Namecheap suspects GoDaddy is throttling domain transfers

Today is Move Your Domain Day and Namecheap customers are experiencing issues or delays in transferring domains from GoDaddy over to Namecheap.

As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, Namecheap suspects that GoDaddy is thwarting/throttling efforts to transfer domains away from them.

I have to say that this doesn’t come as a surprise to me. I wrote an article about how GoDaddy is violating ICANN WHOIS rules and no one cared. Now more and more domain name owners and other registrars are realizing the problem.

GoDaddy has been blocking whois access at Port 43. Now it seems that their blocking is causing problems in transferring domains away from GoDaddy. This is probably why the blocking started in the first place, and not what GoDaddy claims.

In preparation for today, Namecheap had previously whitelisted IPs with GoDaddy so there would be no excuse for this poor business practice. GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process.

I will say it once again. GoDaddy is clearly violating the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RRA) and specifically section 3.1.1.

Will ICANN do something about this or are they just busy spending our money?

Another big problem is that a few people in the domain name industry are defending GoDaddy in this issue. Let’s see what they will say when they want to transfer out of GoDaddy. I have seen some strange comments from people that are supposed to know better. I see most people are not talking while domain name registrants are having more issues every day by large domain name companies and ICANN(T).

Here is the complete announcement from Namecheap today:

Today is Move Your Domain Day, our annual tradition enabling our customers to support EFF in their fight for Internet freedom by transferring their domain to Namecheap.

We wanted to give our customers a quick update on the status of domain transfers associated with one of our competitors, GoDaddy.

Firstly, we’re very sorry that some of you have experienced issues or delays in transferring domains from GoDaddy over to us.

As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that GoDaddy is thwarting/throttling efforts to transfer domains away from them. Whether automated or not, this is unacceptable. In preparation for today, we had previously whitelisted IPs with GoDaddy so there would be no excuse for this poor business practice.

Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This is not the first time something like this has happened.

First and foremost this practice is against ICANN rules and regulations, secondly, we believe it violates “unfair competition” laws.

Solving the problem

GoDaddy’s action is completely unacceptable, and we are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

We are also asking customers to reach out to GoDaddy and engage with them to let them know that blocking customer authorized transfers is not the right way to serve their customers’ clear intentions.

Don’t worry – each and every transfer request will be processed manually by our team. Every request will go through. We won’t rest until everyone who wants to join the Namecheap family can do so!