I understand the stress you are having.
An important aspect of domaining is acquisition. It’s important that when we buy a domain, we are sure we can actually use it. Often time a domain is listed for sale in many marketplaces. For example, it could be listed on Afternic and then sold here. It’s important, therefore, that there is some verification process.
No system is perfect. Even though Sedo validates a domain through DNS record, a domain still can be sold after its been sold already. This could happen because the DNS text record would remain intact after transfer.
I don’t know if Afternic validate a domain. I know Epik doesn’t, and I do complain about it.
GoDaddy owns Afternic, so it’s in a unique situation that it knows if a domain changes hand, either by auth code or push.
As a seller, it is important that we treat the buyer’s interest as our priority. That means providing the best purchasing experience with smooth transaction. That also means the seller makes compromises.
If we do that, we maintain a good reputation of the industry, and that drives sale.
To illustrate what I mean, let’s say I sell you a domain that you want to resell. I neglect to remove it from my marketplace and now it’s sold again. Now I could not deliver the domain and now the buyer has bad experience. The buyer could the best end user there is, but he may get cold feet and you lost a sale.
Now let’s say I sell a domain to an end user this time. And the domain is sold again. I could not deliver. Now suppose you own the domain that’s the second buyer’s second option. Will the buyer buy from you now he doesn’t trust the system?
To protect the reputation of the domain market, what GoDaddy did is correct. You may wonder why GoDaddy didn’t offer you a chance to clarify it. But GoDaddy couldn’t and shouldn’t. GoDaddy should trust the new owner, not the previous owner. It is up to you, the new owner, to re-list the domain.
Domainers should also understand that, when switching registra, a domain could be placed on 60 day lock. That means the domain can only be pushed but not transferred for 60 days, and that could lead to bad customer experience.
Again, no system is perfect. It’s not easy validating each domain on Sedo as DNS change can be a painful process. It would take a long while until different registra work together to figure out a way to validate ownership despite WHOIS privacy (and that’s assuming they want to work together), domainers have to prepare to work with the inconvenience of this imperfect system.