1&1 Internet Are A Disgrace
There are not many times that I feel the need to publicly demonstrate my dissatisfaction at someone or something, however with 1&1 in this instance I am making a massive exception. The culprit is 1&1 Internet and they are a disgrace to the web hosting and domain name industry. I have been a customer with 1&1 Internet for quite a few years now and never have I been treated so badly, not just by 1 and 1 but by any company I have ever dealt with. Yes they are THE WORST.
So what has happened?
It started on the 17th of January when I transferred the domain name Rottweilers.co.uk to them and since then it has just been a complete sham. I am waiting to report on this officially once the issue is resolved by 1&1 Internet but to give you a brief overview I have over 100 domains currently with registration errors against them which I cannot use. My website Rottweilers.co.uk does not resolve and has dropped out the SERPs meaning I am losing daily revenue. 1&1 Internet have continued to bill me for over £200 of renewals when I asked them to stop until the matter was resolved. After more than 10 telephone conversations total several hours worth of my time, 17 emails back and forth to their technical support team, complaints team and even their legal team – from which I have yet to get a response after almost a week. Yes from their Legal team of all departments! This simply demonstrates that 1 and 1 Internet are not concerned in the slightest about their customers.
What else is being said about 1&1 Internet
You only have search for 1&1 on Google to find a barrage of people complaining about their service. I am not the first and I am sure, unless they undergo a significant shift in their management, I will not be the last.
What Next?
Today I have written 1&1 Internet a Letter Before Action giving them 7 days to resolve my matter before I begin legal proceedings against them to recover my costs and loss of income. I will be making public every email and record of my conversations with 1and1 Internet since this matter started on the 17th January 2011 for everyone to see exactly how this company operates towards its customers.
How can you help me get 1 and 1 to listen?
It is time that 1&1 Internet were held accountable for their customer service failings and that their UK management realise they cannot hide behind overseas call centres when people wish to complain about their services.
If you have experienced the poor levels of service that I am experiencing at the moment with 1&1 Internet please add your comments below and link back to this page.
16th Feb 2011 – 1 and 1 Update
Well it has been about a week since I created this post, thank you to every one for your support so far. Here’s a brief update on 1&1′s lack of customer service:
5th of Feb I sent a “7 day before legal action” letter to the complaints and legal dept of 1&1 saying that I will be taking legal action if they do not resolve the issue and refund my domain renewals since the start of Jan 2011 – I didn’t get a response to this letter.
7th of Feb – I receive a response to a previous email, there have been many saying they will refund £43 of my £230+ worth of renewals…what?!
Since then I have contacting Nominet who in turn have contacted 1 and 1 on my behalf to see if they can resolve the issue and STILL NO RESPONSE
I have been tweeting @1and1_uk on Twitter since this whole saga began and not once have they bothered to respond so I have taken further action and that was to change my debit card details so they can no longer bill me. My first renewal got declined today and guess what? Yes, they contacted me straight away saying I needed to make payment to avoid disruption to my sevvice…funny that!
I have just emailed their social media account (socialmedia@1and1.co.uk) in a last ditch effort to get someone from their UK head office to contact me before I get my solictors involved now that I am back from New York. They ha more than the seven days to come back to me and I feel completely justified when I say that taking 4 weeks to resolve an issue which I even know the answer too is just a disgrace.
So please, please help me to raise other people awareness of 1 and 1 internet’s terrible customer service to people who may be considering using them, by linking to my post and pushing it higher up the search engines!
Once I have closure on this issue I will be publishing all correspondence regarding this episode on my blog so you can see all the intimate details.
Oh and today I have also begun transferring my domains over to Domain Monster, because unlike 1&1, they actually have a UK based contact centre that cares about its customers.
Thank you for your support
Gary
125 Comments to 1&1 Internet Are A Disgrace
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About Me
Hi, I'm Gary Taylor. I have been developing domain names since 2002. In 2008 I won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Midlands Business Awards. I am an industry blogger and have recently spoken at conferences like ThinkVisibility.com and SAScon.co.uk. I live in Birmingham with my dog Alfie and love to play the guitar. You can follow me on Twitter or connect with me on Linked In.
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Hi guys. I am sorry to have add my bad experience with these bastards. I can not be polite because i have nervous break down with the problem. They took my £43 for the domains and now because i complain for the service they cancelled everythinf and all my work in the website is lost and probably i’ll lost my 5 domains because they are not willing to transfer.
Now i’ll open my case in paypal. At least i haven’t lost more money yet but i’ll make sure paypal don’t pay more money to this company.
I hope this blog make people aware about them. I think this company should be band in internet.
Have used 1&1 in the past and been happy. But recently had two customers who have tried to transfer their domain registrations to 1&1 and complete disaster. Support totally useless, providing instructions that just do NOT work. They are a complete shambles. Will not be encouraging any more customers to go to 1&1 and will move as many as possible away just as soon as we can find a reliable company. Any suggestions.
Hi there
I am amused that when I type ’1 and 1 contact number’ into Google a) nothing comes up for them where I can actually call a HUMAN BEING to complain, and b) this blog was 4th item on the Google list. Well done.
I am HUGELY appalled by 1and1 and was on the phone (again) to them today for 15 minutes practically begging to be put through to someone in their customer complaints department. Apparently, there was no manager to help me out either. The list of problems I have had with them is truly endless and they are an embarrassment to say the least. I am the CEO and Founder of my own company and all the problems were escalated to me but apparently phoning them myself had no impact, despite me reeling off the list of issues we’ve had here.
Their website builder ‘tool’ is laughable and so is their ‘service;…I just wish I new about WordPress before I bought our URL’s with 1and1. Never ever again.
Let me know if you manage to get through to anyone decent in 1and1 that can help you.
Betty
I have to agree 1&1 are the worst company I have ever dealt with.
I agree about 1&1 I made an error when setting up my website and tried sorting out why I was billed 35.83 x 2 every 6 months wrote just got an abrupt reply back basically saying my fault. They would mot listen and thus now costing my twice as much fro my website as was originally all thay I wanted was to promote our community Centre and as a Charity we could ill afford the extra cost. There Customer service is awful and no sympathy once the 2 years is up I will create a new website wiht another service provider.
I’ve been trying for weeks to cancel my VPS with 1and1. I managed to transfer all but 2 of my domains out using their cancellation portal. When trying to transfer the remaining two, I kept getting an error message to say that they were external domains, which they weren’t. This also prevented me from cancelling my VPS.
I then spent over 3 weeks emailing and calling their ‘support’ to no avail, so logged into Nominet and forced the transfer of the two domains to a new registrar (at £12 per domain!).
Now i’m still unable to cancel my VPS, which i’ve raised numerous times, and have subsequently entered a new billing period which they’ve invoiced for.
1and1 seem to go out of their way to stop you from cancelling a service, and i’ll be taking action accordingly if they continue to bill me.
To be continued….
I tried to cancel my website by phone and email but they wouldn’t close it. They would only close it if I sent them a letter. I sent the letter and then 3 months later I got a letter from 1&1 demanding the 3 months after I sent them the letter. I told them as oper my ohone call, email and letter that the account was closed. they denies receiving the letter and sent me to debt collection so I had to pay. Sent cancellation letter by recorded delivery…my fault should have done that the first time. Horrible company and people.
Numerous web applications and e-commercs sites hosted under a .net hosting package.
!and1 decide to update their servers from 2003 to 2008, surprise, on updating everything .net stoops working! I’m now 72 hours in, customers complaining every hour or so (as expected) due to lost revenue from e-commerce sites, client perception being ruined etc etc.
Issue was raised with 1and1 immediately, simply looks like a case of re-creating the application folders on the IIS to me. Still no resolve from them.
Utter cowboys. Will be looking to take action against them to recover losses incurred.
Andy
I just want to add my voice to all the complaints about 1&1. People should be warned about their FREE TRIALS and told not to sign up and give them their credit card. I signed up for a trial, cancelled it before it expired because I didn’t like the service and they still got my money. They have not replied to any of my complaints nor returned my money, of course.
Sadly, some journalist from the Daily Telegraph wrote a highly complimentary article about them in the last 3 months. I saw it and now I can’t find it. On the comments box online there were some angry responses from people.
I am still trying to get the article. If you find it, please email it to me. That journalist needs to know that he didn’t do his research and that by talking favourably about this non-company with agents in the Philippines and the USA, he is likely to increase the number of victims of their tactics.
Thanks
1&1 are without a doubt the worst company in the world for customer service. I hope that by writing this they are closer to going out of business. We have a dedicated server with them and without warning they have closed down our servers we have thousands of users and corporate accounts on our web service. We are looking to move companies and as soon as we have another company lined up we will move.
What can i do about 1and1??? they have got their collections agency to harass me for £61 they say i owe them. I tried to cancel my services with 1and1 (only because i no longer wanted to run my site) via their website but it would not let me, i tried numerous times and i could not cancel. i even emailed all their depts telling them i want to cancel, i also could not cancel by phone! i ended up removing the paypal payments and now the are saying i owe them. there customer service is appalling. i dont think they actually read the emails i send them. i told them their website wouldn’t work and they told me… to cancel using their website!! how helpful. they did not even try helping me one bit. not i have to pay £61 to collections agency!
IF YOU ARE READING THIS BECAUSE YOU ARE THINKING OF USING 1AND1 1&1 PLEASE FORGET THAT IDEA, ERASE ALL THOUGHTS OF USING THEIR SERVICES FROM YOUR MIND THEY ARE THE WORST COMPANY ON THE PLANET! DO NOT USE!
Awful company!!!
I realised how crap this company was about 1 year ago. After crap service and numerous calls to foreign call centres I cancelled my hosting package and moved the domains I was using to another provider (Bluehost). I recently got a bill from 1and1 for a Beginner hosting package (which I cancelled aboout 1 year ago) and for 2 domains that I did not move. To be honest I wasn’t too bothered about the domains when I moved services, I assumed they would expire if I did nothing – apparently they renew on a 2 year cycle. Luckily I have changed banks recently so 1and1 have been unable to automatically charge me for the services we are arguing over. I am offering to pay for the 2 domains, they want me to pay for these and for the hosting service I cancelled around 1 year ago. They are thretening to pass my debt on to a debt collection agency – exciting times!
Thanks Richard
It appears from many of the comments and feedback that I have had on this post that 1&1′s default approach if you have a dispute is to threaten that they will pass you onto their debt collection agency.
The foreign call centres are very poor at customer service in my experience of 1&1. There have been many time I have been on the phone to them for quite some time and failed to have issues resolved as you can see from the updates on my post.
I moved most of my domains to Domain Monster after the problems I had and have not had any issues with Domain Monster at all. Their call centre is based in the UK too which is great!
Best
Gary
[...] 1&1 apologise for treating so many customers like shit – ok a little ambitious but you never know! [...]
I certainly agree. 1 and 1 has VERY poor customer service. Wish I had never bought domains from them.
Spent about 2 days in total trying to sort things out with them – they finally agreed to let me pay half of everything they claimed I owed – which I did yesterday by bank transfer. It had got to a point where I couldn’t be bothered argueing anymore and didn’t want the hassle of debt recovery people. The staff on the phone are absolutely useless – I had to spell out my password (phonetically 6 times to one person, another one gave me an email address to contact as “1 and 1 Internet ltd”.
Just when I though everything was sorted I got a letter through the door this morning (dated 02/01) regarding another domain I have with them (obviously one I registered a few days later than the others). Have now wasted another 2 hours cancelling and paying for this one. You would have thought of the 50+ people I had spoken to in an attempt to cancel absolutely everything I had with them and pay off what I owed, someone would have the foresight to mention this other domain on their system.
Anyway….
Hopefully I have spoken to 1 and 1 for the last time and I can move on with a decent provider.
Good luck people, and STEER CLEAR OF 1 AND 1 INTERNET!!!!
Cheers
Richard
I saw 1 & 1 advert advertising a beginner package for £6 a month registered 26 Dec 2010 tried to set up a website but was too complicated for me. Beginning of January 2011 got a pre notifaction of a direct debit payment of £54 – I immediately cancelled the direct debit and 1 & 1 account and phoned them and was told that as I hadn’t cancelled within 7 days this amount was payable and they would place it in the hands of debt collectors – so I reluctantly paid. I like to think that I am pretty careful with internet sites but with 1 & 1 I feel completely conned from their misleading advertisment. I have just had another bill in for £35 which I have no intention of paying. Do not touch this company with a barge pole. I never even got as far a setting up a website – was with them for just over a week and it cost me £54!!!
We have been experiencing enormous problems with 1and1 aka Schlund AG and we advise all our customers to avoid them like the plague.
Some of the problems experienced: A number of our domains some of which are trademarked have been cancelled without our knowledge, their sister company http://www.domcollect.com based in Switzerland where the reach of the EU law can not touch, have had the domains paid in advance and registered to us transferred to themselves. DomCollect.com have then informed us they have paid for the domain names when in fact 1and1 are transferring the domain names to domcollect.com.
We have for the last 4 months been unable to upload any new webpages or websites despite the advice of the support staff we have followed their instructions but are still unable to update any webpages.
Now 1and1 just ignore our support requests or ever time we talk to someone on the phone becuase its a different individual each time we have to keep starting from the beginning every time resulting in getting no where.
We have also tried to move domain names away but 1and1 refuse to release them despite the email confirmations from their automated system. We have now engaged solicitors to deal with the matter as its costing the company money as the internet is our primary sales channel. We have complaints filed with Nominet the UK domain name register and ICANN as well.
All I can say is stay away from 1and1.co.uk!
Finally after years of aggro and run ins with Arvarto Finance I managed to make my escape from 1&1 Internet with the aid of ‘Nominet’ who were able to cancel my two Domains that I had with them. It was like pulling the rug out from undeath them…excellent!..It cost £12.00 but it was money so well spent.
Gary, I hope that you don’t mind but I would like people to see something that was posted on the ‘Moneysaving expert site from the middle of last year. It is rather upsetting but it will give people a good idea of how this company operates and the lengths they go to make money and complicate peoples lives…..Quite shocking really, unfortunately I don’t know how the situation resolves……..
My mum died in April and unbeknown to us she had a domain name registered with 1&1. A few weeks ago I went to check on her house and in the post was a letter saying her direct debit hadn’t gone through. I phoned them up and explained I didn’t know she had an account or I would have contacted them, told them she had died in April (the bill was from May) and asked if they could close the account. They asked if I could email a copy of her death cert to the billing dept. Ok no problem there.
Today I got an email saying that the death cert wasn’t enough and I would have to follow a whole list of logging on to her account and pushing this and that or the account would remain open. I wrote back saying I can’t do this because I don’t know any of her log on details.
They wrote again saying that I would then have to email again with a certified copy of mums death certificate, a copy of her ID and a copy of my ID before they would cancel. I was pretty livid by now. I wrote back and told them that the certificate I had already emailed them was a certified copy and that I had cancelled her council tax, gas, electric, water, car insurance, driving license, passport and mobile and not one of these had asked for further ID and most hadn’t even asked to see the death cert.
They have now written again saying fine I don’t need to see the death cert again but they want ID. Do they have a right to see these other things? I certainly don’t know why they should need to see my ID – I don’t even have an account with them. I have no ID of my mums and can’t bear going into her house as it has me in floods of tears. Why would they need stuff that even the goverment offices don’t ask for? I wish I had never rung them up in the first place and just let them try to get a court order against a deceased person instead. What should I do? I really don’t think it’s right that they ask for more ID – what will happen if I just ignore them?
I am just reposting on this thread because I didn’t contact 1&1 again and now I have just gone to check on mums house (it’s empty so I pop in every few weeks to check it over) and found a debt collection agency letter. I can’t believe 1&1 have instructed a debt agency after they have seen mums death certificate! I don’t even think there is a debt because she paid monthly and the charge was for the month after she died and as it is £17.96 and they know she is dead it seems pretty sick to send baliffs in. I have emailed the debt agancy saying she was dead and 1&1 had seen the certificate, and I attatched a copy to the baliff agency too – is this going to be the end of it?
I agree with you totally. The support is just useless and they give you the run around for days for the smallest issues. They are just the WORST. I am moving to other hosting company after years with 1and1. I guess they got just too big and disorganized.
Hi Guys,
Another one for the pile…
Tried to cancel my account with them in march 2010, but got no response. Several emails later, was contacted and was instructed to use their portal to cancel. The portal would only alow me to cancel in a few weeks ahead… so I thought all was done.
Shortly afterwards, I had £46 taken from my debit card, sending my bank account into the red incurring bank charges.
Several emails to 1&1 complaining, led to only one reply- you are now into the next billing cycle and must pay.
They (1&1)have cancelled my account, and my next task was to seek help from my bank.
A call to Lloyds TSB customer complaints led the bank reclaiming the money back via Visa as I was told that 1&1 should not have taken funds AFTER I requested them not to, and the funds returned to my account & all bank charges cancelled (Very helpful people at Lloyds tsb).
This week (Feb 2011) have rceived several emails and letters saying they will suspend my account, which will be interesting as they have already cancelled it, and demanding the £46 or will add £15 for debt collection agency.
I guess the war starts all over again…
Will email them shortly to remind them of previous goings on, and will now start writing to them and charge them £12 per letter (admin fee), judging by their lack of customer svc, I should be quids in, in a few months!
Absolutley disgusted at 1&1 service, someone should warn everyone about this host. I cancelled my account after refusing to pay a bill that was outstanding for a service i did not require. 12 months later i get another invoice for the account i cancelled. After speaking to them i was told i never cancelled the account despite them loggin my call and i should have checked for a cancellation e-mail they never sent, therefore i have been billed again for something personaly cancelled. im the main account holder. The whole experience is terrible, the website was always down, the customer service people do not help at all. the billing department hang up over and over agian after being on hold for 10 mins at a time. . . THANK GOD THIS NIGHTMARE IS OVER. . . or is it till i get my next bill in 12 months. BEWARE DO NOT SIGN UP!!!!
Well it is very disturbing that I am not the only person who is having problems with 1and1 since the da I built my website with there design and build software nothing has worked correctly.
I initially built an affiliate shopping mall with affiliate banners ect only one of the banners functioned correctly and I have requested cancellation of their service as I wanted to transfer my domains to another provider .
I also went for the busIness package which is £29.99p per month and addition SEO £29.99P per quarter .
There customer service is useless and outside of the UK I have spent a fortune on phone calls ect endeavouring to sort this matter out and in the end I cancelled my paypal payments and told them I would not pay any further payments until this was sorted out.
Subsequently I have letters from legal collection department I will be writting back to let them know I will see them in court .
I have 25 further domains which they will not transfer due to outstanding amount
regards
Frank
I wish I had found this site prior to purchasing 1&1 internet service last summer. They continue to screw up billing payments and then charge 12 euro on each of their failures. Then they sent their screw ups to a collection agency with huge fines on top of their 12 euro fine for payments not going through. Before you know it they will be billing you for 85 euros for collection fees. If you pay them you’ll only get charged more fees! This is a no win situation. After talking for over an hour on the phone they had no idea where the extra fees where coming from. They even hung up once by ‘accident’. They are incompetent! If anyone knows a way to deal with corrupt businesses like this in Germany please let other know.
Have any of you gone through Trading Standards? Swiss hidey-hole or not, they are still trading here and can be stopped.
If you ALL complain to Trading Standards summat will get done, especially if you co-ordinate! I takes time & effort, but the result will be worth it.
All the best with your battles, all of you.