I am unable to express my anger, frustration and rage of the events of the last three days with respect to my company's domain name. So, in the interest of documenting it, here's the email I sent to a lawyer trying to find someone, nearly anyone at this point, to take my case.

I've spent the last couple days calling lawyers and referrals from lawyers and more referals from lawyers. GoDaddy, complicit in the error of my domain name being transferred away, as both ignored the issue, disavowed there is a problem with their system (there is: if I select "autorenew" and can't autoremew because no payment has been applied to the account, don't tell me the domain will autorenew: it's a simple as that).

I, at this moment, completely and utterly despise GoDaddy and will be transferring my domains away from them as soon as I find a registrar with DNS hosting and a decent interface. At this point, I don't care much about the cost.

Fuck GoDaddy.

Hmmmm.... maybe the anger is starting to show through.

Hi, Mr. Greenstein,

We talked briefly last night about my domain name dispute case. Thank you for taking my call so late in the day.

In January, I had transferred ownership of my company's domain name codingclan.com from my business partner's account at the registrar GoDaddy, to my account at GoDaddy. When doing so, I verified I had auto-renew on for the domain, so that the domain would automatically renew at the end of March when it came due. I have all of my domains on auto-renew so that I don't have to worry about renewing them. Given that I also have a valid credit card on file with GoDaddy, I assumed the domain would automatically renew.

I found out on Tuesday that not only had the domain not renewed, as GoDaddy's systems indicated it would when I logged in to look at my domains, but, when it expired, it was purchased by another company who had placed it on back order.

I am unable to find out the new company's name, as they have registered it under GoDaddy's Domain By Proxy service. When I called GoDaddy and the Domain by Proxy company, both refuse to give me information. Similarly, when I emailed the tech contact's email address listed in the domain's new whois information, I receive no answer.

The new owners of the codingclan.com domain name scraped my site before they transferred the domain to their servers. They have my company information, and company logo on their new site. They are receiving email into my old accounts, essentially impersonating me and my company.

I would like my domain name back.

I would like to begin a domain dispute. Their actions of impersonating me by displaying my site and company information without any indication they are not me, constitutes fraud.

I would like GoDaddy to fix the problem with their setup by which internal transfers of domains cannot be listed as 'auto-renew' unless they can actually autorenew. GoDaddy's current system does not apply the default payment method in an account to internally transferred domains, which is the loophole my domain fell into.

GoDaddy's system also does not display expiring domains which do not have a default payment method assigned to them. To find default payments requires numerous steps, buried in the site, which a technician on a 45 minute phone call had to show me where the listing, and I've been using their services for over five years.

Is this a case you are willing to take? If not, can you refer me to someone who can.

Thanks.

Kitt.

Updated July 26th, 2009: Here is what happened to my domain name:

I transferred my company's domain name from my business partner's GoDaddy account to my GoDaddy account with an internal transfer in January, as my business partner had left the company. When I made this transfer, I made sure the domain name had automatic renewal on. My credit card on file does not expire until next year, so I figured I was all set.

After receiving an email that the domain was about to expire, I logged in to my GoDaddy and verified the domain was on automatic renewal. It was, so I logged back out and didn't worry about it. Recent calls to GoDaddy support confirm that I logged in and viewed my domain page, and would have seen the domain was set to automatically renew.

On May 5th, I was informed by a colleague that email to my business email account was bouncing. Turns out, my domain was NOT renewed, and here's why:

GoDaddy has a bug in their system where INTERNALLY TRANSFERRED DOMAINS DO NOT HAVE SAVED PAYMENT TYPES (CREDIT CARD ON FILE) AUTOMATICALLY APPLIED TO THEM

Despite the fact the GoDaddy website TOLD ME MY DOMAIN WOULD AUTOMATICALLY RENEW, it did not.

When I didn't manually renew the domain name (why would I? it was set to automatically renew), GODADDY SOLD IT AT AUCTION for over $500. This is $500 of profit for GoDaddy ON THE BUG IN THEIR SYSTEM.

It turns out, the person who bought the domain at the auction, scraped my site before transferring the domain. My company's logo, phone number and (this is critical) company email address are currently on the website of the domain name I lost. The new registrant is committing a copyright violation, a trademark violation and fraud by impersonating my company. This scraping happens to be the only chance I'll get my company's domain name back, because of the fraud committed. My case is currently pending in the domain arbitration process that everyone agrees to when they register a domain.

Ideally, I'd like for the defendant to join me in a case to force GoDaddy to fix their system. I'd support a case where GoDaddy pays for my court costs, the defendant's court costs and his auction monies.

In the meantime, I'm looking for a new registrar. Given that I have over a hundred domain names (many as gifts to friends), my leaving will be a noticeable chunk of change. I expect GoDaddy to give me a call when I leave, the same way they annoyingly call to thank me for my business when I now manually renew all of my domains to prevent this error from happening again.

Did I say GoDaddy sucks? Sorry, I meant, GoDaddy FUCKING sucks.

Why is there never a dull moment with Caltrain? I swear, every time I head to any station, there's always some drama. Fortunately for me, it's not always bad drama.

This morning, I realized that the next available train that stopped at South San Francisco was leaving about thirty minutes after I had finished waking up, petting the Bella, and stumbling to my computer to check train times. About five minutes after that, I realized I wasn't going to find any parking at the Mountain View lot, I'd better head south to the Sunnyvale station where the parking structure means all-day parking.

The Sunnyvale station also meant I had five fewer minutes than originally thought I did. Five fewer minutes in this case, meant rush. So, rush I did. I left the house with a calculated 10 minutes until the train arrived, assuming the trains were departing 2 minutes early, as they had been last time I rode Caltrain. I arrived at the station with five minutes before the train was calculated to arrive, and turned into the parking structure.

Now, I hadn't expected to find parking on the first floor or the second floor. When I didn't find parking on the third or fourth floor, however, I started becoming nervous. Surely there would be roof parking right? I turned the corner for the top floor, into the bright sun of the roof, and found rows of cars. Crap!

No, no, wait, there was a space at the very end, right next to the pay machine. Hoorah! I parked quickly and hustled over to the pay machine, where a small Asian woman was all a flutter, waving her arms, asking "Help me, help me!" I went to the pay machine and looked at the screen. It was asking for $2.00 on the screen, but blaring out crazy instructions that made no sense if you didn't already have a ticket. She said, "Look!" and shoved a $5 bill into the money slot. The machine rejected it.

I looked again at the screen and down at the wad of money I had in my hands. I hadn't recalled how much the parking fees were, so I had grabbed four quarters, two dollar coins and five singles. I unfolded the singles and fed one to the machine. Almost as if the machine had been starving and was now pacified, the lights stopped flashing, the horns stopped blaring and the two of us heard a contented sigh from the machine, as the amount due dropped from $2.00 to $1.00.

I fed another dollar into the machine, waited a moment, pulled out the parking ticket, and handed it to her. I needed to make the same train, and I didn't have my retardo 8-but-really-4 ride ticket validated yet. I pushed the buy ticket button again, and shoved the two dollar coins into the parking pay machine. Grabbing my ticket, I noticed the woman was still standing there, once again, all a-flutter.

On, right. She wanted to pay for her parking ticket. I handed her my three singles, she handed me the five that the machine kept rejecting and asked the fastest way down. I pointed her to the right staircase, jogged back to my car, and started unloading my stuff. As I heard her clip clip clip away in her heels, I realized my watch said 10:26. My calculations had the train arriving at 10:27, and my ticket was validated. Crap.

Slinging my scooter over my shoulder, I ran for the stairs, ran down the stairs, and around the corner. Dropping everything and grabbing my wallet, I was thankful I had the multi-ride ticket, as the small Asian woman was at the ticket machine, heading the front of a long line of people wanting to purchase tickets at the machine she was using. Oh, goodness me.

I validated my ticket, packed up the keys and books I had run down the stairs carrying and turned to walk to the far platform. "Is this correct?" I heard the woman ask again. I looked down to see her ticket, and asked, "Are you going to San Francisco?"

"Yes."

"Then your ticket is correct." Relief flooded her whole body. "But you need to be on the other side of the tracks," I continued.

"The other side!" She took off running. I hadn't heard the train, so I knew that both the train hadn't arrived and wasn't approaching. Once it approaches, if the train hasn't screwed you over by stopping across the tracks, you can cross the tracks behind it and still make the train. The woman hadn't realized any of this and by the time I had blinked twice and started moving, she was already on the other side, waving happily at me.

I don't recall if I had had such a hard time the first time I rode a Caltrain ride. I do know that I much prefer to train up than drive up, if the timing is convient. Maybe one of these times won't have the drama and suspense.

Okay, so, these wounds on Bella really fascinate me. Martha, you really don't want to click through.

This is the one that she was gnawing on so much that we needed to have it removed. This is the little bastard that really cost us $732. The rest were free.

So, Kris has this habit of waiting for me to purchase some new toy and, after it arrives and I'm playing with it, says, "Hey! I want one!" That's usually followed by his co-opting my new toy, forcing me to purchase a new one.

I can't say I'm particularly upset by this habit, as it gives me an opportunity (an admittedly very SHORT opportunity) to play with the first one, and purchase a better or upgraded one when he's not looking.

He's been doing this since our first MP3 player (not an iPod) and our first digital camera (floppies!), and our Handspring PDAs.

Of course, that all pretty much stopped when I purchased him an iPod. Instead of being fascinated with my iPod, he could be fascinated with HIS iPod.

This would work well, for both of us, if he didn't keep losing or breaking his iPods. I'm on iPods two and three (one for long term listening and videos, the other diskless for running), having lost my first iPod to kris' magical touch.

Kris, on the other hand, is on iPod five or six, having broken his first one, worn out the battery on his second one and my first one, and lost the fourth one, possibly the fifth one, too. Honestly, I've lost count.

Actually, kris WILL BE on iPod 5/6 once I give it to him. It arrived today. I really should have had his phone number engraved on the back. Of course, if I had done that, all the chicky-poos would be able to hit on him via his iPod and he'd NEVER see it.

The good thing about the engraving is that if whoever finds this ipod googles for his name, they'll find this site and hopefully contact me. That assumes, of course, that said finder is resourceful.

And that he loses it in the first place. I hope he doesn't: I'm becoming quite tired at replacing iPods.

Of course, since I've licked it, they're all mine.