My first and last domain “pull”

The transfer of domains between accounts within the same registrar, is referred to as a domain “push.”

Such pushes occur daily, and it’s a common practice during both domain acquisitions or domain sales; all that is needed is the originating and the target account at the same registrar.

As it happened I recently acquired a domain at Dotster, a registrar that used to be easy to work with in the early 2000’s. After consolidating my domains elsewhere, anything that I acquire gets transferred out and have no domains there.

In this case, the seller pushed the domain to my account but nothing happened. The domain remained in limbo, despite a notification that they received, stating that the request would be completed in the next 24 hours.

The seller opened a ticket for this extraordinary delay in pushing a domain, a function that is instant, typically.

Dotster does have a responsive support team, and they provided the following information about how to successfully push the domain to my account:

First, the seller had to delete it from their account, because it was stuck there, despite the push function.

Then, I had to add the domain to my account, effectively “pulling” it from the digital purgatory that it was left at.

The pulling process lasted a full minute, with an animated gear rotating, while hordes of digital minions apparently completed the task in the background.

Humor aside, the domain ended up in my account, where more trouble awaited: I could not remove the WHOIS protection in order to transfer it away, and had to open a support ticket. They took care of that, as well.

Dotster is not a bad registrar but their new control panel is atrocious. Functions that would normally take seconds to complete get stuck or do not complete without manual intervention. I sincerely hope they fix this soon.