Robert L Mathews wrote:
Well, yes, the customer should lose the service. That's what "transfer" means: losing all services from the old registrar.
To our users, until we edicate them otherwise, they think that "transfer" means losing registration services. It's surprising to them that they lose web hosting or DNS service -- after all, they paid for a year's registration, so the hosting should continue till the year's up, they reason.
Hopefully the customer has done some research, knows what they're losing, and has made sure that the new company provides the same or better for each service that they need.
You're clapping for Tinkerbelle. It's your responsibility to tell them what it means -- not which specific services you don't offer, but which ones are likely to be interrupted no matter who the losing registrar is.
Do you allwo them to upload their content, set up their mailboxes, etc. *before* doing the transfer to ensure continued operation? do you allow them to test their content using one of your URLs before executing the transfer?
That way madness lies. Even a generic "you may lose services" is bad, because inevitably the customer will ask "well, hold on a second -- exactly what will I lose?", which is a question that's impossible for the gaining registrar to answer.
You should give the worst-case scenario: that, at the moment of transfer, mail, web content, lists, etc. may stop worknig until they put their content up at your site.
The suggestion that "the customer should remove all services before transferring to indicate that they know what they're losing" is also problematic, because it would lead to downtime of services in cases where the transfer would otherwise be seamless because the new registrar provides the same service after the transfer.
See above as to service continuity.
Anyway, all this is a bit irrelevant to the discussion at hand. In the cases I'm concerned about, the person who registered the domain name with GoDaddy knows exactly what services he or she is losing and gaining and wants to transfer it anyway, without being forced to jump through various GoDaddy-specific hoops beforehand.
But apparently they're unaware that (a) they're not the actual registrant and (b) they signed an agreement about discontinuing proxy before transfer. Not so "knows what they're losing," are they?
If GoDaddy wants to lock all private registration domain names against transfers, so that gaining registrars can handle the failure as part of their normal "locked domains can't be transferred" business logic, that's fine (extremely annoying, but fine). What I object to is "every registrar has a different extra procedure that needs to be followed to allow transfers". When a customer asks me "how do I transfer a domain name to you?", I need to be able to check that it isn't locked, that it's been registered for > 60 days, and that the customer can read messages sent to the admin contact address, and say "you're all set". Not "well, you'll have to ask your current company what you have to do so that they'll allow it...", which is EXACTLY what the transfer policy was designed to put a stop to.
The changes to the existing policy were made to make it easier for your customers, not to make it easier for you. Your own needs are pretty much irrelevant. Besides, as we've established, Domains by Proxy is the registrant, and has every right to reject the transfer.
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