GoDaddy Surprises Customers with Retroactive Refund
“Dear (Client Name)
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN®) recently agreed to reduce their Registrar Transaction Fee from $.25 to $.22. What does this mean for you?
Good news. You have been credited $.03/yr for each domain name you registered or renewed dating back to July 1, 2006* — $.03 has been placed into your Go Daddy® account with this customer number: (Account Number)
Your in-store credit will be applied to your purchases at GoDaddy.com® until it's gone or for up to 12 months, whichever comes sooner. If you have any questions, please contact a customer service representative at 480-505-8877.
As always, thank you for being a Go Daddy customer.
Sincerely,
Bob Parsons
CEO and Founder
GoDaddy.com
If you’ve received an email similar to this, a few thoughts probably crossed your mind. First and foremost, you probably thought, “Sweet! A refund!” Next, you thought, “I don’t remember hearing about a refund.” Last, you may have asked yourself, “Wait, why is this refund retroactive for almost a full year?”
The answer is quite simple: bureaucracy.
ICANN adopted their fiscal year 2006 Annual Budget on June 30, 2006. In this budget, the registration fee is 25 cents. The ICANN Board of Directors approved this budget. However, the registration fee schedule had yet to be approved by the registrars. Before the fee schedule was sent to the registrars for approval, ICANN changed the fee to 22 cents.
Notice of this fee reduction was sent to registrars on March 14, 2007. ICANN had yet to invoice any registrars for registrations from July 1, 2006 forward. Of course, registrars such as GoDaddy had been collecting registration fees based upon the published ICANN 2006 Annual Budget. So, now that the fees have been finalized at 22 cents, GoDaddy is crediting the 3 cent per domain difference back into customers accounts.
And that, in a nutshell is why GoDaddy customers are getting money back, 3 cents at a time. Don’t spend it all in one place. 
Whether other registrars will follow suit is unclear. ICANN advised all registrars that did charge their customers 25 cents based on the ICANN's 2006 Annual Budget to check back with their (the registrars') own legal departments to see if they are legally obligated to pass on the refund to end users.
While 3 cents per domain may not be an "exciting" amount, I feel that GoDaddy should be applauded for "doing the right thing" here –given the number of domains they registered, they could easily have pocketed a nice windfall…