Fixing GoDaddy's problems - the root of the problem

This is not about minimalism, or simplicity, or philosophy. This is about a basic truth:

Companies need their customers in order for them (the company) to exist.

Dave Winer wrote a good piece about this that I think everyone should read. I, like a lot of people, had a domain on GoDaddy. When GoDaddy announced its support for SOPA I moved it. Like Dave, I too experienced what can only be called fraud with GoDaddy and I am happy to be there no more.

Dave wrote:

I’ve transferred 35 domains out of GoDaddy in the last few weeks. I started the process long before the SOPA thing blew up. What finally got me to move was a $4.99 charge for a service I never wanted. I must have ordered it accidentally when reserving a domain. Something GoDaddy goes out of its way to make difficult and error-prone. We all know this. It could be a lot simpler. We all know that, I’m sure they do too.

It wasn’t so much that I had the charge, but that it was almost impossible to get them to remove it. I got in contact with their support people and they said I had to do it myself, they couldn’t do it “for” me. On what planet is a customer, expressing a very clear wish, asking you to do something for them. That’s what you get paid for. To do things on my behalf. Hopefully you make enough money. If not, you should just charge more, not do these horrible ripoffs.

Even worse, the page they told me to go to, to get rid of the feature, didn’t have the command they told me to look for. I used the search command in Firefox. The text wasn’t there. I tried looking for text like it on the page. Nope. I tried viewing the source code of the page. Nope. I think they were actually lying about this. Unbelievable. All for $4.99.

Please go read the whole article.