Go-Daddy Gone Wrong: What Happens to Your Domain if Your Co-Owner Dies?

Well, he didn’t die. In fact, every day I hope he’s alive and well.

We’re not in touch anymore.

We ran a startup together, until the no-shows at the meetings, weird behavior during the calls with our partners, gaslighting and disappearing on our project launch day.

It’s something you can’t be prepared for. Especially when you run a progressively growing company with your best friend. Especially when you were very close for years, and you trusted him with your life.

Then one day you receive a call from a mutual friend and hear unbelievable stories, when your friend is out of his mind, and harms himself, and others.

Drugs.

Remote work is the new normal nowadays, so I couldn’t know what was happening to him behind the screen.

Anywho, we tried to deal with the issue, even had an online intervention with a friend, and tried to help. But you can’t help a sick person if they think they’re alright.

In three months I was done. I fired him and said that we should split ways so that I wouldn’t hate him forever. He was always responsible for the tech’ish part of any project we ran together.

I asked him to transfer our projects’ domains hosted on GoDaddy. The procedure is fairly easy: you transfer your GoDaddy domain to another GoDaddy account via GoDaddy.com using your registered emails and receive an email with a confirmation, that you transferred your domain.

And the recipient receives an email about the successful domain transfer too.

BUT.

Here’s the F#@$^G thing: there is a button in that email that asks the transferrer to double confirm the transfer.

Well, guess what?! Somebody didn’t press it! What a F#@$^G nightmare.

I’ve tried to reach out to him via every app and chat possible, emails, and word of mouth. But when the person goes nuts, and nothing makes sense except the next high episode, you can’t do sh*t.

So I asked for GoDaddy’s support.

And the dumbest issue arose. They saw the transfers; I confirmed the dates and emails. But, because the sender didn’t press that confirmation button in his email, the domains weren’t transferred.

The red tape doesn’t make sense. My last question for the support agent was: what if the transferrer was dead? What would they do then?

They asked me for a death certificate.

F#@$^!

So apparently the transfer is not enough. You transfer the domains with your own fingers typing the info in on the computer. But then you have to confirm it AGAIN via email, preferably before you die or go insane because otherwise those domains are gone forever.

You can’t always get a death certificate when your friend dies on the other side of the planet, and this issue is real for someone, unfortunately. But who cares about domains, when your close person dies? I guess GoDaddy counts on that.

Even if it’s an apocalypse, the end of the world, nuclear war, or monsters invading Earth, you have to press that confirmation button, transferrer. Even if you are mentally ill or dead.

And who gives a f@$^?

Only you, the recipient.

Just for a bit. Till you lose your best friend to drugs, those beautiful websites you worked on for months to a No-Go-Daddy, and your country to the f@$^ng nazi.