I recently attempted a domain transfer from GoDaddy to Namecheap.
I did all the steps – I unlocked the domain from GoDaddy’s control panel, then placed the order through Namecheap. Namecheap needed the EPP code – I used the GoDaddy control panel to email it to myself, and entered it on Namecheap’s site.
All seemed to go well until it got “stuck”. For a few days at that. A little searching around showed that it may take up to 5 days, but the odd thing was checking Namecheap’s Transfer Status page, the status description was “Transfer in Process – Acquiring Current Whois for Transfer Verification“.
Should it take over 2 days for a Whois lookup? I think not.
Although I had searched searched Google with terms similar to this page’s title, I hadn’t come across anything for this situation. I searched for “Transfer in Progress – Acquiring Current Whois for Transfer Verification” this time, and BAM, came across this Namecheap KB article. Basically it states that the status description I’ve been getting happens if the auto-whois that Namecheap does during a transfer doesn’t get anywhere for 8 hours. The transfer is effectively “stuck” at this point. Fortunately, that KB article gives instructions for opening a ticket to get it manually fixed (although it’s unfortunate that someone could be waiting for days before deciding to submit a ticket – would be nice if it was automated).
I opened a ticket at Medium priority and got an email 5 minutes later stating:
This happened because the current registrar is blocking our IP addresses for whois queries and we’ll have to manually insert whois details into the form. We have forwarded these details to our development team to investigate this further and manually update the whois info. Please allow up to 24 hours to receive the authorization email. Please use that time to unlock your domain, take off any whois privacy features and ensure that admin contact’s email is valid and checked frequently.
Thank you for letting us know about this problem.
In any case, a 5 minute response time by Namecheap is pretty impressive. All the steps they mentioned had already been taken, so it’s just a matter of sitting and waiting for the authorization email. I’ll update the post if there are any further issues.
Update: There weren’t any further issues. I got an email from eNom (Namecheap’s provider) with a link that I had to visit to authorize the transfer. GoDaddy sent me a mail at that point letting me know there was a transfer request. To make things speedy, I logged into my GoDaddy account, found the domain, looked at the “Pending Transfers” section, and approved the transfer. Less than an hour later, I got an email from Namecheap stating that the transfer was complete.
