Thank you for inquiring about my problem. Here is the story.

About a year ago I ordered two SSL certificates from Godaddy. The certs were for a company I no longer work for. I must have used my own credit card to pay for it.

A few days ago I get a call from my credit-card company about possibly fraudulent activity on that card. They ask whether I spent $99 at Godaddy on April 1. No, I definitely haven't. I ask them not to cancel the card just yet while I investigate.

I check my old company's website. Their SSL certs don't expire until May 1. I'm thinking my card has been stolen.

I comb through mail and find an order receipt from GD from April 1. I don't recall asking them to auto-renew, though as you know GD tries VERY hard to conceal those kinds of choices in the checkout process, and they ALWAYS pick the default option most advantageous for themselves (e.g., buying 2 years for a domain).

I call GD and get a male CSR. I give him my customer number and order number and explain the problem. He says he needs to make sure my old company's certs are working, and that he can't cancel the order because "their site would stop working." I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's just repeating a lie written up as a CSR script. I explain that (a) the old certs aren't expired yet, and (b) no, GD definitely can't cause a site to stop working by canceling an order for an unissued SSL certificate; the web just doesn't work that way. He presses on and says I'm wrong (so he's actually the one doing the lying now). I recognize we're at an impasse, and I'm not about to tell him to open up the Wikipedia entry on SSL. I say just cancel the order. He then says GD can't do it and that I need to log into the account myself and cancel it. I hang up. Not only is this guy going to lie to my face about how SSL works, but he's going to lie about whether GD can fix their own purchasing process.

I have since gotten in touch with my old company. Their accounting department got involved and spent time on the phone with GD. They issued refund receipt number 413802860. They're annoyed enough with GD and how difficult they made this simple process that they're planning on switching to Namecheap for their 2012 certificates. They are fully aware of the SOPA mess, and they're a bit embarrassed that they're still doing this tiny bit of remaining business with GD.

I have called back my credit-card company. I've explained the situation. They are removing the security hold on my account. They advised me to call them IMMEDIATELY if this charge isn't quickly removed.

Oh, and by the way, this explains why my personal card was unusable from April 2-3. I thought it was some weird glitch with the card. It was a real inconvenience; I had to use a backup card. Now that I know it's all GD's evil UI driven by its business practices, and I can't believe how hard you make it for ME and other people at my old company to fix your OWN mistakes. I wince when I use the word "mistake" because you're doing it on purpose.