If you have transferred domain names (also known as ‘account change’) from your Go Daddy account to another person’s Go Daddy account, you would probably recognize the email below. This is the email message that Go Daddy sends to the old domain registrant after the new registrant completes the domain transfer process.

This email is to confirm the recent change of registrant of the following domain name(s):

SOME-DOMAIN-NAME.COM

The change has been completed and the available information has been recorded in our system. If for any reason this information is incorrect or you feel this change of registrant request was made in error, please contact us within 15 days at undo@godaddy.com.

Sincerely,

GoDaddy.com, Inc.

Take note of the sentence that I underlined in the email message, especially the “If for any reason…” part. This particular clause, and the sentence in its entirety, sort of gave me an assurance that if something goes wrong with my domain transaction, I can easily reverse the domain transfer and get my domain back. By “wrong”, I am referring to, for example, the domain buyer reversing the PayPal payment. Because of this “assurance”, I transferred domain names to buyers even before they sent payment, confident that I would get my domain back if they don’t pay.

One day, a guy bought a few domains from me for a couple of hundred bucks. I transferred the domain names to his account as soon as I received confirmation that he had sent his payment via PayPal. Ten minutes after he completed the domain transfer, I received an email message from PayPal informing me that the buyer had reversed the payment. Bah, I said to myself. No problem; I’ll explain the situation to good old Go Daddy and I was sure I’d get my domains back.

So I emailed undo@godaddy.com and explained the situation. Six hours later, I received the following reply:

Hello,

Your emails have been received and forwarded to us for review. After investigating the domain name(s) SOME-DOMAIN-NAME.COM we have determined that the changes were made by an authorized party (a party that had access to the customer account). As such, we cannot assist you with the changes made to the domains.

Any disputes over the ownership or wording of the domain name(s) itself will need to be sent either to the registrant, through an arbitration forum such as World Intellectual Property Organization (http://www.wipo.int), or the local court system. Per ICANN regulations, domain registrars are prohibited from becoming involved in domain ownership disputes. Should you decide to proceed and initiate a legal dispute against the registrant of the domain(s), please send a copy of the filed and stamped complaint to domaindisputes@godaddy.com.

Thank you,
Undo Department

So what the frack happened to “If for any reason this information is incorrect or you feel this change of registrant request was made in error…”? I strongly felt that this was made in error because the buyer reversed the payment!

I emailed them back and suggested that they remove that particular clause or the entire sentence from their transfer confirmation email — because it gives the false impression that we still can get out domains back if something goes wrong with the transaction. Guess what they said… NOTHING. The same sentence is still in the transfer confirmation email, still giving domainers the same false assurance.

So is it possible to undo a Go Daddy transfer after the transfer process is completed? Yes, of course — in your dreams.