ICANN Issues Advsiory To Customers Of OnlineNic.com: You Can Transfer Your Domains

Over the past days readers to this blog have left comments regarding their inability to transfer domains they had registered at OnlineNic.com to any other registrar.

I sent these comments over to Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) who contacted ICANN on behalf of these domainers.

Tonight in response, ICANN issued the following advisory to all Onlinenic.com customers:

Customers of registrar OnlineNIC who had problems with previous transfer requests should now be able to transfer their domains to a different registrar if they wish.

ICANN is aware that some customers of OnlineNIC have been prevented from completing requested transfers and ICANN has been working with the relevant parties in an effort to resolve complaints.

OnlineNIC, Inc. had interpreted a court order to mean that OnlineNIC was prohibited from allowing any domain names registered under its accreditation to be transferred to a different registrar. Two new court orders issued on 13 May 2009 provide for a receiver to act in a limited capacity in order to facilitate the transfer process.

Any registrant that experienced difficulty recently with transferring domain names from OnlineNIC to another registrar should now be able to complete the transfer by contacting their preferred registrar. Once the transfer request is initiated, it is expected that OnlineNIC and its receiver will follow the procedure spelled out by the court to permit legitimate transfers to be processed within a few days of the request.

While transfers should be possible now, ICANN is not suggesting that registrants request transfers if they are satisfied with the service and functionality available through OnlineNIC.

ICANN will continue to monitor the situation. For additional information about domain name transfers please visit the FAQ page at http://www.icann.org/en/transfers/dnholder-faq-03nov04.htm.

Although I personally did not have any domains at onlinenic.com, I was more than happy to bring this to the ICA attention as they are the only one’s that I know who have any influence with ICANN.

‘m glad that the ICA went to bat for domainers who had domains stuck there, and got this problem solved in just a day.

Another reason why every domainer needs to be a member of the ICA.