Most registrars won’t allow domain transfers within 60 days of registration or renewal.

Is it in the domain owner’s interest? Often the answer is NO!

So why do registrars impose the 60 day rule?

Transferring your domain to another registrar can be one of the most frustrating aspects of managing domain names. I know because I’m a domain owner myself, as well as serving my customers. And I’ve had some hard experiences with a few registrars over the years.

The 2 main reasons why domain name transfers appear so complex are because the registrar has to protect both the domain owner’s interests as well as his own.

The domain owner’s interests are protected by insisting on getting confirmation for the transfer request from the administrative contact email address. That’s the standard way of ensuring that the request is genuinely from the owner or from the person the domain owner trusts implicitly, i.e. the domain’s administrative contact.

And one way the registrar protects his own interest is through the 60 day policy. Here is how one of my registrar partners put it:

(quote)
We don’t allow transfers away until 60 days after renewal or new registration, same as many other registrars. This is to help stop fraudulant transactions in the case where someone transfers or registers a domain, then immedietely transfers out, and does a chargeback. We are stuck paying the chargeback fee, paying for the domain, and having nothing.

This isn’t anything new in our system. We have this written clearly in our Terms Of Service, and you can direct your customer to yours. If you feel confident that the customer won’t do a chargeback and feel it will be more cost effective to take this risk..ask them to resubmit and then contact me. I can probably manually approve it.
(unquote)

Btw., in case you are not aware, “chargeback” is a fee levied by the credit card company on the merchant (in this case the registrar), whenever a transaction is not paid by the client.

For example, the transaction might be, say, $10 and if it’s refused, not only the registrar doesn’t get that money, he’s additionally charged $40 to $50 by the credit card company! And as the registrar passes on this charge to the affiliate partner (us), it’s obvious that chargebacks need to be avoided at all costs.

Clearly the registrar needs to take reasonable measures against fraud (chargebacks). But the rule can appear unfair when, say, you’ve just sold one of your domains and the new owner wants it transferred because he keeps his domains with another registrar. Why should the new owner have to wait 60 days to move his domain?

This is where sensible registrars show flexibility. As my registrar partner at DomainsNow4U.com said in the quote above, he’ll make exceptions and allow a transfer BEFORE the 60 days are up, provided we are confident it won’t end up with a nasty chargeback.