I've been burned by both Namecheap and GoDaddy, along with losing a few domains in the infamous registerfly scam in the early or mid 00s. Namecheap may have been simple cock up, rather than systemic pattern of intentionally fucking over every customer. Avoid GoDaddy at all costs.
I consider GoDaddy to be one of the worst companies in existence, as bad as anyone else you can think of, as free of corruption as current ICANN and as fraudulent as registerfly. Clients looking at available domains have found them immediately registered and squatted at {hundreds}% markup. Their incompetence lost me a few domains, and several freelance clients reported similar -- all of whom were paying vastly over the odds for what they were getting. GoDaddy make Gandi look an exemplar of ideal behaviour for behaving as people are reporting in this HN post.
Their previous CEO had domain squatting and a complete lack of personal ethics as sidelines. That's quite apart from their horrific upsells making a simply renewal a 22 page nightmare of deeply dark patterned "no" clicks against atrocious value "offers".
