Not to mention there might be additional fees or registration costs to transfer the domains from one person to another, then back again.
No vod, I have done a domain transfer it doesn't cost you anything but needs detailed information about the user you're transferring to and transferring from. Like not only email address but birthdate etc is verified and also it doesn't happen instantly, it takes a week or at least 24 hours. I have done this at godaddy, not sure about other hosting.
That's because you were using GoDaddy; have you ever tried transferring domains to others via other domain name registrars? They typically charge a mandatory fee to transfer it (I believe it's to extend the domain by one year, but it's required). Only domain registrars such as Namecheap, GoDaddy, and a few others feature free domain name transfers
within their clients.