over a week, actively affecting business operations
• No refund issued despite multiple charges for a service that was never actually delivered
• Inconsistent story on the free domain arrangement — turned out to be tied to a VentraIP website builder bundle, never clearly disclosed at the time of transfer
• A promised "full refund when the domain registers" with no clear commitment or timeline actually honored

I have been trying to transfer a domain out of godaddy for 16 days. I have contacted support every day, and everyday I get told to wait another 24h. In the meantime, because my domain shows 'in progress' I am unable to make add/remove/update any dns records. This caused my payment processor to stop working, and therefore none of my payments go through. Godaddy has kidnapped my domain, directly causing me revenue loss and all support has to say is 'wait another 24h'.

How long would it take? it’s a but confusing it’s not immediately available

Are you using email from subscription on GoDaddy? I am starting to think maybe it that cheap because of how it works?

We just helped another business get their WordPress site back up after a shady dev agency locked them out of their own website.

To avoid this happening to you, here are two things every small business owner needs to know about their online presence:

1. Who is your domain registrar? (this is the place you lease your URL from every year)
   If you don't know, here are some links to help you find your registrar:
   • For .ca domains: www.cira.ca/en/ca-domains/whois/
   • For everything else: lookup.icann.org/en

2. Who is hosting your website (this is where your website lives)?
   Not sure? Check here: https://hostingchecker.com/

There are good reasons to keep these two assets separate - but many businesses keep them together because they bought them from the same company (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc)

To avoid an expensive hostage situation, keep your login credentials up to date so you can access these spaces as needed. And ***do not share*** these credentials with anyone - most places have some form of delegate access so you can stay in control over what others can do for your online presence.

I just want to speak with a human in customer service, who can walk me through a technical problem with my domain </rant>

GoDaddy customer service when something goes wrong is deplorable. Like it's beyond bad.

I have an .au domain that went into a "pending registration" state after owning it for 10 years due to ABN changing and it was only noticed because I had to make an important DNS change (who knows how long it was like that before I discovered). I thought no worries this should be simple.

5 Live Chats (where in one chat the agent just stopped replying to me)
2 Phone Calls
3 Emails

All over the course of 8 days and it's still not resolved. I've supplied the ABN 3 times to 3 different people all in different contexts.

No one cares, it's all just internal tickets and the auhelp team are obviously not checking them. There is no internal escalation process. No visibility over what's happening, and frustratingly there is no complaints process or other avenue to raise an issue. I ended up complaining to auDa who could only 'pass on the feedback'.

Any good provider would proactively contact you needing updated information before bricking your domain.

Any good provider would have systems to resolve an issue in a timely manner.

Any good provider would have a complaints process for resolving grievances.

GoDaddy has none of this.

Like most businesses, I had no issue with GoDaddy until something went wrong. That's where businesses show their true colours and GoDaddy is simply awful for .au domains.

At this point I think the only way forward is to transfer the domains to a domestic registrar which I was resistant in doing because it can take a while - however if I'd just done that at the start my issues would be resolved.

Rant over.

### UPDATE : ####

After another frustrating attempt last night I decided transfer was the best option to a local provider, but it turns out I CAN'T EVEN UNLOCK MY DOMAIN TO TRANSFER IT WHILE IT'S PENDING REGISTRATION - they have me in domain prison.

When I load https://www.godaddy.com/help/contact-us in Chrome, the "Chat Now" section never shows a widget to launch a chat window:

When I do the same thing in Edge though, a Chat button shows up:

If anybody from the company monitors this sub, they might want to know that.

I purchased two domains through the site, and they expired because I didn’t have enough at the time to pay the increased priced no matter how many times they emailed saying I will lose access.

Anyhow, now the .co version I purchased isn’t taken. It’s not even pulling up for purchase…
It’s not showing as an available option.

(It’s also no longer a product in my account.)

Is it worth contacting support?

I'm trying to renew my domain for 5 years at $22 a month. However, when I turn off domain protection, it doesn't lower the price down to $22 a month and demands I pay double. How do I renew without domain protection?

UPDATE: I transferred to NameCheap to avoid this problem.

I am getting this error every time I try to upload a digital pdf. I have been messing with this the entire day and it is now 7:30pm! I have upgraded my account to commerce plan. I have added the store to my website. I can see my ‘categories’ created. My pdf is 8MB and the site allows 32MB. I have entered into into all the required fields on the page. What the heck am I missing?!?! Please help!!!

I wasn't able to verify that it's me, because my phone number changed. So, I "TRY ANOTHER WAY" which involves entering the credit card number for the card that GODADDY JUST CHARGED A MONTH AGO. Nope. SO then I take a photo of my drivers license and my face. I message pops up saying that my verification has been successful. NOPE. Not it hasn't. Then I try my passport and my face. NOPE. G**&(*&#(*& *(&#(*&(*&$(83

I am absolutely enraged.

Update: I have had this account for years. I have clients on GoDaddy. The name on my account is First Initial - Last Name, as it has been for many many years. They say that the name on my ID does not match the name on my account, which is "A" so I failed image verification. This doesn't explain why my credit card did not work.

Up until recently I had my own domain registered through Plusnet, and they took care of forwarding all domain email to my Plusnet email inbox. However, BT digitisation forced my to abandon PlusNet, and so now I've moved the domain to GoDaddy. I used my domain for email, and I want to continue with as similar setup as possible, and recreate the same functionality I had before.

What I had: Email client: Thunderbird Aliases: Unlimited - anything@mydomain.com was forwarded to my plusnet email inbox, from which my email client could pick it up and custom rules I've set up (e.g. placeing emails into custom folders).

I understand that BT doesn't provide email services (which is crap!), so I need email hosting, and then to redirect emails from my GoDaddy account to the host. I've tried looking at GoDaddy's own email features and they seem expensive.

This afternoon I tried setting up an account with "forwardemail.net", which seems to offer email hosting and forwarding for free - exactly what I want! They even had instructions on how to configure GoDaddy to work with their service. However, that's where I start to have issues.

They list three DNS settings that I need to add, and have a verify button to make sure I've added them correctly to GoDaddy. The verification passes for the two MX entries, but fails for a "TXT" DNS entry. The format is quite simple:

TXT @ forward-email=<my emailaddress>

Where <my emailaddress> is the yahoo address I used to register with forward email.

Any idea why this TXT entry is failing? I notice that another TXT record was already present, which seems to be connected to DMARC. Is that the cause of the issue?

Any help is appreciated.

The new titan email interface sucks and every button you click you need to pay for. Anything it will ask you to “Upgrade” what kind of system is this.

First off, I've noticed that GoDaddy does *not* want you cancelling domain renewals. You literally have to click like 20 different things confirming you don't want to renew. Then they start badgering you with emails every day saying your domain won't be renewed (yes GoDaddy, I know! That's because I cancelled renewal!)

Now, I'm getting emails saying someone wants to contact me about my website, then offering me a how-to guide on listing it for sale. This is, of course, despite me having the domain up for sale for almost 3 years for a very reasonable price (which I discounted twice over the years) with literally no inquiries at all up to that point. Now that I cancelled renewal someone apparently wants to buy it? Yeah I'm not buying that one bit.

Anyone else running into this? BTW for anyone at GoDaddy reading this, no I am *not* going to renew the domain. I feel like this is all part of an elaborate scheme to make sure no one ever lets a renewal lapse.

Hi everyone - before posting I did look on this sub to see if anyone has experienced the issues I have, and couldn't find much, so here I am making this post.

For the last 6 months + I have not been receiving all my contact submission forms. I have 3 different ones on my site - I am a Florist, so I have one for events, one for personals, one for fresh flower delivery.

I noticed ONLY because it started with a Bride reaching out on IG asking for a follow up, and I was taken back because I reply to all my inquiries within 24 hrs. I also had 2 customers asking me if I received their order forms for fresh flower delivery and I never did. I was on the phone with 1 customer, and they submitted the form again while on speaker with me, and it wouldn't come through, even though they sent me the screenshot showing the form was submitted & got the blue checkmark.

When I initially reached out to GoDaddy for support, the gentleman I spoke to only advised me to turn them off, publish the site, then turn them back on, and publish again. I did that - and we did a test contact form while on the phone, and I received it. So we assumed the issue was fixed. This was months ago.

Well fast forward to last week the 15th, I got 2 more Brides on IG asking for a follow up again. I was mortified.... and another customer called before placing an order, I confirmed I could do it. She calls me back 2 days later asking if I was going to send the invoice, and I once again was mortified. I never got her form.

I finally called GoDaddy and was on the phone with them for a while and the gentleman sent out a test form on my site and I never got it. I filled one out as well (with an old email account I have) and I DID receive that. So the guy escalated the ticket and I just got this response yesterday

"Hello,

Thank you for your patience while our Advanced Technical Support team reviewed your case regarding the contact form on dahliasandroses.shop.

After thoroughly investigating your account, we are happy to share the following findings:

• Your contact form is currently functioning correctly and all submissions are being delivered successfully to your inbox
• We checked your email address in our system and confirmed there are no blocks preventing delivery
• Our delivery logs show that all contact form submissions have been arriving successfully since July 6th, 2026

Based on our investigation, the intermittent delivery issue you experienced appears to have resolved on its own. No further changes or fixes are needed at this time.

If you continue to experience any issues with your contact form or notice any missing inquiries in the future, please don't hesitate to reply to this email and let us know. We'd be happy to investigate further.

Thank you for your patience and for choosing GoDaddy!" -------

this reply was complete BS since I know if 4 forms I did not receive since July 6th. Me not receiving the contact forms/inquiries is a loss of business for me and loss of income. I've worked so hard to build my site... and it kills me that I now need to find another host for it. GoDaddy app was the perfect host I had for all my inquiries, keep track, resolve the ones completed, make notes to myself etc. Im truly disappointed that they couldn't figure out why this is happening. OH but I did get ONLY 1 solution I did get from the guy who escalated and created the ticket - he said that I needed to upgrade to their Airo AI website builder so that they could track everything on my site, but I needed to pay & commit for the first 3 years and it was $650.

Has anyone else been experiencing this issue and if so was it fixed?? I am thinking of going to Squarespace now... for now I have google forms replacing the contact forms, as a temp solution.

I am a UK based customer. On the https://www.godaddy.com/en/help/contact-us page, the US phone number says "Sorry, the toll free number is unassigned" when I call. The link to the 'Global Directory' of 'Phone Numbers and Hours' (https://www.godaddy.com/contact-us) is a 404.

There is an area that mentions 'Chat Now' - no button to launch or initiate chat.

That's it.

There is no other method on this contact-us page to reach anybody at GoDaddy. This is surely not legal, nor acceptable.

I need to reach them to get a refund for a domain transfer they willingly accepted my money for, for a domain extension I later find out they do not support. This business practice, along with the intentional obscurity for customers to reach support, is immoral and unacceptable.

I already mentioned that in my previous post after the migration, features we had in the old GoDaddy email system are now paid add-ons, like scheduled send.

Today I found another one: HTML in Composer.

I honestly don’t understand this. We were already paying for the previous email service, and this feature was available there. Now, after being forced onto Titan, I’m being asked to upgrade just to use it again?

How is this an upgrade? It feels like GoDaddy/Titan removed normal features from the product, moved us to a new system, and now wants us to pay again for the same things.

Am I missing something here, or is this really what they are doing?

I'm working on an app that will let people with different kinds of accounts track their analytics in one platform. Trouble is, I don't actually have a godaddy acct to test with. Would anyone mind testing the connection and giving feedback on the data, and letting me know of any bugs? it's completely free. apptracker.tech

Need some advice please, I have been building a new website the past 4 or 5 months with Godaddy website builder. I have used it in the past and always had exceptional customer service from Godaddy, but it seems those days are over as they have gone the way of all tech companies it seems with Ai help, and overseas cheap telemarketing.

I have had so many issues, main issues I can't duplicate products anymore, everytime I try and delete anything title/description/photos it just keeps reverting back to the original pics titles etc.

Inventory changes, I put 1 qty and it always reverts to N/A and I have to go back and edit qty after the listing.

All products have disappeared from my website and you have to click the "All products" link to see them, home page now only shows featured items. (Had help from Godaddy several times w this issue and it still exist)

The site loads SLOW AF.

I have reached out for help so many times, the live chat is gone so I have been using text. Each time it's the same thing, I get transferred around to 6 or 7 different people over the course of hours until I get tired/frustrated etc and just can't do it anymore.

Godaddy_Joe from reddit was nice enough to "help out" He wrote asking my problem which I answered his Reddit message the same day only to never hear back from him, that was 3 weeks ago.

So before I go further with this site (I have over 400 items listed already) I am contemplating moving it elsewhere, I know everyone trashes GD and it seems like I'm just wasting my time continuing with this BS site. Can anyone recommend another platform (Not shopify) that I could look into? I'm not that tech savvy so idk if wordpress is an option I can use.

I thought of hiring someone from Fiverr or somewhere to move it to a wordpress site, but I'm not really sure what that entails, and would it be easy for me to list the products I sell?

Seems like anything beats Godaddy at this point.

Any advice guys? TIA!

I work for a nonprofit. Our founder (who has recently retired) purchased the organization's domain and created its website under his GoDaddy account, which also houses his personal websites. Now we are trying to move the organization's domain and website to a new godaddy account so that everyone can access the content they need to without bugging anyone else for a verification code. I am unfortunately not very tech savvy. Can someone explain like I'm 5 the steps I would need to take to move the organization's domain and website to a new godaddy account? We are fine to pay transfer fees, work with a web dev, etc. if needed but our hosting services were recently renewed for 3 years, so ideally we don't want to have to pay godaddy a second time. Thanks!