I have had a domain automatically moved out of my registrar account that was NOT fast-transfer enabled by me. I was not asked to authorize the transfer in any form. The domain just vanished from my registrar account. This is after I had worked with Afternic support on a manual transfer that had been unsuccessful until that point.
What Afternic support did next, without even informing me or asking me if it was okay, was to contact the registrar directly, and get the registrar to simply take the domain out of my account. The registrar did also not ask me whether I had actually sold the domain, or whether I wanted to accept the transfer, they just gave it directly to Afternic.
The fact that I, as the domain owner, never opted in to fast transfer, and never approved any form of ownership transfer, and then had the domain just taken right out of my account by afternic, is extremely problematic.
What if I had sold a domain I didn’t own? And the reason the manual transfer had not been able to proceed was that I didn’t own it? That should have been a red flag for Afternic. 3 failed manual transfer attempts is not something that should give you the confidence to move ahead and simply take possession of the domain after the seller (me) had been unable to provide it by himself.
But instead of making sure I owned the domain and get it moved in a legitimate way, Afternic support just somehow got the registrar to pull the sold domain right out of its registrar account, without any form of communication with or authorization by me.
I actually spent days trying to retrieve this domain as this seemed like theft to me, as I had no idea Afternic is able to do this kind of thing, and the registrar who facilitated this was of no help either (they just complied with Afternic’s request of taking the domain, and then when I asked them why they my domain, that was not fast-transfer enabled, move out of my account without my authorization and without even checking whether I'm actually the seller of this domain, they pretty much just said it’s not their problem and that I got to work it out with Afternic by myself... moving all domains away from them at the moment...). Then finally, after several days, Afternic support briskly told me that they had simply taken the domain out of my account by themselves with the help of the registrar (who did not ask me, the domain owner, whether this was acceptable). My concerned follow up questions with Afternic regarding this were, as they nearly always are, ignored.
@Joe Styler - Can you please explain how it is possible that Afternic can just take non-fast-transfer-enabled standard network domains right out of domain owner’s accounts without any kind of ownership verification, authorization, and approval on the part of the owner?