When you first read about Godaddy dropping the 60 day lock you were probably like me. You thought that now you could buy a domain and wouldn’t have to wait to transfer it to another registrar. In actuality, the 60 day lock that can be waived is not the ICANN transfer lock but the self imposed lock that Godaddy puts on.
If you change any contact info at all, Godaddy will lock the domain for an additional 60 days to protect against theft. It keeps people from stealing, then changing the email to their own and then pushing the domain to another account within the registrar(which isn’t locked). It really makes things safer but occasionally can cause a problem like the one I had yesterday.
I bought a name in a private transaction and had it transferred over. I changed the nameservers but forgot one important thing, to change the contact info. It’s something I never noticed until I sold the name. I went in to unlock and get the authorization code but oops…wrong contact info. If I go in and change the email then in the past it would locked for 60 days and I would be screwed. With Godaddy’s new system it can be unlocked.
My account rep Brett was nice enough to let me know the process was simple. All I had to do was email [email protected] and tell them the problem and the would most likely take care of it. 24 hours later I received an email saying go ahead and change the contact and then let them know. I changed it, emailed them, and it looks like there is no lock on the domain. So I sent out the code and we’re going to try and transfer out the name. A pretty painless procedure that should only cost me a day.
It’s nice to see a system that works when necessary. I screwed up and they were accommodating. A big hat tip to Godaddy.
Looks like godaddy changed all their reps, I tried it once the 60 day lock unlock, for a name I purchased from their expiry drop, and they wanted nothing short of a DNA sample, good they laxed up a bit.
Thanks for sharing. I was unable to transfer out domain with this 60 day lock period. But this will help me in future if required.
learn something new every day, thanks
I too have a new rep with the switch around they did with premier services
she couldn’t have been more helpful when I needed assistance on a couple of things, really good, her name is Leah Sigety
thanks Leah
Certain domain bloggers like to hate on Godaddy, but let’s face it, time after countless time Godaddy outperforms any other registrar out there.
I call bullshit.
The 60-day lock is lock-in, plain and simple. It does not make your domain inherently “safer”, it just prevents customers from moving away when they get the inclination to do so.
We’ve never locked a domain after modifications (other than the registry imposed locks on new domains) and we have not had one, single, solitary unauthorized transfer in over 14 years of business. Not one. Zero.
Agree the 60 day lock is a farce in itself, it is really a circumvention of ICANN rules, and we all know it, only thing is ICANN is useless, and only knows their way to the buffet table.
I just had this problem today, so this is very timely. I’m encouraged to hear the lock can be released and appreciate knowing that this is a GD internal policy, not ICANN.
My rep is working on clearing the lock, but didn’t happen today. We’re still within the 24 hour window, but I will be emailing him this post to ensure I get similar result. Thanks very much!!
Mark how many customers do you have vs godaddy ?
Godaddy probably picks up more customers in a day than we have in total.
But our numbers are high enough that if this was an actual problem (which it isn’t) we’d have had at least one unauthorized transfer over the years. The point is there are other ways to safeguard against this than locking up the domain after any routine modification.
The 60-day lock is to make it harder to legitimately transfer out of Godaddy and it violates the ICANN transfer policy.