If I were a registrar, I would have rate-limiters on domain info downloads to prevent harvesting by spammers. And those rate-limiters would be set so as not to interfere with normal demand, but might be tripped if, say, everyone tried to transfer out their domains all at once.
Just sayin.' Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by reasonable engineering heuristics...
Not allowing other registrars access to WHOIS is against the rules, regardless of what you think makes sense for spam prevention. If they have such a filter, it needs to go away.
Hey Namecheap, since I know you're on here (Anthony?): did you try contacting some engineering folk at GoDaddy to try to resolve this delay for your clients? I hope you already have, and that they told you to sit on it, given the tone of your last blog post.
If you're just slinging non-verified mud at a competitor, kicking them when they're down instead of focusing all your effort on actually fixing this, how are you better than GoDaddy and why would a potential new client choose you over them if you're both shady?
Amusing that you'd hope that GoDaddy would continue screwing their (soon to be former) customers because they don't like that a competitor thinks they're playing dirty pool.
....what? My point was that it seems like Namecheap is just making efforts to blame GoDaddy instead of efforts to actually fix the problem. I hope GoDaddy dies in a fire. I hope everyone gets away from them ASAP and I hope they get out of the domain business after that (it'd be great to at least see ICANN call them out on it and fine them or something.)
As I see it, the more GoDaddy fights and does stupid things, the more it increases the Streisand effect and the more people will become aware of how awful they are.
Just sayin.' Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by reasonable engineering heuristics...