I tried to transfer my domain name a couple weeks ago, from Enom (via my old web host Addaction), to Namecheap.
After putting in my request, Namecheap sent the usual notification emails and told me to get an ‘EPP’ code. Addaction sent the code to me without making things too difficult, which I must give them credit for. I entered the code and was told that things were in progress. I thought all was well and decided to give it a few more days for the transfer to be completed.
Until I came back from my holiday, checked my Gmail an hour ago and discovered that Namecheap had sent me an email just 2 hours before, telling me that my transfer request had been cancelled!!!
This was apparently because I had not responded to a ‘verification email’. Thinking that my Gmail spam blocker had filtered that email out, I did a search but couldn’t find any recent emails from ‘Namecheap’. I logged into the Namecheap website to view my message inbox, but there were no new messages – apart from the same email telling me that my transfer request had been cancelled. The previous message was one requesting for my EPP code, 1-2 weeks ago. There was nothing else, in between.
What’s alarming is that my domain name’s going to expire in a few days’ time. I just tried to re-request for the domain name transfer to Namecheap, but was told that as my domain was going to expire in less than 7 days, it cannot be transferred anymore. WTF! I did request to transfer my domain name with weeks to spare. I sent them all the info they required, and now my request has been cancelled because I didn’t respond to a nonexistent verification email??
I sent Namecheap an email explaining my situation. I hope they do something about it. If not, I have no choice but to renew my domain at a higher price, back with Enom.
If you aren’t able to access this blog from Feb 26, you can safely assume it’s a problem with my domain renewal. As far as I can help it, I’m going to post updates about this boo-boo on my blog, so you know what to be careful of if you ever want to transfer your domain name.
[Update 1: Namecheap has replied very promptly to my email, assuring me that while I can no longer request for a transfer via their website, they can still attempt a manual transfer. I have thanked them for their quick response and confirmed that I still want to attempt this transfer before my domain expires.
As for the missing verification email, it was apparently sent to an ‘Admin contact’. I’m trying to find out what this mysterious email address is. I definitely asked my old/current registrar to update my email address records a long time ago, so am wondering why it wasn’t done thoroughly. ]
Comments
When I changed host from Brinkster to Bluehost I had a similar problem where brinkster didnt seem to want to let me go and wouldnt transfer my domain automatically.
I had to do it manually and after numerous support im’s, I finally got the information I needed to transfer.
Unfortunately for me, from what I saw, the status of the domain was already expired. But bluehost was professional about it, they said that even though the domain was expired, bluehost assured me that the name will be given 30 days grace.
After a week, I still had my domain and on a better host!
I think you’ll be fine 🙂
Anything else other than vantan.org just wouldn’t be the same.
I have used namecheap, their interface looks good and is more than what I need. Apparently, namecheap is related to enom, looking at the google results for their names!
My wife and I went thru some horrible nightmares with Godaddy.com then. Apparently they didnt send any emails to us that the site is expiring but good thing that we discovered it earlier and when we tried to renew it, we discovered that the domain was not 100% transferred from another service provider to them.
But yet GoDaddy.com charged us a year ago for the transfer. In the end, have to go back to the previous service provider to find out what had happened. Lotsa ding dong here and there and in the end, gonna go back to the first service provider to renew. And it really makes us wonder, then how in the world did GoDaddy.com comes in in the first place?
Good thing that the sales at her online store was not badly affected.
Paddy, your comment got me curious about godaddy, and I found their CEO’s blog in the process (it’s among top 10 google hits for godaddy). It might give you some insight about how godaddy evolved to what it is today. I think it would be of interest from an entrepreneurial standpoint.
I looked at my emails with namecheap, there’s not many of them, and a reminder email to renew my domain name is one of them.
Can still remember couple of years back when some other .com registrar snail-mailed reminders from the States! (the era when .coms were US$35/yr)
My business domain is hosted by NameCheap. I created a new website last month and tried to contact NameCheap to have them point my domain to my webhost’s IP address. They never responded to multiple voicemails that I left them. My webhost finally helped me get the domain pointed to the webhost. Now, as of yesterday, my email forwarding by NameCheap is down. So for two days my business email has gone into the black hole. No response from NameCheap!!