Website Held Hostage by GoDaddy

All,

A friend has, for the past 15 months, hosted his website with
Godaddy through one of their affiliates/partners.

Servers belonged to Godaddy yet billing and contracts were with the
affiliate/partner.

Friend was unhappy with the affiliate/partner and wanted to migrate from
the affiliate to Godaddy themselves. Friend paid the affiliate to back-up the
site and forwad a copy.

When the new hosting account was set up, affiliate was to cancel the hosting on his end and Friend would point the domain to the new godaddy
servers/account.

Affiliate canceled hosting, Godaddy set up new hosting....but affiliate will
not/cannot provide a copy of the website files....and godaddy refuses to
provide Friend with a backup from the affiliates server without a court-
order.

Friend is the owner of the URL, the website copy and is listed as the contact of record on WHOIS.

Any alternative, other than legal action, that would "help" godaddy provide a
copy of all files?

Thanks -

 

My understanding is that GoDaddy handles all billing and contact with their reseller's clients. Their resellers are essentially affiliates with no customer contact.

Perhaps the hosting was with someone else who is renting a server from GoDaddy. In that case the host is not an official reseller (just some guy renting a Godaddy server) & GoDaddy can't get involved in providing files to third parties (you). What is the host's name?

 

While one may believe the website is "held hostage" by Go Daddy, it does not
necessarily mean it's true. Especially if certain facts might be left out.

If your friend was never listed anywhere on the original hosting, Go Daddy has
no obligations to your friend. And I doubt that spreading this online would do
any good as it tends to "distort" the "truth" behind what happened.

 

ouch that sounds bad
strange how godaddy wants to do that and waste more and more of there time and resources just to give a backup out..

 

Well why didn't you download all the files and databases yourself in the first place. I'm pretty surprised that you didn't do that. I don't know what you can do.

Legal actions might be your only option. Good luck. Btw, legal actions might cost you more than the site is worth. If you don't make a lot from the site (ie: ads) or if its not important then don't take legal actions. See what I mean?

Btw, I think I could get the files for you. PM me your site's link.

 

have you checked archive.org to see if your friend can recover files? old cache's?

sounds like poor planning for a move- lesson learned. good luck!

 

While giving the OP's friend their backup is a relatively simple thing to do, how
does one go about verifying their claims to begin with? Surely you don't want
your provider to give anything about you to a third party, do you?

 

Tobycoke,

The company in question is http://www.campbellhosting.com

Thanks for responding.

 

th13rteen,

My friend tried to do that - actually it was the first thing he tried. Reseller would not provide login info. And your right, legal action is probably not an option. I'll PM you shortly.

Thanks...

 

Essociate,

Thanks - I'll check with archive.org. Appreciate the heads-up.

 

Godaddy is one of the WORST hosting companies you can deal with. I used them for about 6 months. After my server was hacked several times and after godaddy refused to help, I moved to another hosting company.

Its your buddies responsibility to make sure he has his OWN backups of his site. Who built the site for him? Do they have a back up? What kind of site was it? Was it a simple HTML / PHP page or database driven? It was his site, he needs to make sure he has a backup. It is not anyone elses responsibility to back his site up.

The next thing to do is to go to webhostingtalk.com and post a well written review about campbellhosting and godaddy. That way other people can avoid those companies. Godaddy has so many bad reviews I wonder how they stay in business? Some of those hosting companies are members at webhostingtalk.com. After I posted a blistering review of one of my hosting providers, they contacted me and fixed the problems. I then removed the bad review. But the problem with godaddy - they do NOT care.

If the site was a small one, count it as a lesson learned and move on. If the site was a forum with 100,000 post, yea I would be throwing a fit. But then again, I backup my own site.

Your buddy is partially to blame. He should have backed up his own site, or had a friend like you do it for him. So this situation is not 100% godaddies fault. We all know to back our sites up. I say this is 99% your buddies fault for not taking care of his business. That sounds harsh, but its the truth. In other words - back your **** UP!!!!!