Same. I hate hate hate GoDaddy, but Namecheap assuming malice in this case might blow up in their faces, and honesty, just for speculating (with a pretty sure-sounding tone) that GoDaddy is doing this on purpose, I hope it DOES blow up in their faces. This is really just dirty business.
Move to name.com instead because they don't practice this type of distasteful PR.
They do provide some details about the abnormalities:
"Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules."
I hear that name.com forces a wildcard DNS entry if you use their DNS servers so that any unregistered subdomain points to a "domain parked" or similar squatter-esque page. This is completely awful and should be enough to bring a lot of heat to name.com directly. Definitely much, much worse than misassuming bad intentions.
Then they're telling the truth. What if they're making assumptions with the same zeal for finding wrongdoing on GoDaddy's part as a hyperactive child has for finding more chocolate in the garden on easter?
Justification for acting like a dick can't be post-dated. You are either justified in making statements like namecheap did, or you're publicly naming and shaming on an unproven hunch. Either namecheap should show their cards and say "we know they're slowing us down, and here's proof", or they should try to be a little bit more professional with their public statements.
I know that this is an exciting time for everyone involved, but seriously, this is starting to play out like a school-yard drama.
Then that sucks for GoDaddy, but what I'm getting at is that they should make a call to GoDaddy engineering and say "Hey, what's up with this, are we being throttled or something?". The risk/benefit for this type of thing just doesn't work in favor of Namecheap. Posting what they did, if GoDaddy is indeed dragging their feet on purpose, they'll be able to say "we told you so!" which isn't worth much. If GoDaddy is NOT intentionally delaying this and GoDaddy comes out against this, Namecheap gets a lot of bad PR, and rightly so.
If they just said "we're having issues with transfers in from GoDaddy right now, we've contacted them about the issue and are waiting to hear back, and we'll update you with any of their responses and/or progress on the matter", I'd be much more impressed. It seems that they're trying to kick GoDaddy while they're down instead of working to actually resolve the issue for their clients.
Conversely, the mobs are already upset about bad behavior on GoDaddy's part. If Namecheap is right, this story gets even bigger and makes things even worse for GoDaddy.
If they're wrong, well, everyone is pissed at GoDaddy anyway, so this angle fades quietly from view.
Move to name.com instead because they don't practice this type of distasteful PR.