1&1 is the worst online company I have ever had to deal with. The sad part of it is I already knew this and still signed up a for another hosting account with them. It all started with me wanting to conserve some resources on the VPS where I host my DJ Forum. Figuring I’d move my blog (bandwidth eater), parked domains, and a few other sites to an another host so I decided to start a new hosting account with DreamHost for this purpose. I’ve had history with DreamHost too but overall they’re a decent host and work with their customers.
Long story short I had issues with DreamHost it took them over a week to get my domain email working properly, I was getting frustrated so two days ago I opened a new hosting account with 1&1 at an introductory price. This hosting plan was supposed to be an upgrade to my current account where I have about 50 domains registered. Here’s where the first thing went wrong, they added a new contract to my account instead of upgrading my current contract. Okay no problem so I’ll just add the domains as additional hosted domains since they’re already registered at 1and1. The hosting plan came with 100 “add-on” domains, these are domains that are registered elsewhere but hosted at 1and1. I go to add the first domain registered at 1and1 that I want to host on another 1and1 contract under the same customer number (confused yet? Yeah that’s 1&1′s plan all along.) Their control panel won’t let me select host as additional domain it will only let me move it to the new hosting package. Okay that’s fine since I plan on keeping both contracts active. I select move it to this package, now I’m hit with a little check box that I have to check “I understand that my credit card will be charged for this item”. Huh? Wait..What? I already own the domain, why would you charge me to move it? No other registrar does that. Apparently 1&1 wants to charge me a full year’s registration fee to move the domain to another account I own and then not extend the domain’s expiration date by another year. What the fuck? in plain English. So, I cancel that.
Two letters to their “support” department trying to get them to merge the two contracts goes on unanswered. A third letter demanding cancellation of the hosting package gets the standard canned response, directing me to go to cancel.1and1.com. I’ve been through this cancellation process before, it’s convoluted and deliberately confusing. Having been through this before it’s a breeze for the seasoned 1and1 run around professional. I select the hosting contract and hit cancel entire package. Please check your email for a confirmation link, okay I get the confirmation link click it. Easy enough right?
Nope I get your package will be canceled February 19, 2009. Huh? Now I realize to get the promotional price that I had to lock into a time commitment, 1 year. Not a problem but I’m well with their 90 day money back guarantee period it should of been deactivated and canceled on the spot. An email to support explaining the whole situation gets a canned response to contact the billing department. Which I just wrote, I’ll update when I get a response.
As I write this my bank account has been debited $6 on 4 separate occasions from 1&1. $6 dollars is their ghost charge, they charge it and then put the money back to confirm funds availability. Let’s not mention the fact that every other company on the planet only debits a few cents or at most $1 to confirm the card is chargeable. 1&1 has seen fit to confirm my card 4 times, thus tieing up $24 that I could be putting to good use else where like DreamHost.
If it weren’t for my VPS’s host name being tied into a domain registered with 1&1, I would take a hit and loose 50 domains and cancel my entire account with 1&1 they’re just plain bad business people.
Coming soon: A tutorial on canceling 1&1 products.
Rotten, filthy, duplicitous bastards. They deserve to be drowned in monkey vomit. I contracted for a year’s service, never received the promised SW package. Got sick of chasing them down, didn’t bother canceling, credit card expired a year later…… I then get a letter from a collections agency 6 months later – 1and1 never sent me a letter, when the FOLLOWING YEAR’s renewal fee didn’t go through on the expired credit card they sent my account over to a collections agency without ever attempting to contact me. Hate them.
They pulled the “pay again to transfer domains between accounts” on me as well. I lost several pre-paid years worth of hosting on some of the names.
Damn nasty trick for a company that claims to be the biggest and best in Europe.
I have slowly been transferring all my domains (40+) out to another company. 1 and 1 leave transferred domains in your account under a different status…
GUESS WHAT: They still have been randomly charging me annual renewals for domains transferred out to other hosts! They have done this no less than 6 times so far and I have had to fight for a refund each time. Today I received an invoice including renewal of a domain transferred out over a year ago!!!
This has to be happening all over the place but people are probaly not noticing.
BEWARE EVERYONE: 1and1 are scum and should be reported!
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I’m having a lot of problems with 1&1 right now. Before ever once calling, or in some other way contacting me, they sent my account to NCO financial and are charging me a late fee (those ruddy bastards).
Right now I’m trying to battle them on this, and in the meantime (until they stop b*tching), I’m gonna be looking at other companies, like GoDaddy, DreamHost, et al. Please let me know of anything that may help.
Thanks for having this here entry.
1 and 1 hosting has the WORST customer service and tech support. I purchased a domain and hosting plan from them under my name, then my plan was to transfer ownership to my client after the project was completed. I have faxed the transfer form several times and they have not completed the transfer yet. It’s been several months now and they said they cannot give me a timeline. What kind of crappy service is that?!?… It’s a simple transfer of ownership! Additionally, the website has been down on numerous occassions. I understand this happens once in a while but it happens too much with 1 and 1 and I will never use them or recommend them to anyone.
I’d like to file a class action lawsuit against this company. Anyone with me?
1and1 is ruining people’s credit if people let their subscription expire. That’s crazy! I have plenty of hosting accounts on the internet, so I am very familiar with hosting policies. When a subscription expires, and your card is expired, your prepay doesn’t go through. That then cancels the account.
But I guess 1and1 finds that it’s profitable to send people to the NCO collection agency if they don’t prepay for the next term without clicking the ‘cancel’ button, which is not even available on your control panel!
Anyone else think this is an unfair business practice? I think we should contact the Abbey Spanier law firm and file a class action lawsuit!
I’ve been having the same problems. It all started for me after I canceled two domains I registered with them. I contacted support to reverse the cancellation since I requested the domains to cancel at the end of the billing cycle. They instructed me to reverse the cancellation on my own on their cancellation site. Well, the cancellation site would allow me to or even provide the option to reverse the cancellation so I emailed them back and they told me that they could reverse the cancellation but I would have to renew the domain contract and give up the remaining time left on the domains. I told him it would be a breach of contract for them to do that but they still declined. So I transferred all of my domains to another registrar. After the transfer was completed they charged my CC the renewal fee for two of the domains I transferred AFTER the transfer was complete!!! So frustrating.
They provide no way to cancel your account or remove your CC information. I’m want to do a charge back, but now that I’m reading that they will send it to collections I’m not sure. Any suggestions?
I like the law suite idea. 1and1 is very shady. I hope I can get my money back, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
I spoke to a 1and 1 technical services rep in April 2009 to cancel my account. I was led to believe that the account was canceled. I received no other communication. On Dec. 14, 2009 I received a collection letter from their NCO financial systems stating that I owed 1 and 1 $23.94 and $18.95. I called 1and1, they said my account was not fully closed, only the domain was canceled- not the hosting. I told them I had requested both (and why would I still host if the domain was canceled). Then they told me they sent me ONE email in October to let me know that I owed money. I did not receive this email. They did not send an invoice by mail, call me (they have my phone number) or attempt to contact me in any other way. The 1and1 sales representative acknowledged that I did cancel my domain in April, but hosting was not canceled. I said that when I communicated with Tech Services, I was led to believe that both had been canceled. Next she said that if I paid the collection company, then they would pro-rate back my refund based on the cancelation date. However, I still would have to pay the $18.95 late fee. Then they transferred me to NCO to make the payment over the phone, I found out that I had to pay another $8 to pay via credit card over the phone to ensure that the bill would not be reported to the credit agencies. I had been told by 1and1 that I would not be reported to the credit bureauy and that I had 30 days to pay this bill. 1and1 mislead me again & it cost me a total of $50.89.
THIS IS A CALL TO THE WHOLE INTERNET – 1AND1 CONTINUES THEIR FRAUDULENT ACTIVITIES WITH THE TACIT ACCEPTANCE OF ICANN. EVERYONE, LETS FLOOD ICANN WITH DEMANDS TO REVOKE 1AND1′S REGISTRAR STATUS. In my case, the put my account into collections, damaging my credit, without a single note of warning. My account was hooked up to PayPal, which was well funded, but I needed to “update my paypal permission” or something, which I already did a few months back, and which they DIDN’T give me any notice for.
Same exact thing happened to me. Never sent any notice that my credit card on file was not up to date. They emailed ONE crappy PDF invoice that went straight to my junk mail. Made NO other attempts in good faith to contact me, then suddenly bam, two collection notices, inlcuding one for the arbitrary 18.95 late fee. CROOKS. Called their customer support and i’m having a hard time remembering dealing with a company that was so flippant, unhelpful, and just downright rude.
Yeah I’m still moving away from 1&1 slowly but surely. They’re definetly some shady business people.
Have had loads of issues with 1and1, even though I was frustrated i remained polite to the rep and they still put the phone down on me! Its more like “we’ll take your money but wont give you anything in return” anyone considering 1and1.co.uk should run a mile!
@1&1 Class Action Law Suit
I am very interested in pursing class action against 1and1 internet. I’m willing to put money into it as well. I have spent over a year documenting their business practices include untold disputes with the credit card company (all of which I won). This is the WORST company I have EVER dealt with.. I’d like to uncover a relationship between them and NCO Financial, thier collection agency. It almost seems as if they’re in on things together (and they’re both located in the same area). I’m also contacting the FTC to file formal complaints as well as attorney’s general in the states in which I do business with 1&1. It’s time for them to be help accountale for their practices.
Watch an honest review of 1and1.com. They destroyed my company in just under a month and laughed about it. I cannot believe how websites their are dedicated so opposed to 1and1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZw31SRUk0
.-= Bill´s last blog ..Check Out the Latest Video =-.
I have used 1&1 for hosting for probably 4 years. I recently encountered one of my site’s IP addresses being blacklisted due to spam. I got the reports from MAPS which showed this being an issue since 2007, which explains the problems I was encountering with mail relaying through this IP address. When I sent the MAPS reports to 1&1 (and I might add, this is the second time I have contacted them about the issue in the last 3-4 months) this is the response I received:
“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has brought you. This is an issue with one of our IP address being blocked. This is already known and reported to our developers. At the moment, we do not have an estimated time frame for the fix however rest assured that we are currently working on a resolution. Once we have the fix, it will be implemented to all affected customers. To ensure that your case will be taken cared of, I will be adding the details of your case to the list of affected customers. We understand that you might be anxious to have this resolved as soon as possible so thank you so much for your patience while we work on the resolution.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.”
So they are telling me that I should just “wait for the fix”? Meantime my email gets bounced left and right…
I have given them a day/time when I expect a resolution, or I am transferring my domains and canceling my contracts with them for failure to perform. I am also going to go after them for a portion of my past payments for the same reason.
RM
hey dumbass, its called editing the DNS.
Gee thanks Philip… So helpful.
Here is the situation,
Yesterday someone exploit a vulnerability on my website were he/she was able to upload one malicious file. All this nightmare start happening around 6:00am, by 6:30am the attacker start sending thousands of email through 1and1 gateway mail. By 4:30 the account linked to the compromised website was locked by 1and1 abuse department. I notice the issue by 6:30 and i call they technical support. While on the phone, i got only apologize, and sorry – we don’t have access to remove the restriction, only the abuse department has. Ok, fine, transfer me over to your abuse department, i said – well, unfortunately the abuse department is closed till tomorrow, since they have a 9:00am to 5:00pm schedule. So, now at 6:30pm i found out that i can’t do nothing till next day – how messed up is that – 16 hours and 30 minutes till the department opens. So, i asked, is the a way to contact them directly? Yes, i got as an answer, and i got the 877-206-4253 . After i hang up with the tech department i called that number to find out that actually that number is they billing department. I called back the 1and1 tech department, and tell them that i got the 877-206-4253 as the phone number for abuse department from them, and i expected to hear a generic message from the abuse department, but they ensured me that the abuse department use same number. Ok, so now, i got mad that i have to wait 16:30 hours. Meanwhile i send an email to [email protected] to let them know that in such a case like this i wasn’t notified over the phone, were seamed to be a such an emergency going on with my web space.
Here is the replay from them:
#########
We understand you’ve been upset with the functionality of our anti-spam security systems mistargetting you. This is something that I can only apologize for. This is an aspect of our service that we’re always trying to improve. This is why your feedback is so important to us. We can now look through and see where and if we made mistakes. Then, we can look into making sure that this doesn’t happen again. Again, we can only apologize for this frustration that you’ve suffered. We will continue to work on this to serve you better.
I can see that there is a ticket with our abuse team regarding this. There are abuse agents available 24 hours a day, so they will be able to address your issue faster than you have assumed. We hope that you do not leave 1and1, and are willing to do what we can to assist you here.
Our sincerest apologies again and thank you for using 1and1.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.”
#########
Again, another department another misleading information and full of lies,
Notice were was mentioned quote “There are abuse agents available 24 hours a day, so they will be able to address your issue faster than you have assumed.” this pissed me off way beyond my expectation.
Here is my replay to that message at 10:31pm:
##########
Thank you for replaying with same incompetence from department to department. You guys are all the same there, working for 1and1, untrained properly and giving misleading information.
How can you lie (1and1 employee) that there are abuse agents working 24/7 when the abuse department works 9am to 5pm? Oh, i’m sorry maybe that’s how you got trained to say. In reality, you should know that that department is closed after 5pm – forget weekends.
Please cut the crap, and make it happen to have my websites up an running ASAP. Nobody from any of your departments had the courtesy to call me IF there was a such an emergency. I know in reality is just generic one-man-judgment hidden from umbrella of “the abuse department” – yeah right – like that will gonna fly.
And by the way, I didn’t ASSUMED that the ABUSE DEPARTMENT is closed after 5PM – your tech department told me that on the phone – so you can know how well you guys communicate there.
As much as 1and1 got big from 1988, can go down as well by continuing this type of crappy relation with they customers.
Have a boring day!
########
As expected, no reply.
Now, horror show part II.
Today 6/9/2011, 9:00am, i call the “Abuse Department” aka “Billing Department” at 877-206-4253, someone answers, and i ask nicely to be transferred to they abuse department since this is not a billing issue that i’m having, and here is how this conversation went:
Me: After 10 minutes of waiting to be transferred to they abuse department, i ask the person on the phone what takes so long to be transferred?
1and1 employee’s answer: we are looking into your account with the abuse agent
me: i didn’t ask you to look into my problems, since never even mention what problem i have to you, i asked you to put me in contact with your abuse department, i have nothing to do with you
1and1 employee’s answer: sir, we are looking into your account with someone from abuse department
me: look, i wanna speak with someone from that department, what’s so hard to be transferred over?
1and1 employee’s answer: the abuse department can’t accept your call yet, but we are looking into “this” (which i never mention to this guy ever the reason of my phone call) right now with someone from abuse department, please be wait…
—-another 10 minutes pass by (20 minutes total by now on the phone)—
me: what type of support is this if you can’t transfer me over to the other department ?
1and1 employee’s answer: sir, your account has been unlocked and as of right now you can access your websites.
me: aham, so basically your billing department is also the abuse department also? How messed up is that to have to wait 16 hours and 30 minutes for your department to be operational, simply because someone did a stupid mistake yesterday locking my account at 4:30pm 30 minutes before you guys went home…
1and1 employee’s answer: sir … interrupted by the supervisor
1and1 employee’s supervisor: He never said his name, but before he hang up IN MY FACE he said – I’M THE SUPERVISOR HERE, AND YOU (ME) ARE HARASSING MY REPRESENTATIVE – AND BANG HE HANG UP.
Now, lent me tell you mister whatever your name is, SHAME ON YOU to say something like this to a customer with more then 6 years of relation.
So, people you be the judge.
As per the hacker, that find himself, herself conformable playing through my websites – what was taking care of officially.
His name is Damien Christopher
https://www.facebook.com/people/Damien-D-chan-Christopher/748024595?sk=info
1 and 1 are good in some ways. They offer low prices at the beginning. But they really make me drink too much coffee. Every time I click on a button in the control panel, I have to go make some more coffee before any thing shows up. Absolutely useless. A waste of time.
Theie previous Control Panel was better. The new one sucks.
Agreed. The both suck but the old one was the lesser of two evils, IMHO.
Well, it looks like I’ve been hit by the 1and1 SUCKS syndrome as well.
I found out recently they were charging me every year for 3 different domains I transferred to them from another registrar (to try and consolidate my domains) where I had paid for several years in advance to the previous registrar (good up through 2014) yet 1and1 charged me for the past 6 years for each of those without increasing the expiration date. Here’s their bullshit email response:
————————————————–
Dear customer,
Thank you for contacting us.
Our policy is that just because you purchase time at a differing registrar, we do not honor that time because it was paid to a different company other than us. As such, even when the domain is not up for renewal, we charge the annual fee as provide the maintenance and dns management for it.
If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.
–
Sincerely
Christopher Flagg
1&1 Internet Inc.
You can also contact us via phone at (877) 300-8316
from 9am till 5pm EST Monday to Friday
————————————————–
These people are nothing more than crooks. I’m cancelling my business account, and transferring all of my domains away from them today!
This is quite common. You paid another registrar, and then you transferred the name to 1and1. You have to pay them too, no matter the “prepaid” amount at the first, as your contract was originally with them, and you start a new one with the second. I don’t know of any company/registrar that would honor the prepaid amount from the first. You might be buying a domain name, but you are paying the registrar to actually set it up and pay its fees, so anytime you transfer, you have to pay up again. This isn’t just a 1and1 thing… I’ve registered and transferred domains a lot (to and away from 1and1); they all do that.
1and1 is virtually a criminal enterprise. Years ago I purchased a few new websites – rather than combine them with my existing account (cheaper) they saw fit to open a new account. SO, after a year or so I tried to cancel several – no dice. You simply CANNOT cancel – a year of toying with me finally let me cancel and ‘combine’ remaining domains. So this year I get a bill collection notice that my second account (which apparently was never combined…despite months of wrangling with them…surprise?) was overdue. They sent a notice to one of the domains I had cancelled….nice…no notice…and credit card had expired. SO they took it upon themselves to renew the account on their own and to send the bill to the NCO collection agency….all with NO notification to me. It was my ‘fault’ for not realizing that they never bothered to combine accounts or to notify me that the domain they themselves cancelled was my contact info. Now I’m paying for an account I can’t use and can’t transfer. WORD TO THE WISE: DON’T. Just find a company that’s got some semblance of customer service and doesn’t optimize ripping off their clients with billing schemes that serve only to enrich themselves. MOVE ELSEWHERE – nothing could be as bad as 1and1. I’m writing this between trying to call them as their customer service number now just hangs up after a few rings – guess that’s an improvement over answering and lying!
I have over a hundred domain names… and slowly have been changing the dns on most of them to point to Hostgator where I moved most of my sites. My 1and1 hosting was going down far too often. I started tracking it with pingdom and reported the findings to 1and 1. They gave me the royal run around. Then, finally when my sites went down and I called them. They said… ‘oh, the server is rebooting’. I said “I know, I’ve been complaining about this for 2 months’. So then they moved all my sites to a new server without telling me which resulting in all of my sites being down for a full day… ALL DAY… instead of telling me in advance that they were going to do. I would have had them do it over night. Unfortunately, I have too many domains to easily transfer, but at least changing the dns works without any hitches so I can host the sites on hostgator.
The problem with 1and1 is technology. Theirs sucks. Don’t go with 1 and 1.
Been a customer of 1and1 for 10 years. Will NEVER put any mission critical application on their servers. When the servers work, it works like a charm. However, when there are issues, it takes 1and1 5-6 days to recover.
1and1 was one of my worst experiences – they banned my IP and after declaring it’s gonna take them 4 hours to reopen it in the end it took forever.
The customer service is careless, rude and non-professional, so don’t expect a personalized attitude or empathy of any kind. You’ll be ripped off – just don’t get caught.
The 1and1 webmail just went away. I called support and they didn’t know about it until he put me on hold and checked. Now the webmail page says it will be down for 8 hours for “software update.” 1and1 never sent an email notice. Their support staff wasn’t even told about the “software update.” I won’t be able to complete a product registration by e-mail. Because 1and1 doesn’t inform customers of planned downtime I have to wait 6 more hours to get my email but then I won’t have the time to finish this job.
I delight in, lead to I discovered just what I used to be looking for.
You have ended my 4 day long hunt! God Bless
you man. Have a great day. Bye