My solution for the Pool problem – Pool shutting down registrars effective January 10

Pool announced on the 20th of December that it is shutting down many of it’s registrars effective January 10, 2013. I had 12 affected domains that were registered in these registrars in the past few months. These registrars were used for drop catching for the Pool backordering service.

First thing to do if you have domains in these registrars is to transfer all domains that have been registered for more than 60 days to your preferred registrar. (These domains can also be either renewed at Namescout and this will automatically move them from the affected registrars to Namescout.)

After transferring the 60+ day domains I am left with 8 domains stuck in those Pool registrars. Pool was actually still using these registrars to catch domains until at least the 16th of December. That is the creation date of the newest of my 8 domains. I am sure they knew they were closing down all these registrars 4 days before their email on the 20th. They just didn’t care about their customers. Acro has already filled a BBB complaint at Canada against Pool.com.

One of these 8 domains cost me $1,233 so I am not very happy with this “situation”. So this is my solution:

All domains caught by Pool using these registrars are managed through Namescout.com. I logged into my account at Namescout and I unlocked all the domains. I then got all the auth codes and saved them. I can’t start a transfer yet as these domains are under the 60 day registration lock. But as soon as the 60 days have passed I will start a transfer from my registrar. 5 days later the domains will be at my registrar. I hope this will work because the losing registrar doesn’t need to actively ACK the transfers. Transfers get the AUTO-ACK exactly 5 days after a transfer has initiated.

There are only a couple of days left to unlock the domains and get the auth codes. After the 10th of January you will not be able to use Namescout to unlock the domains and get the Auch codes. My only fear is that ICANN might lock the domains making my solution obsolete. This is a first for me so I will test this and find out what happens.

If you do none of the above ICANN will take steps to allocate the domains in inventory to another registrar through a public bid process and will make public announcements. But this could take months and your domain will be in limbo as you will not be able to update whois, nameservers or renew it.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

14 comments

  1. Great idea, however, my concern is that either auth codes expire, or domains get auto-locked. E.g. that’s what happens at Fabulous.com. The fact that you paid $1233 for a domain via Pool shows how thoughtlessly the transition process has been designed. It’s like parking your car with your laptop visible inside, hoping to find it two months later.

  2. I had the same idea. If that does not work out then to bad and i will wait till the new registrar contacts me. I did make sure that the WHOIS data reflects MY info, since that wasn’t the case at first. Not sure how it will go down but i don’t feel like jumping through extra hoops cause the info in the WHOIS is not correct. Might wanna check that.

  3. Just for argument’s sake I will unlock the domains and get the Auth code, then wait 30 days until the 60 day window expires.

  4. I am unable to transfer them to godaddy even though I bought them 6 months back. How can they blatantly screw us?

  5. If anyone is having any issues now or has issues accessing their domains after the transfer to the new registrar, I remain at everyone’s disposal to fix any such issues.

    @krishna, contact me and I will help (richard@pool.com)

  6. Konstantinos, I believe the registrars will contineu to provide services other than registrations or renewals up until the time the bulk transfer occurs.

  7. Konstantinos i was able to move out 3 of the domain names dropcatched by pool today (11-jan).
    The only one in limbo is now a .net that i expect to move out tomorrow without any hassles.

    So your idea seems to work

  8. latest update: i was able to start the transfer for the .net also.
    Shame those registrars did not implement the irtp-b effective june 2012. If they had done that all transfers would have been completed by now. I couldn’t be bothered to contact them and agree to the transfer out, so i will wait for the 5 day transfer period and if they do not cancel the transfer the domains should be transfered out.

    • This method is optional. Moniker will not release any domains before the 5 day transfer period is over.
      Also I don’t think they can cancel the transfer even if they wanted, so your transfers should complete.
      I just made a new post about Pool’s domains being moved to NamesBeyond in the next 24 hours.

  9. actually it is not optional , There has been a PDP and IRT-B is a requirement, not optional 😉
    I dunno how Moniker deals it with though, but sending out a FOA to agree with the transfer out to the registered domain holder should have been implemented.

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