This is the situation... I have bought a site on flippa and the domain was registered with namecheap.com. Now it has been a year and so the domainname was ready for renewal (on 2-2-2012). But I like working with name.com and so I started a transfer. I did all the requirements, filled in forms, paid name.com, replied to confirmation e-mails, etc. But the status for the transfer on name.com is negative because the transfer is "prohibited". And now in the meantime the domainname has expired! I contacted the Live support of Cheapname and they told me this: name cheap> Unfortunately, we don't allow to transfer expired domains out. You need to reactivate your domain before transferring me> so now I would have to pay 10 dollars twice!????!?!? name cheap> I am sorry, but it is our policy Well that is great! NOT! So if you register a domain with namecheap, better register it for 2 years right away.... because you are stuck with them! What can I do now? Wait for the domain to be free for registering? And possibly losing it. I cannot get back my money from Name.com I guess??
What for? It appears you only paid the one you bought the domain name from - rather than NameCheap - based on what you described. It seems the domain name's already expired by the time you finally got around to wanting to transfer it to Name.com. At this point, you best renew it to keep that safe rather than risk someone else grabbing it. That's why it's important to start your domain registrar transfer before the domain expires. While there's no requirement for domain names to be transferred within X days before expiration, nothing currently bans registrars from preventing that either if it especially lessens any potential problems for "crammed" transfers or done at the last minute. One more thing: there's a little-known ICANN rule about registrars not adding an extra year to a domain name if it's transferred within 45 days after its last renewal. So if you renew that expired domain name with NameCheap, you can transfer that out with little to no issues 45 days after it's renewed with them. Regrettably these are things not too many people are surely keen to hear, yet are realities that are important to know what to expect. Good luck.
The problem was that I had to change the status of the domain from "transfer prohibited" to it being unlocked. But this can only be done after 1 year registration. But by then you can not "manage" your domain anymore because it has been expired by then. My only option now was to renew the domain with namecheap and for this I paid namecheap 10.87 dollars. But in the earlier transfer process with name.com I also had to pay 8.94 dollars for the transfer (in advance). So now I have paid 10.87 + 8.94 dollars = 19.81 dollars. But the transfer was not possible and so name.com will not be the new hoster. I have received an e-mail from name.com that the transfer is not possible due to a lock on the domain name. They will try again and if it still fails they will refund the payment. So I guess I will get the 8.94 dollars back from name.com. Great news! Yes, next time I will start the transfer earlier! Thanks!