Why has my domain transfer failed?

This guide is intended to explain the potential reasons a domain transfer failed. For LCN customers transferring domain names into, or away from LCN.

For instructions on how to transfer domains into your account, or check the status of a pending transfer see our guides on How to transfer your domain name to us.

Inbound domain transfer

We’ll cover some of the potential reason’s inbound domain transfers to your LCN account could fail below.

UK Domains (.co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .uk)

Inbound transfers for UK domains could fail due to the following reasons:

• IPS Tag change not applied: To complete the inbound transfer of a UK domain you’ll need to request that the IPS tag for the domain is changed to LCN. This change needs to be applied with your current registrar or Nominet.
• Transfer not initiated: If you’ve requested an IPS tag change to LCN without adding the domain as an inbound transfer to your account, our system won’t accept the inbound transfer. Transfers need to be initiated within your LCN account before our system will accept an IPS tag change for inbound transfers.

If you’ve added an inbound transfer to your LCN account and requested a tag change that hasn’t been accepted – get in touch with our support team and we can check the tag and refer to our Domain Admin team.

Top-Level Domains (.com, .net, .info, etc…)

We’ll cover some of the potential reason’s inbound transfers for top-level domain names could fail below:

• Invalid Auth-code: If the auth-code supplied for an inbound transfer is rejected by the registry for your domain, the transfer will fail. If this happens our Domain Admin team will be in touch. If the code supplied by your current registrar has been rejected, contact the registrar to ask that a new auth-code is generated for the domain.
• Transfer rejected/not approved: When transferring top-level domains, the losing registrar may send an approval email asking you to confirm that you want to transfer the domain. If this email is not confirmed the transfer may be rejected by the losing registrar.
• Domain lock status: Top-level domains need to be unlocked to be transferred between registrars. Our system will check that a domain is unlocked before you initiate a transfer. However, if the name is re-locked at any stage during the transfer, the transfer will fail to complete.
• Domain is expired and in redemption: If a top-level domain has expired more than 30 days ago it will be placed into redemption status. It won’t be possible for a transfer to proceed. You’ll need to contact your current registrar to resolve this status. Additional charges are usually incurred to renew a domain once it enters a redemption state.

Outbound transfer

To check why an outbound transfer from your LCN account has failed, we’d recommend contacting the receiving registrar to check if they can confirm a reason for the failure.

We’ll cover some of the steps that you can take within your LCN account when an outbound transfer has failed below. If a transfer has failed for a reason not covered in this guide, you may need to contact our support team to investigate this.

UK Domains (.co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .uk)

• IPS tag not changed: If the IPS tag change for a UK domain transfer needs to be applied again, you can do this from your LCN account by repeating the transfer process. If this is not possible you will need to get in touch with our support team to ask that this is applied. They will be pass this to our Domain Admin team to check and reapply.
• Transfer not accepted/timed out: The receiving registrar should be notified of an inbound transfer before you change the IPS tag for a domain within your LCN account. If a transfer has timed out or been rejected, you can apply a tag change again within your LCN account if needed.

Top-Level Domains (.com, .net, .info, etc…)

• Invalid auth-code: If the auth-code supplied for your domain transfer has been rejected, get in touch with our support team and we can check if a new code can be generated.
• Transfer rejected/not approved: If the outbound transfer has been rejected by LCN, check that the email for the domain within your account to make sure that you can receive the approval email for the outbound transfer sent by LCN. The transfer would then need to be re-initiated by the receiving registrar.
• Domain lock status: Once unlocked in your LCN account, domain names should remain unlocked for 60-days, or a transfer completes. If your transfer has been rejected due to the lock status of your domain, get in touch with our support team so we can check the status of the domain.
• Domain is expired or in redemption: If a top-level domain has been expired or within a redemption state. Transfer of the domain won’t be possible. You will need to renew your domain before it can be transferred. For domains in redemption additional charges will be incurred to renew the domain.