Getting “Invalid authorization code” on domain transfer

tl;dr: go back to domains, start a transfer of the same domain again, and magically it works. Gut tells me there was a caching issue somewhere.

Not sure why this has been such a hassle, but I am trying to transfer a .lol domain from GoDaddy to Cloudflare. The domain was purchased under Uniregistry about 10 years ago (thus coming up for renewal) and was the only domain on that migrated account so I wanted to move it. Not to mention, as usual, CF was quite a bit less expensive than GD.

Went through the usual steps:

1. Start transfer in Cloudflare
2. Update the Nameservers in GoDaddy
3. Validate the change and have it show as DNS Setup: Full
4. Unlock the domain in GoDaddy and get the authorization code
5. Paste it into Cloudflare – this is where things went off the rails as I kept getting the message "Invalid authorization code. Please try again or request a new one from current registrar."
6. Called GoDaddy to request a new code – each time spending between 30-60 minutes on the phone (mostly waiting) then listening to the tech support agent scratch their head on how to request a new code. The first two times I was promised engineering was resetting it and a new code would be available within 90 minutes. Spoiler: it never was. Asked second tech to actually create a ticket to track this, and kept asking until they did.
7. Tried to create support ticket with Cloudflare as well – which is gated behind being a "paying" customer. Guess what: I am paying. For a domain. I get they don't charge on top of their fees but you know what, it still feels like I am paying customer in this case. And I have other accounts where I am paying customer. Frustration mounts.
8. Tried to create a post on Cloudflare communities, but registrar issues require a case number, and well, I was still stuck on the catch 22 of not being able to create a case. Annoyance level spiked to 100%.
9. Third phone call with GoDaddy – got connected to a tech that actually understood what was going on and was honest that engineering was not likely to take a look until Monday. Big shoutout to Coby whoever you are. You deserve a raise.
10. Keep searching the internet for any keyword hits that might help, and I stumble on a help article that says I can cancel the transer – well, following the instructions didn't let me do that (not sure if they are out of date or refer to different part of the process) but it gave me the idea to just try and start from the beginning again so I punch in the domain name to transfer it, the window for the code pops up, I paste it in (still on my clipboard from previous attempts) and what feels like magic at this point: it actually worked!

I hope this helps someone else in the future with a similar issue, and maybe Cloudflare will see this and figure out whatever the caching issue that was holding it up. I don't have access to the backends, but based on my conversations I can't imagine GoDaddy actually fixed anything that was broken, and I never had a chance to interact with Cloudflare, so unless the Cloudflare error monitors happened to trigger a lot of repeated failures on the registrar transfer authorization code path and someone happened to fix it, it really feels like this is a just life of a tech person and once again the end user has to work around system issues.

Kudos to Coby at GoDaddy. -1000 points for Cloudflare and complete lack of support options. Hopefully someone sees this feedback as the gift that it is and we can collectively make the world a little bit better.

I did fill out the survey for Coby and gave him perfect marks. I truly wish I could do more.