I was attracted by the option offered by marblehost.com - the company promises to add a year to the expire date of the domain name transferred to them. It sounds good, the more so because I intended to get a new hosting, but does (this) tranferring mean any risks?
Personally, I would not allow the host to register your domain. They can hold your domain hostage. They can disappear and leave you screwed, etc. etc. Go with a big-name provider like GoDaddy, or Namecheap, or another big player and register your domain with them. You then have complete control and "ownership" of your domain outside of your hosting account. Then simply change the nameservers on the domain to whatever host you choose. Keep the two seperate. So yes...there are risks. Marblehost is also a reseller for resellerspanel.com. That's why you have to give the representative some number when you call them. Might as well just go with resellerspanel and save yourself some money, or go with a company that actually has their own servers, equipment, and support folk.