Last night, I noticed I had a domain name on hold in my Afternic account, but the domain name did not appear in my GoDaddy account. I know that GoDaddy pulls domain names from accounts when they are pending sale, but the disconcerting thing was that I could not find a purchase receipt or any ownership record for this domain name.
I called the Premier Services team at GoDaddy, and I was able to put a few things together. The domain name that is pending sale was hand registered by me in January of 2025. Because I registered it in a bulk purchase, the domain name was not included in the purchase receipt I received. It was also renewed in bulk on the first anniversary, so I did not have a renewal email either. These are standard records I generally have quick access to in my email history. In addition, new registrations have Whois privacy at GoDaddy, so a Whois record didn’t confirm my ownership of the domain name.
What helped is that the creation date matched the date it was added to my Afternic account, and the Premier Services account manager I spoke with on the phone confirmed ownership and forwarded me the purchase receipt. That still did not include the domain name, but I could click through to the full receipt within my GoDaddy account.
This is not the first time I called GoDaddy about an “on hold” domain name not being in my GoDaddy account. I am sure plenty of other people have had the same issue and called GoDaddy to confirm they still own a domain name that is pending sale but removed from their account while on hold.
I assume GoDaddy pulls domain names that are pending sale because the company wants to prevent people from transferring their domain names away from GoDaddy while the sale is pending. Perhaps they also do it so sellers can’t adjust their nameservers to avoid being penalized for not using GoDaddy-associated nameservers prior to a sale.
I think this can be alarming for customers who want to confirm ownership of a domain name. With the potential for others to accidentally authorize an Afternic listing, that could continue a chain of errors and cause an errant transfer and sale. Notably, a few years ago, I made a typo on an Afternic listing, and I only caught it when I saw the domain name was pending sale for ~$1k and I did not own the domain name that was sold. That was the first and hopefully the last time that ever happens.
I think the better thing would be for GoDaddy to keep “on hold” domain names in the seller’s account under a transfer lock. This would prevent a seller from moving the domain name away from GoDaddy while a deal is pending, and it would allow the seller to confirm ownership of the domain name. It doesn’t make sense to pull it from a seller’s account while a deal is pending.
