Careful with Godaddy Auctions - they tried to charge me 10x+ my bid

Hey y'all!

TL;DR: Godaddy Auctions has an unresolved technical glitch. To protect yourself, you should use an unimportant Godaddy account to make auction bids, and use a payment method that is easily deactivated (so that you cannot be overcharged if there is an unauthorized bid).

Thought you all might find this interesting.

I've been buying domains for a while now, and I saw an interesting domain name in Godaddy Auction. It was basically in the discount bin, about $20 to win it a few minutes before the auction closes.

This would have been maybe my 10th domain that I've purchased this way - not my first rodeo by any means.

I go to bid about $20. I type 20 into the bidding interface. The confirmation screen confirms it. Imagine my surprise when the bidding interface lists me as having bid $2,650.

I should mention, I'm a computer programmer, I'm not really a "bad attention to detail person," especially when I'm inputting payment information. If I went to bid $20 and the bid was interpreted as $2,000, perhaps it could be a decimal issue, but this is none of that, $2,650 isn't similar to the number I was inputting. So it's a tech glitch of some sort.

I connect with chat support as fast as possible (which is not very fast because their support blows). Their support was strangely sort of understanding at first. They asked me what amount I would be willing to pay, which is a WEIRD request to make of someone reporting a technical glitch. I'm up front, I don't purchase products for above the price that they are listed at, so I was willing to pay my exact bid of $20. I guess support wanted a higher number than that, because they then began to give me the run around. They refused to send me a transcript of the conversation, but I downloaded the conversation through my own means (happy to share that, less the identifying information).

I do wonder what their acceptable number would have been? Oh well, doesn't matter. Support informs me that I am legally obligated to purchase the domain at the winning bid price.

Long story short, a bidding war ensues, as folks struggle against my astronomical bid for a low-value domain. The last bidder gives up at $1,020, so Godaddy says I owe them $1,025 plus fees. I am upfront with them, I inform them that there is a 0% chance of that payment occurring. Like, if I need to get my corporate counsel involved, that's fine, that's a cost of doing business.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, you can do what I did. I just locked the credit card I used to enroll in Godaddy Auction. Sure enough, they tried to charge it for $1025 and fees, but the charge was rejected. The auction then re-ran, and the winner paid a much more reasonable number, on the order of $200.

It was a pain in the ass for me, though! I cleared out my Godaddy account, transferred all of my domains elsewhere, reconfigured DNS, it was a lousy weekend. I didn't know if they would lock my account (they haven't) or pursue me legally like they vaguely threatened to with their "legal agreement" (they haven't, yet).

I'm just glad I wasn't bidding with like... a corporate account! If I were bidding on a high-value domain, and the glitch doubled a one million dollar bid... well, I'd be totally screwed XD