Domain Transfer not carrying over paid time

Question

I recently renewed my domain for a year on BlueHost. A few days later, I decided to transfer it to GoDaddy. After transferring, GoDaddy did not show the new year that I recently paid for. After contacting their support, they blamed it on BlueHost. After contacting BlueHost support, I was given the following reply. Does anybody know if this is actually an ICANN policy, or if they're just trying to short me out of the 10 bucks.

Your domain was in the 45 day auto renew grace period. This is an ICANN policy. In short, it means that the renewal is considered tentative for 45 days and not permanent. If you transfer the domain within that 45 day period you don't get the year you paid for.

Answer 1

Have a read of this page here explaining the ICANN policy on auto renew, transfers and refunds:

and this ICANN page

2.3 Auto-Renew Grace Period

The Auto-Renew Grace Period is a specified number of calendar days following an auto-renewal. An auto-renewal occurs if a domain name registration is not renewed by the expiration date; in this circumstance the registration will be automatically renewed by the system the first day after the expiration date. The current value of the Auto-Renew Grace Period is 45 calendar days. If a Delete, Extend, or Transfer occurs within the Auto-Renew Grace Period, the following rules apply:

Transfer (other than ICANN-approved bulk transfer). If a domain is transferred under Part A of Exhibit B to the Registry-Registrar Agreement within the Auto-Renew Grace Period, the losing Registrar is credited with the Auto-Renew charge and the year added by the Auto-Renew operation is cancelled. The expiration date of the domain is extended by one year up to a total maximum of ten by virtue of the transfer and the gaining Registrar is charged for that additional year, even in cases where a full year is not added because of the 10-year maximum limitation.

BlueHost are within their rights but should really offer you a refund if they were "nice". Pester them for it. They have had the money refunded so they should give it back to you but a lot of these companies have ToC's giving them every right to keep your money.

GoDaddy should have added a year to your domain. So you should now be one year up on previously despite paying for two.

Answer 2

Anytime you transfer a domain from one registrar to another, it automatically adds a one year extension (renewal).

You want to check and find out if BlueHost was actually using godaddy's system to manage your domain.

Either case, anytime you paid for renewal there are no exceptions. You paid for renewal so you get a year's worth of renewal. If the domain was expired past 30 or 60 days (can't remember) then there is an additional fee to get the domain reactivate.

Answer 3

As long as you renewed before the expiration date, or had your registar's "auto-renew" feature turned on for that domain (which should renew the domain slightly before the expiration date), the year that you have paid for at the old registrar will be added to the year you get at the new registrar. So if you use an auto-renew feature, and transfer to a new registrar after the auto-renew rolls over, your new expiration date should be two years from now: one year from the old registrar, and one year from the new registrar (just confirmed this by transferring from GoDaddy to Namecheap). You only enter the "Auto-Renew Grace Period" if you let the domain go past the expiration date without renewing (i.e. expire): https://www.icann.org/news/advisory-2002-06-06-en. The terminology can be confusing, because you have an auto-renew feature which you can set in the UI at your registrar, and the Auto-Renew Grace Period which kicks in automatically after expiration. They're two different things.