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Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

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MaxHoose
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Registered: ‎14-06-2020

Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

Hi all

I have a domain name that I use with PN for all of my email, mostly to forward to Gmail. The domain is registered to PN however, not to me. I'd like to transfer this domain to my own registrar (Google Domains).

As far as I understand the process for .co.uk transfers, when PN change the IPS tag on the domain to (in this case) [GOOGLE], Google will then contact the email address associated with the domain which will confirm the transfer. 

I can't see the domain reg details, but I assume at the moment this is a PN admin address and not my own.

Can anyone confirm that this is the case and that when I phone PN support to ask for this transfer I need to ensure the email address step is completed as well as the IPS tag?

thanks

gordon 

6 REPLIES 6
MisterW
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Re: Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

The domain is registered to PN however, not to me.

@MaxHoose  are you sure about that ? I have a domain registered with PlusNet, but the email contact is postmaster@<myaccountname>.plus.com and it's actually registered to me. I'm sure I wouldn't have set that contact address deliberately and so that's likely the default that PN used when registering the domain. In my case I created a Nominet account using the contact email, see here https://secure.nominet.org.uk/auth/access-your-account.html

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

MaxHoose
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Re: Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

Thanks @MisterW much appreciated - you might be on to something there! The reason I thought it might be PN's details is that I didn't register the domain "normally" at the time.

Back in 2003ish there was a big data leakage/spam issue on PN (I forget the details) and as part of that I think impacted users got a 'free' domain name for the life of their PN relationship. I've not thought about who might "own" the domain until recently when new circumstances mean I want to have more control over it.

Looking at Whois now you don't see much in the way of personal info, but I've read on here of all sorts of delays transferring domains out and emails not arriving etc, so didn't want to be caught out with. (99% of my and my family's email goes through my own domain name so don't want it stuck in limbo not delivering mail!) 

However although I've not had to logon to Nominet for a long time, I can vaguely recall having emails from them in the past. And I've just found one from them last June about the .uk version of my domain and notice that it was actually sent to domain@<myaccountname>.plus.com - which suggests that what you say is indeed the case! If I'd had a choice of contact address at the time - when I was big into choosing a separate email address per service or website - this is exactly the type of thing I would have chosen!

So off to see if I can resurrect my Nominet account (which will mean installing Thunderbird and dusting off those email archives I never quite got round to importing into Gmail!), and then will get the PN support ticket I now have raised, actioned!

I'll keep you posted - cheers!

g

MisterW
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Re: Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

@MaxHoose 

Back in 2003ish there was a big data leakage/spam issue on PN (I forget the details) and as part of that I think impacted users got a 'free' domain name for the life of their PN relationship

That's exactly where mine came from!

Looking at Whois now you don't see much in the way of personal info,

That's probably because (like mine) your domain is registered to a private individual and details are withheld. As I said , when I go into my Nominet account the domain registrant details , name , address etc are mine and correct.

The main problem with transferring a domain out of plusnet is getting the ticket actioned by the correct team. Most of the normal CSC will know nothing about domains, they're a legacy extra. There's a number of experienced Plusnet staff who monitor these forums and some of them will be familiar with the transfer procedure but ultimately I believe it needs to get actioned by NetOPS.

Let me know how the transfer goes...

 

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

MaxHoose
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Re: Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

I'm facepalming at how easy that was to get into my nominet account and why I didn't think to try that earlier!

So I've now confirmed that the domain is indeed registered to me and was setup with my PN email address. Which I've now changed to my gmail one to keep things separate during the transfer. (had a heart stopping moment when I realised you only see the domains that match your Nominet logon and so it disappeared - until I logged in to Nominet again with the gmail account I'd just changed it to - phew! This was despite the big red warning banner on the contact details form advising of such!!; it's been a long week!)

 

So I've just updated my PN support ticket simply asking them to change the IPS tag to my new registrar (Google Domains) - I'll keep you posted. A phone support guy previously said this might take 5-7 days and they couldn't say exactly when it would happen, but I'm hoping I get a little heads up so I don't lose any email...

Thanks again @MisterW 

cheers, g.

MaxHoose
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Re: Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

Fix

@MisterW - Just a quick update; my transfer is now complete and all seems well!

I phoned PN on Friday pm and waffled enough that they just raised me a new ticket, on which I was then able to articulate my request in detail. This was then assigned to the NetOps team as you suggested - a good start 😊. The ticket said that the new IPS tag would be applied within 3 working days by NetOps and was put on hold until Wed - fair enough.

In the meantime, over in my Nominet account, I realised that I could actually control the IPS tag myself from the Nominet dashboard. Although it would cost me £10 (annual renewal cost)... However as I already had this in motion with PN thought only fair I'd see how that played out and didn't want to mess anything up.

08:50 this morning (Monday) and got a text to say the transfer had been initiated but was paused as new registrar required a "handshake" to complete? At same time I got an email from Google Domains to approve or reject the transfer request. Obvs I approved this, and that was it - job done, way more straightforward than I was expecting. And as far as I can tell PN did the transfer for free 👍 So my first ever bill for this domain name will be in Dec when Google charge me £10 for another year. 

I told Google to initially duplicate all of the DNS settings from the PN DNS servers. I then replicated all of my PN email forwarding rules for various family members within Google Domains, and after they'd all verified their addresses, told Google to "fix" the MX mail records they had copied from PN. And boom - email forwarding on new domain all setup and working.😁 Other DNS like www page (for my crappy circa 2005 holding page!) are still pointing to PN and as I write are still working - I expect that to break at some point, but no problem.

I've also setup a free tier Mailgun.com account which is acting as my SMTP relay, complete with a DKIM key. Now that I have access to normal DNS settings I've also added an SPF record to allow both Gmail & Mailgun to relay mail for my domain, and configured the DKIM key too. So I now have fully secure email on a custom domain running from Gmail that is fully compliant with modern email security standards 😎

Thanks again for your help and pointers. Thought I'd write it up in detail in case it proves useful for others.

cheers

Gandalf
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Re: Transfer domain name away from Plus.net

Thanks for the post @MaxHoose Glad to see the transfer's gone through smoothly. I progressed the ticket on your account in the background. (I probably should've posted a reply here earlier at the time). We'll follow things up once we've had confirmation from our side that the transfer's completed, we'll then remove the domain records from your account. Cheers

[edit]

I say ‘background’, background compared to the forums here as I messaged direct on the ticket

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet