It was that time of year again, domain renewal. In that past I had registered with Godaddy, and at the time, they seemed like a good idea, cheap and efficient. But I couldn’t be more wrong.

Up until now, I never actually had a problem with Godaddy, they seemed nice enough and I never had to contact them for support. Changing the name servers when I switched hosts seemed easy enough and problem free, but they seem to have separation issues, and don’t want me to leave.

To be honest, the only reason I’m leaving Godaddy is because of their pricing. With domain privacy, it was going to cost me $24.20 (Australian) to register just the one domain, compared to Namecheap’s $11.70 (Australian), and Namecheap currently have a free privacy protection offer going at the moment.

My first mistake though was leaving it too long. Three days before my domain was about to expire, I realised I forgot to renew it, and you weren’t able to transfer a domain within seven days of its expiry. I decided to contact Namecheap support to ask what my best option would be, and it turns out you can actually transfer within this seven day period, but you may suffer downtime.

This is where my problem starts, getting the required EPP code from Godaddy. An EPP code (or Extensible Provisioning Protocol) is simply the ‘key’ used to transfer domains from one register to another and in my case, Godaddy to Namecheap. Searching around in the Godaddy control panel, I could not find a single reference to an EPP code anywhere. I later found out that it is called the Authorisation code, and had to be emailed to the domain administrator (as per internet regulations- nothing wrong with this).

The problem here though, is that I used private registration, and Godaddy uses a 3rd party called Domains by Proxy, so therefore they are my domain administrator (at least on paper, anyway). When I first registered by Godaddy domain, they created an account on my behalf, but neglected to pass on any account details, effectively locking me out. The closest thing I can get to logging in is the forgot username form on the domains by proxy website, and to this day, I am still awaiting the confirmation email that was request nearly two weeks ago. Neither company offers any sort of live support, with their only available options being calling them or sending them an email. So here I am, stuck under the control of Godaddy and Domains by Proxy, whom I suspiciously suspect to be deliberately withholding my EPP code from me based on their previous shady operations.

Rather than wait for Godaddy to release the domain, or renew with them for another year, and pay an extra fee to get my old domain name back, I’ve decided to go with a new name. squaregarden.net