123-Reg sabotaged my domain transfer to Namecheap

By Abhijit Menon-Sen <>

A friend had a domain registered at 123-Reg that he no longer wanted. It was coming up for renewal later this month, and he offered to transfer it to me. The domain was not locked, so I asked him for an auth code, and immediately submitted a request to transfer it to Namecheap, my preferred registrar.

The transfer failed, and Namecheap sent me mail saying the domain was locked. I checked, and it was. It had also already been transferred to another sponsoring registrar (Mesh Digital, the company that owns both 123-Reg and Domainmonster). My friend contacted support to unlock the domain, but by then of course the domain had entered the sixty-day period during which it could not be transferred again. I was forced to pay the renewal fee to them, and will now have to retry the transfer after the embargo expires.

I suppose I could think of benign explanations for the above if I tried, but I'm not feeling especially charitable about it.