Quoting Michael Paoli (michael.paoli@berkeley.edu):
But alas, many registrars (e.g. NetworkSolutions.com/Web.com) will drag their feet and take the maximum time they can contractually get away with (which is I think 72 hours? I forget precisely how long. May also vary somewhat by TLD).
That's my recollection, too.
IWantMyName (actually CentralNic) at this point, 4.5 hours in, still shows PENDINGTRANSFER. Detailed view shows "STEP 6 / 7". I.e., the incumbent registrar forking it over is the last thing needed.
I'm expecting release some time in the A.M., just as a hunch. But if they pull a NetSol, that'd be petty of them but harmess.
Already in my account is berkeleylug.com, for which I'm Admininstrative Contact. I note to my pleasure (as this ticks off a "must do" for my own domains) that "Renew" is possible at any time. Hitting "Renew" places a one-year renewal into the shopping cart; although there's no way to say you want n > 1 years added, though I guess you can go through the renewal for one year, pay, then repeat cycle as many times as desired(?). (I've occasionally kept domains as much as 3 years out from expiration, but never more than that. Perhaps I might want to if price increases were imminent.)
Late edit: I see you address the "multiple years extension" thing later.
And, somewhere at your losing registrar, at their higher levels of customer service and/or technical support - if they exist 8-O - they probably have some means of being able to extend domains, by positive integral number of years (up to whatever the maximum is, which may also vary by TLD) ... but alas, seems they quite lack the competence to reasonably well and easily do that - even via support request or the like (not a great sign). Sounds rather like lower-level folks (and they may lack the higher), "pushing buttons" - selecting among probably the only menu options they've given to such folks - in order to at least roughly/grossly (but not well at all) attempt to implement what they think the customer wants.
That's part of it -- and we've all seen this at support organisations suffering from the race to the bottom _including_ outsourcing to whatever nominally English-speaking country offers the lowest-paid serfs: Indeed, those techs are empowered only to do certain rote tasks, but, in the worst examples, they are also told to stick to "script" answers only -- often told they'll be fired if they improvise.
The handling of my support ticket seemed like a classic: He recited a rote "script" about the reasons why automated renewals works for one year only, even though I'd asked about _manual_ extension, because it was the closest match. It's also telling that, when I rejected that answer, saying it was nowhere near an answer to my request, I got utter silence -- because the trail of rote answers had run out.
Or Joker.com https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=system:registrars#jokercom being grossly incapable of even updating a single IPv4 glue record.
Out of curiosity, has this been re-checked? When I discovered that to my indignation, it was a long time ago. Probably about 20 years ago.
[NetSol:]
Anyway, did that on a single one-shot basis ... and I think I did that by phone - in any case, never asked for my card data to be added on to the (not my) account, etc. ... yet, alas, they stuck it on there and enabled auto-renew on it. Oh, and the kicker ... they wouldn't let me take it off of there! They'd only let the registrant remove my credit card from the billing or automatic renewal on the account! Ugh!
Cheryl Morris, my mother-in-law, got vampirised by "Register.com", which IIRC is the same bunch of pirates, and what you describe was among the several outrages that I got her away from by transferring her (remaining) domain to... irony alert... IWantMyName.
Deirdre also has hers at the latter. I see more moves to Gandi in the near future, assuming I am not unpleasantly surprised (thought Deirdre will need to make up her own mind).
I don't see an option for multiple years though ... and ... no, it won't let me add that exact same item multiple times to the shopping cart ... ah, yes, ... click wee bit further on shopping cart towards checkout ... and can select integral number of years, so could extend that one by anywhere from 1 to 8 years.
More than good enough.
So ... already sounding helluva lot easier than your losing registrar? :-)
So far, so good.