Name.com no longer allowing users to approve domain transfers - must now submit ticket

Since around late January/early February, @name.com decided, without explanation, to no longer allow users to expedite domains themselves, instead of letting the domain transfer by itself during a five day course. Users must now submit a ticket requesting to expedite a domain which could take as little as 1-2 hours to get processed, but may also take upwards of 12 hours sometimes.

One possible explanation for cancelling this feature could be that some newbies were messing up the process and, perhaps for security reasons, Name.com decided to cancel that feature, at least for now. The funny thing is that Name.com came up with the option to expedite a domain only towards the end of 2019/beginning of 2020, possibly after numerous requests from customers because for most registrars this was a no brainer to allow for customer convenience.

The frustration is that some domainers to whom I sell domains will ask me to approve the transfer if they haven't received it after a while, assuming that Name.com allows fast transfers and not knowing that I had to submit a ticket. The buyer/domainer must therefore be patient.

Either Name.com doesn't mind having a backlog of tickets, or they just hope that most domainers won't know that they can submit a ticket to expedite a domain. Now they know.

Also, they haven't updated their support page on that topic: https://www.name.com/support/articles/206103837-Expediting-a-domain-transfer

Notice that it still shows the button to "transfer now." Attached is the current button without the "transfer now" option where the only option is to cancel the transfer.

 

Are you sure it applies to all? I was able to expedite a transfer from Name by the same automated way as always on March 24.
Bob

 

You mean you were able to click on "transfer now" that recently? Strange...
The best way would be to compare buttons.
Though would this mean that they penalize the people who use the option a lot, i.e. their best customers? Would make no sense.

 

I don’t remember the appearance of the button, but yes could click it and it gave approval confirmation (and the name moved). It was prior to expiry - not sure their policy about that. It was a new gTLD (.express) in case that matters.
Bob

 

Thanks @Bob Hawkes. It used to work for dot coms and regardless of whether the domain was expired or not. Hopefully other Name.com users can fill us in and share their experience. It would be great if @name.com could jump in and clarify.

 

thanks Dohan. You are not the 1st one who I bought names from told me this. I purchased another name from Sedo this week and the seller told me to open a name.com account otherwise they cannot transfer the domain away from name.com.

I used to have a name.com account, but I decided to move all of names away several years ago. I hate the registrars who pretend to be smart and use those little tricks in order to keep businesses within their circle.

Networksolution is one, and name.com is another. I don't understand their operation, quite retarded. @name.com

 

Name.com is owned by Donuts; which is now owned by Ethos.
You (and @Lox) were right, @bmugford

Ethos VC must've cut expedited transfers; Now i cant get my names the hell out of that hell hole (See how much .com renews there, compared to rest...) They are showing their hand.
If this was a recent add-on; (Hat tip, thanks OP) then Ethos recently gaining majority donuts; is already bearing fruits; in the worst possible way.)

This is on the bottom of their Name.com website;
Does it mean anything to even be an "ICANN-accredited domain name registrar" anymore?
If ICANN was not corrupt, they would put an end to this BS; intended to stop the flow of people who want to exercise their right to choose who they want to do business with, including the people you think hold your best interest at heart.... Donuts' owned exts ngtlds non-coms; -- which already served a conflict of interest; but the VC firm seems like made things worse;

No clue why people continue to use Name.com for their domains; Boggles the mind;
The worst of the worst use this method to do everything in their power to force you against will.

 

Thanks @Samer. I knew Donuts owned Name.com, but didn't know Donuts was bought by that company you mentioned. I just read about it and linked to the news below. It would make sense since the acquisition took place around when I noticed a change in customer service on Name.com. I get the logic though. All registrars want to maximize internal renewals, but in an open market like domaining, it can backfire by creating unhappy customers. Plus Name.com won't compete with registrars who swallow their ego and give their customers the freedom and convenience to transfer domains out. It's up to Name.com to make an effort by giving people incentives to keep their domains on Name.com. I personally think they're user-friendly and overall good on customer service (minus the fact that live chat barely ever works now).

Source: https://domainnamewire.com/2021/01/22/breaking-ethos-capital-acquires-donuts/

 

That explains why a seller refused to expedite my domain out of name and said I don’t have time to contact name!

 

Makes sense. While submitting a ticket with Name.com is pretty straightforward, it gets bureaucratic and time consuming down the line, which may cause some sellers to ignore that repetitive and annoying process, especially if the transfer isn't for a high sale. I personally always expedite every transfer for my buyers' convenience and to put pressure on Name.com.

Link: https://www.name.com/support-ticket

 

They don't seem to have been active on NamePros lately, but tagging the Name.com reps to make sure we get the official information on if a change was made, and if so why.
@name.com
@Jared Ewy
@AshleyName
(I have no idea whether all 3 are still associated with Name, but listed in the representatives section of Name.com.
Bob

 

i have had a similar experience no fast transfer with name.cok anymore. now i have 0 domains with them. Probably we should creat a list with registrars without fast transfer approval
sav.com - no fast transfer out
name.com
123-reg.co.uk
network solutions
?

Registrars with fast transfer
Epik
Dynadot
Namecheap
Porkbun

 

I should point out that Name.com is not all bad at all. As I mentioned, they're pretty user-friendly with a nice looking platform. They offer club pricing, so $8.99 for reg, $9.25 for renewals and $8.25 for transfers. They also have a security feature that enables you to limit logins based on your IP address(es), which is pretty unique.

However, their recent corporate policy of no longer allowing automatic fast transfers has distanced them from their client base and they haven't been transparent about why they stopped it when I asked. Now we know that it may have been a compromise that they made with their parent company's new parent company, Ethos, who seems to believe that making fast transfers more difficult to complete will result in more sales. Cancelling their live chat feature now makes them less reliable if a client has an urgent matter to resolve, and what I liked about live chat was that I could expedite my request to expedite a domain lol. The fact that they also no longer login on Namepros to touch base with the domaining community isn't good either.

Customer service specialist Blake told me, along those lines, that the fast transfer feature was always just a "courtesy" and that some domains "will have it while others won't," which was nothing short of a misleading response to get me to move on, as it's now clear that this feature has all but vanished.

 

register and renewal fee too high.

many competitors like epik, dynadot, uni offer $8.49 or under to register or renew...

 

It's $12.99 to renew if you don't have an "investor club" membership to which you can apply if you have an extensive portfolio, like you can similarly get with other registrars. But I do have a feeling that Dynadot is gaining stream and price-beating.

 

I have 1000 names with uniregistry, no discount clubs offered, my regular renewal is 8.45;
I have 350 names with epik, no clubs offered, my regular renewal is 8.49;
I have another 1000 names with dynadot, same, no club offered, regular renewal is 8.50

namecheap and namesilo are also very competitive in price.

name.com is a bad boy.

 

Those are good regular prices. Hopefully they're user-friendly as well. But if the companies you named all offer 24/H live chat and allow users to approve fast transfers, then Name.com do indeed need to step up their game.

 

I thought you always had to submit a ticket at Name.com to expedite a transfer?

Regarding other registrars, does anyone know if Internet.bs allows you to expedite transfers?

 

Name.com finally updated their Sept 2020 support page yesterday, but with a confusing policy mentioning that only a select few will see the "transfer now" button:



Yet the last time I transferred a domain was today and had to submit a ticket. Does anyone know who exactly is qualifying to fast-transfer a domain without having to contact support if even an investor club member had to submit a ticket?

I emailed Name.com on April 2nd with a link to this thread, but did not get a response from them. Still, that's obviously what pushed them to update their policy on April 3rd as they otherwise still haven't logged into Namepros since Sept 2020

Source: https://www.name.com/support/articles/206103837-Approve-or-expedite-a-domain-transfer

 

Yesterday I started the transfer out of name.com to Epik.com for one .com domain I bought on namepros recently.
Everything looks friendly on name.com and no extra tickets were required. Right now I see the good “all green” status for current step of this transfer on Epik (no errors and it’s accepted).

Probably it’s only for 3-5 days long usual transfers (to be honest didn’t experienced with any others transfers between registrars).
I’m sure I’ll find it out in 3-5 days.

 

Thanks for posting @TURIST. Most registrars give users the choice and convenience to fast-transfer/expedite a domain to a different registrar which, instead of taking 5 days to complete, will almost be instant. Right now, Name.com doesn't show me a button to accelerate the process like it used to. That's what this post is about. That said, which transfer button are you seeing between the two shown below?:

 

Wow. It’s good to have such booster for transfers. From now on I’ll do fast transfers between registrars or at least will try to use this functionality.
Thank you for the post with good educational stuff as well

 

No problem @TURIST. I'm assuming your answer to my question would have been the button shown above. Right?

 

I just did this transfer for .com domain in fast mode without any tickets. I just pressed the button "Transfer now" for domain I would like to transfer and actually I did start usual transfer procedure for this domain already yesterday, then I answered/agreed to transfer it now and finally I see my domain on Epik like I expected almost instantly.
Thank you for good tip.

 

Wow - thanks for confirming that @name.com applies different standards to different users, including users of the same TLD (dot com in both our cases), but without being transparent in how they hand-pick who gets what service and why. I can confirm that the dot com domains I transferred out today didn't have the "transfer now" button. So much for being an "investor club" member...