I wonder if GoDaddy's WHOIS server is just applying rate limiting. I suspect their transfers are spiking after the SOPA aftermath. Namecheap's servers might have been sending a fairly consistent level of WHOIS queries that would not be anomalous but after the coupon and lots of press about Namecheap that threshold might have been exceeded several times over.
Now GoDaddy should have cleared up the WHOIS throttles by now. But I can understand there being a temporary issue with mass transfers like this.
