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Domain Transfer Away From Telkom

How to move your domain name out of Telkom.

Short Answer

Send an email to Telkom with the following details:

  1. The domain name. This is the website address you want to transfer away from Telkom.
  2. A letter of intent. This is a PDF document showing your interest in transferring your domain name. Be sure to include:
    • The letterhead of your business.
    • Your ID number.
    • Your signature.
  3. A copy of your ID.

Email Example

An example of the email you should send. An example of the email you should send.

Letter Of Intent Example

An example of the letter of intent. An example of the letter of intent.

Here's a prewritten email draft you can use. Just attach your own documents & send. Link .

Longer Answer

I have a client that had their domain name "locked into" Telkom. I say "locked in" because there was no way of contacting anyone at Telkom about getting their domain name transferred out. I called the normal Telkom support lines, but it was clear that they were only geared to deal with phone and internet-connectivity issues. The moment I mentioned the words "domain name", I lost them to confusion.

I found an article online mentioning that you should email hostmaster@telkomsa.net to authorize the transfer. Which I did 7 times over the next 2 months with no reply.

I even tried to "force" the domain transfer from the new hosting provider's side which obviously wouldn't have worked, but I tried anyway. While doing so, I could see the status of the domain name change to "pendingTransfer" and back to "ok".

At this point, I kind of gave up. I honestly didn't know what to do or who to contact. In my desperation I found another email address that lives on all telkom registered domain names: MPeterS@telkom.co.za . This email address address is supposed to be used to report abuse. Which was very fitting to the way I was feeling.

So I emailed the guy. And a day later I had the domain name transfer successfully completed 🎉

The missing information was the letter of intent and customer ID document . Once I attached those documents to the email, someone at Telkom finally replied.

So thank you Mr. Sabelo Michael Peters at Telkom for doing your job.

Thanks for reading and I hope this article saves you weeks of pain & suffering.

If you're interested in how to get your business online with a website and professional email address then I wrote a step-by-step guide here. Link .