Transferring the Registrar of a Domain Name (Yahoo Hosting)

Seems pretty straightforward right? Possibly a little security to ensure that a rival registrar can not poach new customers (how about the "bills" that come in the mail from rogue registrar's with a "pay your renewal" to us message?). But no - it isn't nearly as easy or straightforward as that.

I registered a .org site for my church about 6 years ago and used Yahoo as the registrar/host. Quick and easy - painless billing to my existing Yahoo wallet. Now for the transfer ... Yahoo doesn't have the necessary info available online, only a cryptic message regarding "contact Customer Care". I've sent two form based messages already ... 1st a generic request for tell me what I need to do to transfer this .org domain and registrar out of Yahoo. 2nd a specific request for the authorization code for my domain. I'm waiting for responses! I'll update with the timing and relevance of the response.

Why the lack of confidence? Check the recent posting and comments at http://w2.syronex.com/jmr/blog/2005/10/yahoo_domain_registration ! I understand why businesses don't want customer revenue to leave - but not providing information IN my web account console is poor service.

4/8/2007 UPDATE: 3 requests to Yahoo Customer Care via a web form from my account = 0 responses, 1 request via email to the address in the Yahoo help system with specific details to make domain changes = 1 rejected email from Yahoo!

But 1 phone call (actually the 2nd but I was hung up on within 3 minutes so I won't even count it!) and about 30 on the phone and I had an authorization code from Yahoo to transfer my domain name. Yahoo phone number 866-800-8092 (option 0 for tech support), alternative number to Yahoo customer service is 866-562-7219 ... fairly quick at transferring you to a specific resource.

Is it moved yet? No but the process at my web host 1&1 seems to be moving fairly quickly. I'll update again with the final resolution.