

Update on GoDaddy Transfer Issues - PStamatiou
http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-transfer-update/

======
jarin
I also ran into a problem with GoDaddy when trying to transfer a domain name
that was protected by Domains by Proxy. I first got a notification that I
needed to enter into a new agreement, so I did. Then I got a notification that
I needed to cancel my private registration, so I did. Then I got this:

    
    
        "The transfer of MYDOMAIN.ME from Go Daddy to another 
        registrar could not be completed for the following
        reason(s):
    
        Express written objection to the transfer from the 
        Transfer Contact. (e.g. - email, fax, paper document or
        other processes by which the Transfer Contact has
        expressly and voluntarily objected through opt-in
        means)."
    

So it looks like they're auto-rejecting domain transfers if you're using
Domains by Proxy?

~~~
gregholmberg
I transferred two domains away from GoDaddy that were protected by Domains by
Proxy. They did require that the WHOIS guard be dropped, even though both
registrars offered a WHOIS-protecting service.

It did feel like GoDaddy was moving the goalposts.

Since I had no deadline and no feeling of urgency, I just allowed the entire
process to play out naturally. There were periods when I was busier elsewhere
and didn't press the issue for a month or two at a time, but I spent the
better part of sixteen months getting both transfers completed.

Update: I bought a standard membership to DomainTools to see if the info ever
leaked. It looks like the patient approach paid off, and that the exposed
WHOIS info was not crawled during the transfers. Taking the time to make sure
both ends of the transfer were prepared was worth the effort, but I think it's
probably luck that kept the info from being picked up.

~~~
soult
Domaintools may be the best-known whois database, but it isn't the only one
and not all of them are as easy to check against.

------
samlev
Devil's advocate here: The idea that godaddy appears to be intentionally
stalling transfers is pure speculation. Not saying that they're incapable of
doing it, but that whole "don't attribute to malice" thing.

Let's not turn this into another ugly internet lynch-mob. Just move your
domains, and be done with it. Namecheap (and others) look like they're more
than happy to help out all their new customers.

~~~
bountie
What's the motive to make this process painful? Would people really say Oh
screw it, I'll just stay with GoDAddy? Ive never transferred a domain before
so I don't know what the process or delay is normally like

~~~
tgrass
This is standard practice to increase the friction of unsubscribing. How many
clicks does it take you to logout of Facebook or Google...and see if your
grandmother could even figure out how.

~~~
djeikyb
Two clicks. Google is easy: click your name, click sign out. Facebook is
slightly harder: click the menu triangle in the upper right hand corner, click
sign out.

~~~
jey
I think he meant to say "close your account" rather than "log out".

~~~
djeikyb
Oh. That makes sense. My bullshit filter kicked in before I finished
interpreting the post as a whole.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Yup, same issue here. Transfer has been hanging over 24 hours now. Edit:
Transfer in Process - Acquiring Current Whois for Transfer Verification

~~~
msumpter
I wonder if GoDaddy's WHOIS server is just applying rate limiting. I suspect
their transfers are spiking after the SOPA aftermath. Namecheap's servers
might have been sending a fairly consistent level of WHOIS queries that would
not be anomalous but after the coupon and lots of press about Namecheap that
threshold might have been exceeded several times over.

Now GoDaddy should have cleared up the WHOIS throttles by now. But I can
understand there being a temporary issue with mass transfers like this.

------
JS_startup
Some definitive, unbiased proof of this needs to be seen before I can join the
lynch mob. I have no doubt that GoDaddy is desperate and/or inept enough to do
something like this but I also can't take their competitor's word for it.

~~~
seanp2k2
Same. I hate hate hate GoDaddy, but Namecheap assuming malice in this case
might blow up in their faces, and honesty, just for speculating (with a pretty
sure-sounding tone) that GoDaddy is doing this on purpose, I hope it DOES blow
up in their faces. This is really just dirty business.

Move to name.com instead because they don't practice this type of distasteful
PR.

~~~
ohashi
What if they are telling the truth?

~~~
seanp2k2
Then that sucks for GoDaddy, but what I'm getting at is that they should make
a call to GoDaddy engineering and say "Hey, what's up with this, are we being
throttled or something?". The risk/benefit for this type of thing just doesn't
work in favor of Namecheap. Posting what they did, if GoDaddy is indeed
dragging their feet on purpose, they'll be able to say "we told you so!" which
isn't worth much. If GoDaddy is NOT intentionally delaying this and GoDaddy
comes out against this, Namecheap gets a lot of bad PR, and rightly so.

If they just said "we're having issues with transfers in from GoDaddy right
now, we've contacted them about the issue and are waiting to hear back, and
we'll update you with any of their responses and/or progress on the matter",
I'd be much more impressed. It seems that they're trying to kick GoDaddy while
they're down instead of working to actually resolve the issue for their
clients.

~~~
commandar
Conversely, the mobs are already upset about bad behavior on GoDaddy's part.
If Namecheap is right, this story gets even bigger and makes things even worse
for GoDaddy.

If they're wrong, well, everyone is pissed at GoDaddy anyway, so this angle
fades quietly from view.

I don't see the PR downside for Namecheap here.

------
colmmacc
Just to add data to the discussion;

I kicked off migration of my only 3 GoDaddy domains to namecheap last night.
One .net, one .com and one .cc domain. None had any kind of whois protection
or anonymisation.

The .net and .com migrations went very quickly and smoothly. Within two hours
I had the confirmation e-mails from both namecheap and GoDaddy, and within 4
hours the migration was complete.

The .cc domain took a little longer, as when I started the move with namecheap
it didn't seem to want an EPP code for a .cc domain, but then later changed
its mind and asked me to enter one. I entered the code within 2 hours, and 8
hours later the migration was complete.

GoDaddy's goodbye was actually pretty professional;

    
    
      ===================================================================
       SORRY TO SEE YOU GO. WE'LL ALWAYS WELCOME YOU BACK.
      ===================================================================
    
      Dear Colm MacCarthaigh,
    
      We're sorry you transferred your domain name(s) away from GoDaddy.com. 
      We are committed to providing quality services and products and hope
      that we met your needs.
    
      If you feel your transfer was in error, or if you have changed your 
      mind, please contact our 24/7 sales department at (480) 505-8877. 
      They'll assist you in transferring your domain name(s) back to us.* 
      Keep in mind that we continue to offer low prices and $7.49 transfer 
      rates on some domains.
    
      Sincerely,
      Go Daddy
    
      P.S. Visit GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com/default.aspx?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=gdbba1365) 
      and SAVE 15%* off your order of $50 or more. Just use source code
      gdbba1365 when you check out to get your special savings. Start 
      shopping now at GoDaddy.com or order by phone at (480) 505-8821.
    
    
      *Please note that ICANN's Transfer Policy may prevent you from 
      transferring your domain name within 60-days of a transfer.
    
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
      *Not applicable to ICANN fees, taxes, shipping and   handling, sale 
      priced domains and transfers, bulk domains   and transfers, premium
      domains, Sunrise/Landrush domain   registrations and pre-registrations,
      memberships or   maintenance plans, additional disk space and bandwidth
      renewals, additional email addresses, Search Engine Visibility
      advertising budget, Managed Hosting, custom page layouts, brand identity
      services, Go Daddy branded   merchandise or gift cards. Discount
      reflected in your   shopping cart - cannot be used in conjunction
      with any other offer, discount or promotion, or in connection with
      special partnership discount programs. After the initial purchase term,
      discounted products purchased with special offer discounts will renew 
      at the then-current renewal list price.
    
      Copyright (C) 2011 Go Daddy All rights reserved.

------
spauka
GoDaddy has responded to the allegations from namecheap at TechChrunch, saying
that the blocks were part of standard practice to limit the volume of Whois
queries from a single IP, which is apparently common practice, unless the
registrar is notified that there may be a large number of queries. [1]

If this is indeed true, then it seems namecheap are trying to score cheap PR
points, although they have responded saying they attempted to reach out to
GoDaddy.[2]

I'm inclined to believe that namecheap did try to reach them, although I'm not
sure that they are above trying to slam more bad press onto GoDaddy....

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/26/godaddy-responds-to-
nameche...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/26/godaddy-responds-to-namecheap-
accusations-removes-normal-rate-limiting-block/)

[2] [http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-
trans...](http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-transfer-
update/#comment-1709)

------
iSloth
Well that explains why my transfer is taking so long...

------
freejack
NC is an enom reseller, so I'd guess that all of enom would be affected as
well. Nothing on the eNom status page, so not sure...
<http://www.enom.com/registrynews.asp>

~~~
gregholmberg
Does eNom own NameCheap?

    
    
      http://davezan.com/does-enom-own-namecheap.html
    
    

No, it seems they don't, but the article provides details on a longstanding
partnership.

------
j_camarena
I use godaddy to buy .com.mx and .mx domains .. PLEASE, start selling this
domains.

I really hate to give money to godaddy .. i feel like a dollar for them is a
dollar for killing-elephants-for-joy safari.

------
overshard
I finally was able to get my domains transferred to Namecheap today. It's one
of those "I never liked GoDaddy anyways" kind of things and the entire SOPA
ordeal finally pushed me to it.

------
smcnally
If the (alleged) issue is that GoDaddy is throttling WHOIS lookups, does using
[<http://help.godaddy.com/article/3681](GoDaddys> Export Lists tool) and
including WHOIS info help? Or are the "real-time" lookups required by a new
registrar?

------
Aloisius
I moved all my domains from GoDaddy and one of them had trouble doing the
whois information. I did it myself and it in fact did look different from my
others. It could have just been the difference between a .org and a .com, but
I entered in the epp auth code with the transfers and it helped it along.

------
johnpowell
I just got the e-mail from GoDaddy to ask if I wanted to allow or decline the
transfer. I'm glad that got resolved. That was my one to test that I was doing
things correctly before I moved about 20 other domains off GoDaddy.

------
aaronpk
Thanks. I noticed this too.

------
pbreit
This doesn't strike me as one of the classier communications. Does it resonate
well with other people?

------
laironald
I bet namecheap's investors are smiling right about now.

------
smackfu
I wouldn't exactly be calling my employees in over Christmas to make it easier
for customers to leave.

------
g3orge
did you know that EA games and Sony also support SOPA?

~~~
soult
Are you really surprised? Both EA and Sony are known for installing rootkits
on their customer's computers.

------
compay
A bunch of my transfers appear to have been delayed because Namecheap
themselves have not generated the initial authorization email to begin the
tranfer process. The ones for which they did generate the email (about 1/4 of
my transfers) went through fine with no delays from Godaddy. Not sure what's
going on (I sent an email to support about 4 hours ago but have no response
yet), but so far I'm a little underwhelmed by their service.

~~~
PStamatiou
That authorization email is affected by what's discussed in this blog post --
they can't send it until they get all the domain info.

~~~
spolsky
If I were a registrar, I would have rate-limiters on domain info downloads to
prevent harvesting by spammers. And those rate-limiters would be set so as not
to interfere with normal demand, but might be tripped if, say, everyone tried
to transfer out their domains all at once.

Just sayin.' Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by
reasonable engineering heuristics...

~~~
seanp2k2
Hey Namecheap, since I know you're on here (Anthony?): did you try contacting
some engineering folk at GoDaddy to try to resolve this delay for your
clients? I hope you already have, and that they told you to sit on it, given
the tone of your last blog post.

If you're just slinging non-verified mud at a competitor, kicking them when
they're down instead of focusing all your effort on actually fixing this, how
are you better than GoDaddy and why would a potential new client choose you
over them if you're both shady?

~~~
eropple
Amusing that you'd hope that GoDaddy would continue screwing their (soon to be
former) customers because they don't like that a competitor thinks they're
playing dirty pool.

Unsurprising, but amusing nevertheless.

~~~
seanp2k2
....what? My point was that it seems like Namecheap is just making efforts to
blame GoDaddy instead of efforts to actually fix the problem. I hope GoDaddy
dies in a fire. I hope everyone gets away from them ASAP and I hope they get
out of the domain business after that (it'd be great to at least see ICANN
call them out on it and fine them or something.)

As I see it, the more GoDaddy fights and does stupid things, the more it
increases the Streisand effect and the more people will become aware of how
awful they are.

~~~
eropple
Publicly lighting a fire under GoDaddy's rear is probably the most effective
way to make them act right.

