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. Domain Monster were highly recommended by me in my “unofficial top ten” domain name registration companies.
Thank you for your support
Gary
144 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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[...] I have copied in your CEO to this email and provided the link to my blog (http://www.3ac.co.uk/1-and-1-internet-are-a-disgrace) which documents everything since the 19th January with regards to this situation. As you can see [...]
Hi Gary,
I have over the last 6 or 8 weeks had numrous problems with 1 and 1 Internet. Each time I have contacted customer support their initial reaction is always to deny any responsibility for whatever the issue happens to be, and in most cases, not only not offer any help whatsoever in resolving the issue, but worse than that, not even understanding what the issue is!
The issues I have had are as follows;
1. POP3 connections, we operate a Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium which has exchange server built in, we are using this function so therefore wanted to connect the 1 and 1 email accounts to our exchange users (we only have 12!)
We were struggling to make this work, so contacted 1 and 1 Customer Support, which as with all other calls, the initial reaction was to say it wasnt a 1 and 1 problem, then the representitive went on to say they didnt know what Exchange was! Clearly they offered no help whatsoever in resolving the issue, but we did manage to solve that one ourselves!
2. Ove a period of 24 hours we had no less than 5 hacks of our websites and code, somehow a piece of javascript which called a spurious function on a server somewhere in Eastern Eurpoe was being injected into any of our files which had the name of either index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.html, default.htm and default.php.
Once we realised we had a problem (Google search came up and said that our site was a potential danger to client computers!) we found the offending files and restored to a clean version from a backup. Within an hour of doing so, the infection was back. This happened a couple of times before I got fed up and conacted 1 and 1 Customer Support.
Now bearing in mind that files were being infected in folders on our shared space at 1 and 1 which actually werent even part of a website and had no web links to them. Of course once again, 1 and 1 were very quick to deny responsibility, but they did offer to send me an email with details on how to modify the php and html files to remove the infection, something we were already well versed in and had actually already done about 5 times at that point! So once again, totally useless support!
Mysteriously though, not long after the call, the infections suddenly stopped…….
3. We get a weekly report of the statistics on our 3 main websites, these show the weekly hit rate, pages views and referers etc. This worked fine for at least 3 years, then suddenly we get one week where only part of the Sunday was being reported and all the other days for that week were 0!
Once again, a call to 1 and 1 Customer Support ensued, I was told, as always by a very insistant representitive that it wasnt a 1 and 1 problem, and that it was my problem for not setting up the reports properly. I also pointed out that the online statistics were looking reasonable, so it was just the email reports that werent!
When I explained that the reports had been there for years and had always been fine up to this point, and I also pointed out that the problems with the reporting mysteriously started at the same time they did their Control Panel upgrade!
The end result of this is that their Control Panel upgrade process is flawed to the extent that any regularly emailed statistic reports simply vanish from the system. Having recreated them I now get 2, well 1 and a half sets to be precise, as one set, the new ones I recreated work ok, but then I still get emails from the original set that simply says there have been no visitors to the sites in that time period, therefore no report has been produced!
This is something that has never been fully resolved, despite at least 3 calls to 1 and 1 Customer Services…..
4. The latest one, this morning in fact, I went on to my ecommerce site to check a product, to be confronted with a screen telling me that the database server cannot be contacted because there are too many connections……
Obviously it is a 1 and 1 hosting server and a separate server used to store the MySQL database (this too is a bone of contention as there is no direct contact to the database server, this means my ecommerce and accounting systems integration process is a real nause!)
So, once again, I contacted 1 and 1 Customer Services, as ever, the inital reaction from the representitive was that there must be a problem with my php code……..
I then informed the chap that this code had been running quite happily for the last year or so and that this was the first time I had had this particular issue.
The chap then suggested I simply create a new database and used that instead, oh yeah, I said and how do you propose I migrate all the websites settings, 6,500 products, customers, orders and all the other gumph that comes with an ecommerce site to the new database?!
Within a few seconds, after having thought about it, the representitive then admitted that 1 and 1 were actually doing upgrades on their MySQL servers and I could expect them to be going up and down for at least 2 or 3 hours before the work is complete!
This, I draw the line at, they should be doing this sort of upgrade offline, why the hell should they expect their customers to be happy to find their websites going up and down constantly for several hours, so the question is, where and to whom do I send the invoice for lost revenue due to my ecommerce site being up and down…………..
I am most annoyed with 1 and 1 and wouldnt recommend anyone uses their services. Their service quality is poor and their Customer Support is as has already been said, abysmal……
Hi Peter
It sounds like you are having great difficulty with them and your level of frustration is similar to how I have felt since the problems I have had with 1 & 1 started in January. What I have found through dealing with them, in particular with their overseas technical department is that speaking to them over the telephone is a waste of time. I have found it a lot easier to communicate with them over email, and literally writing my requests in a list to them and asking them to answer each point individually. Most recently I have had better responses and faster turn around times when I have copied in their CEO Oliver Mauss (olive.mauss@1and1.com) he has never actually responded personally but it appears to make them work a bit quicker (a more diligently)
The key to any situation like this, where poor customer service and lack of ownership is at the forefront of the issue, is patience and persistence. I am currently waiting a final decision on whether 1 and 1 will pay out £380 in compensation to me. It has taken me 3 months to get to this point including 20-30 emails, hours of phone calls, numerous blog posts, twitter mentions and facebook comments not to mention two separate emails threatening legal action against them (sent to the 1&1 legal team) to get to this point.
Please feel free to read though my posts about 1&1 and see if there is anything in them that may help you move forward.
The two people I am dealing with named Joy and Dana in the transfers and complaints departments appear to be much more competent than any of the other people I have spoken to. However to be able to speak to them you will need to get a complaints reference number first through complaints@1and1.co.uk
Let me know how you get on
Best
Gary
Hi Gary,
I am glad that you have posted this here. I am also having issue with 1&1 and their lame service, but not on the scale you are.
Recently they have blocked one of my contract claiming that I did not pay them. They had all the payment details in their system but something went on their end. They have been denying it since!
I have already started transferring away from 1&1. I am on my last few domains now.
I cant comment much on what I am going to do with blocked domain but I’ll give you can update sometime soon.
Regards
[...] On the 5th May 1&1 took £175.90 from my account for domain name renewals which on the 18th April 2011 I have an email from their Transfer Department to say that they were successfully cancelled and were sorry that I felt the need to complain about their services. (If you do not know about my ongoing saga with them, see my previous blog posts about 1&1) [...]
Gary, I have also received a shockingly bad service from 1&1. I tried to cancel an account that was never actually used and after spending over £300 I finally managed to cancel with the aid of one of their customer advisors. i told them in no uncertain terms that i ever wanted to renew my contract nor wanted to deal with them again because of the bad service I had received however, this morning I’m greeting by a £57 bill from them. The contract had automatically renewed after me saying that I didn’t want it and now I’m hopping mad. I’m prepared to put up a huge fight. I feel for you as your issue impacts your business directly. I’ve sent their complaints team a letter and on the end I’ve posted links to the negative feedback about them all over the internet. I don’t expect to get far with them but in no uncertain terms are they getting any more money off me.
OMG!! So I am not the only one!!!! 1and1 are the biggest joke I have ever come across….except that its not that funny when your site goes down. I have never dealt with such a bunch of incompetent idiots in my life. I got so frustrated I actually transferred a domain to a new registrar. But they couldn’t even do that!!!! Eventually I realised I could do it through nominet. I am not quite sure what to do about them.I am considering going to their headquarters and cornering the directors for an explanation. They are a total disgrace
Well, well, well! I was reminded of my payment to pay for a domian hidesdetectiveagency.co.uk, and hostgaroo.co.uk. I wrote and told them clearly I did not want any further dealings with them. I did stop my card, after the letter to them, the Still sent me email, requesting payment, I went to log in, at one stage only to find that that shut me out, and was told that the creditors will be seeking me to claim the money back. They had the letter acknowledged it, and still REGISTERED THE DOMAIN NAME, AT THERE EXPENCE, AGAINST MY WILL.
I will not be recommending 1&1.co.uk. to any one. If you would like to post your disatisfaction onto my website; please feel free, with any links, I will be happy to release this on My Honest Review, (michaelchristian.ws)
Hope it all goes well for you that you get the company over a barrel!
Micah
Oh my god, where do i start?
I have had my entire companies email addressed locked out as 1&1 beleive we have not paid out bill, the reality was they never even tried to set up the necessary direct debit (as confirmed by their bank). The staff at the phillipino call center are a complete waste of time, all they say is ‘in the next hour’ and ‘i have escelated this case further’. All lies
I am beside myself knowing what to do, i honestly feel that if this isnt sorted by monday i will be driving to the UK office and kicking off in such fantastic style that it gets resolved. my business is slowly grinding to a halt with out our emails.
The E-Mail facility is totally useless,easy login that’s a joke,sometime takes four of five attampts before it operates. Cannot switch from ‘Inbox’ to any other without closing and restarting the process all over again.Yesterday the whole system crashed and was out of commission for hours.This morning unable to use ‘Reply’ for mail or to create any ‘New Mail’. Waste of time contacting the idiots at their service department,they don’t understand English let alone speak it. I suggest you do what we shall be doing,go somewhere else that provides a real service.
I honestly thought that the disgraceful customer service i received, must be a fluke,a one of a kind, a terrible set of circumstances that led to 1&1 being so appauling? I now see that this is not the case, and indeed it seems to be getting worse.
Calling them is a complete waste of time, e-mailing, just results in the standard response and raising a complaint simply gets you a case number. Then they hide behind there own systems inflexibility and pass your case onto a debt collection agency. SOUND FAMILIAR?
Thanks for the comment Lee
This is pretty similar to my whole experience…not a good company to deal with and as you can see from the rest of the comments on here, this is not uncommon either
Best
Gary
[...] those of you following my trials and tribulations with 1&1 Internet since January this year it looks likes the saga may have finally come to an end. I have received [...]
Oh no! Here we go again. My account has been locked again. This is now the forth time! This is the answer i got this time?
Dear Lee Brooks, (Cust: xxxxxxxx)
Thank you for your email.
Please note that our terms and conditions clause:5.15 state that any invoices not settled within 20 days of the due date will be passed across to the collection agency which incurs an administration fee of £15.00.
I can confirm that I am more than happy to waive the late payment charges of £15.00 on this account.
I hope this has helped.
If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards
Evelyn Owobu
Billing Department
1&1 Internet Ltd.
What they fail to mention is the three complaints i have made without answer!
Lee
Hi Lee
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this post. You are not alone in your experience of 1&1. Not responding to complaints seems to be what 1& excel in more than anything else. It appears that they are all to quick to get their collections team onto the case without even bothering to provide even a basic level of service to find out what has actually gone on.
Simply disgusting…
Thanks for your contribution
Best
Gary
Still no joy from them. Still my website remains locked.
I have decided to start a Facebook group!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/11-wont-answer-my-complaints/226118024096186?v=wall
How do i change my web hosting company and rescue my website? It took me ages to put it together and now it in their clutches?
Hi Lee, I would recommend using DomainMonster.com they can help you transfer any domain names you have over to them. You will have full DNS control which means you will be able to reset where your web address is pointing too. You will have to download your websites files from your current hosting package and set up a new hosting package with another provider. Once you have done this, upload the website files and database to the new server and then point your domain name A-Records to that servers IP address, which you will be given when you set up the new hosting package.
Hope this helps.
Best
Gary
[...] you have followed my blog even a little bit this year you will be well aware of my dealings with 1&1 Internet well by battling with the infamous domain name registration company and being open and honest about [...]
Hi Gary,
I was really encouraged to find at least one forum about 1&1′s business practices.
I am currently trying to avoid paying for a domain name which has been automatically charged before renewal.
As someone who seems to have been ultimately successful in arguing your case to 1&1, do you have any advice on how to proceed?
The amount is small (~£12, assuming they do not pass to debt collectors) but obviously I don’t want to give up without a fight…
Will.
Hi Will thanks for the message
Unfortunately if there was no effort made to cancel the domain name either via their customer service department or through 1&1s contract site then you may have your hands tied…
I know it about the principle of it all but their customer service is so poor you may end up getting fobbed off time and again. In my honest opinion I would let the £12 slide and just transfer any other domain names you have away from them so they lose business in that way instead.
I was arguing over £300+ which is why I put the effort I did into it and I had email and screen shot proof that I had made reasonable attempts to cancel the domain names before the cut off date. Look at the hassle I went through.
Seriously, the best way to deal with 1&1 is for people to move their business elsewhere
Best
Gary
Hi Gary,
I have been with 1 and 1 for over 10 years and have over 600 domains hosted with them. I have had cause to cancel around 200 of these over the last few months but accidentally cancelled one I wanted to keep.
It has taken me tow months to try to explain that I cannot reverse the cancellation of a single domain myself, only the whole cancellation order (which had 126 on).
As yet this has not happened and I have just spent an hour writing an email to their complaints department.
I think that there should be a law put in place to make it a legal necessity to provide a customer complaints and customer service number where we can talk to people from the UK.
A couple of years ago I spent over 20 minutes on the phone with one and one trying to set up an account for a friend. I was trying to explain “that in setting up the account I entered the post code but your system couldn’t find the address” the response every time was “our address is www. ….” I eventually got so frustrated I hung up.
I have not been dissatisfied with the continuity of service as there is very little downtime but when it comes to customer service I think I would be generous by giving them 2 out of 10.
Why do big companies put such little importance on customer service. Poor customer service can break a company whatever the size.
It is not just because they are off shore call centres, it is poor training and not employing the correct staff. Amazon.co.uk have offshore support but I have always found their customer service to be superb.
Good Luck
Colin
Well after reading all of this I’m shocked but also annoyed at myself for not doing any research. I’ve only just taken up their services and now wishing I hadn’t. Thinking I may have to cancel the direct debit with them as I was smart enough not to give them debit card details or paypal information. I had a problem registering the first domain I put in there as the message on my control panel came up with an error saying “domain registration error”.
Someone needs to report them to trading standards plain and simple and they will sort them out! No company should be allowed to get away with things like this. Oh and I too have had my emails ignored!
Hope you all get your issues resolved soon!
Hi Gary
You can add me to the list of very annoyed customers of 1&1 Internet. They have handed over a payment to be collected by a debt collection company even though (a) I did initially pay by cheque (which they lost) and (b) I have since sent a letter advising that I no longer wish to remain with them (especially as I viewed all the complaints against them on line) as they have not reply to letters, lost my cheque payment and actually this was a domain that was never hosted so should have failed on cancellation or failure of payment received at no cost or loss to 1&1.
I have advised their debt company – Arvato Ltd – that the £10.79 was paid but as they lost the cheque – its not my fault. I will not pay the extra charge now advised at £15 – they can whistle and I will take this matter forward with the correct bodies if required even though it will cost me. I have also advised them that my rate is £110 per hour for any time sent from this point forward on this matter.
Good luck to all you guys who remain customers of this company. Thi is th first time I have actioned a blog response to the poorest of companies and service.
Kind Regards
Christopher Dawson
WOW! Business Intenational Group
I have also been advised that previous customers have been verbally abused by 1&1 staff so I refuse to get into this and all exchanges are in writing.
Hi Gary. Looks like you are in the same boat as me – I have been chasing for over 2 monts as I cannot purchase domains, edit DNS and struggle to login to the control panel at the best of times. Dana offered 1 month refund – even though I have had no service for 2 months.
Sure they are in breach of their SLA’s.
Would be interested in making a group complaint to Ofcom (if thats the correct body governing in the UK) about them and their lack of activity.
I have 200+ domains with them and a dedicated server, lots of bespoke componets registered so its going to be a massive and expensive job to move away from them, that not mentioning the huge disruption it will cause customers too…
I have requested you as a friend on FB – lets start a page/group in there.
Might even commit some tim to get a doamin listing on 1st page of google for ’1and1′ and use it as a platform to SHOUT about how horrid and irreposible this company and its directors are….
I have 3 dedicated servers with 1&1 internet and whilst I’m sure the people who have been complaining about the customer service (and I too have had the odd clown on the phone to them), I have had no problems with the dedicated server service I have from them. As with anything, there is always going to be the bad restaurant rule (have a good meal tell few folk, get a bad one and you tell EVERYBODY) but as a way of some redress, I can unequivocably say that the hardware we have rented from them has been fine and the cloud servers we are using (even though they come with Plesk) are solid and robust.
I hope your other contributors get their issues resolved soon, but it does smack of a company growing too fast too soon and not recruiting the right people for the job for customer care (ask Santander for advice on offshore support….they’re bringing it all back onshore because of public outcry!)
Just my own tuppence worth
Huge amount of problems here as well, another very unhappy customer.
Hopefully a lot more people see this site before signing-up.
I recently changed my basic package to an advanced package at 1and1, a simple move – you would think.
I had to move all my domains individually (which was not mentioned when I upgraded) and after doing so our main website stopped working. It is now offline since 3 days. Not only does this cost money every day, but we probably also loose a few customers.
Calling the technical support (in the Philippines) is pointless as they either cant do anything (sorry, I forgot they are monitoring the situation) or they have to wait until the US starts its business day. I spoke to lots of people, but nobody is really looking at the problem, they rather ask you to be patient. the technical support is more a counselling service and the word technical is not justified at all.
I tried to contact several people, but so far – after 3 days without a website – I have not had any response.
complaints@1and1.co.uk
olive.mauss@1and1.com (CEO?)
socialmedia@1and1.co.uk
press@1and1.co.uk
billing@1and1.co.uk
I tried all the listed phone numbers, but always end-up at ‘technical’ support.
Huge amount of problems here as well, another very unhappy customer.
Hopefully a lot more people see this site before signing-up.
I recently changed my basic package to an advanced package at 1and1, a simple move – you would think.
I had to move all my domains individually (which was not mentioned when I upgraded) and after doing so our main website stopped working. It is now offline since 3 days. Not only does this cost money every day, but we probably also loose a few customers.
Calling the technical support (in the Philippines) is pointless as they either cant do anything (sorry, I forgot that they are monitoring the situation) or they have to wait until the US starts its business day. I spoke to lots of people, but nobody is really looking at the problem, they rather ask you to be patient. the technical support is more a counselling service and the word technical is not justified at all. The most senior person you can speak to is a supervisor and they will not connect you to anyone else. (but he/she is monitoring the situation as well.)
I tried to contact several people, but so far – after 3 days without a website – I have not had any response.
complaints@1and1.co.uk
olive.mauss@1and1.com (CEO)
socialmedia@1and1.co.uk
press@1and1.co.uk
billing@1and1.co.uk
andreas.gauger@1and1.co.uk (founder?, but retired recently)
Richard.Stevenson@1and1.co.uk (Head of Corporate Communications)
Thomas.Pluennecke@1and1.co.uk (PR Executive)
Ralph.Dommermuth@1and1.com (CMO)
Markus.Huhn@1and1.com (CFO)
Henning.Kettler@oneandone.com (CTO)
I tried all the listed phone numbers, but always end-up at ‘technical’ support.
This number will connect you to their office in the US – 0800 917 6273 – but guess where I ended up, in the ‘I can not help any further’ technical support as well.
I could get on for hours, as I am still on hold (paying 6p per minute for the privilege), but I am loosing the will to live. (I also contacted BBC Watchdog, ZDnet and if I find any other place to complain, I will). Hopefully our site will be online at one point.
Stay away from 1and1 – stay happy.
Hi Mark
Thank you for your comments, I have to admit I never had any service/ technical issues with 1&1 until it all went wrong in January. The issue with 1&1 is that once you do get a problem, like so many people have had, their customer service is dismal. It is the complete lack of understanding in their offshore “technical team” and lack off acknowledgement from their UK management that so many people find truly frustrating
Best
Gary
They didn’t meet my needs hence I didn’t use the service even though I had paid for year (2009/10) I didn’t realise that subscription was automatic and I had to cancel it until a received a demand from a debt collection agency. I paid the debt but now they are demanding payment again. I would have thought them using a debt collection agency would have automatically cancelled by subscription. Any way I cancelled last year after I paid again and they said they had no recollection of this. I’m left wonder if this is a way in which they can extort money from people.
My experience with their customer service was appalling last year when I tried talking to them.
I am not sure what I should do at this point.
Dee
After so much hassle with these guys I decided to have all of my accounts removed from the auto renew feature that all registrars offer…
Imagine my not-so-surprised face when the feature to turn off this off was not available on my account!
I wrote to them asking for them to turn it on and in responce I was asked to ‘Please update your credit/debit card details on file with us as they have expired’
WHAT?? I asked you to do something not to pay for anything! lol
I am currently awaiting their response and will keep you posted.
Dave
My domain was with UK2 and I transferred it to 1and1 on the 2nd August 2011 it is now the 14th September 2011 and it is still not working. when you do a dns check the nameservers are still UK2 ones. All I want is my e-mail and domain to work and maybe an explanation of why they don’t.
I’ve never had such trouble transferring a domain. Everytime I call 1and1 they just say be patient!!! When I ask how patient and when will this be resolved they just say another 24 hours.
I have never been treated so badly and am now looking to pull my accounts from them.
A little update. today I e-mailed them and cc’d everyone on Andre@ ominage’s list of e-mails and mentioned trading standards and the confusion for me over why my domain doesn’t work. This afternoon I discovered it suddenly now does work. I won’t have anybody mention coincidences!!
no e-mail from 1 and 1 though…. Just thought I’d update the situation.
Since 1&1 supossedly ‘upgraded’ their system the service is awful! Logging into my emails is a nightmare. They continually don’t recognise my password and when i speak with the ‘help’ they just deny there is a problem and say i must of keyed it in incorrectly??
EVERYDAY i get a stupid box telling me that there has been an error and asking me to send a report…why? they take no notice of it? If i can get on it keeps telling me i’m timed out after maybe a minute or two and if i ask for compensation, i’m just ignored. They drive me NUTS!!!!!!
Last year I was advised by premier host to use 1 & 1 (June 2010) when they stopped theirhosting service. Since then, despite several attempts to contact get help to get it up and running, this has failed to happen. The help centre is sourced in the Phillipines and the lines are so quiet it it hard to hear what is being said. only time when I did get someone. she was appologetic but completely useless. I have received no service for over a year, and I have received now, a bill for this coming year. Fortunately, my bank details have changed so it hasn’t been paid. So I received a threatening letter advisiing that if payment is not made, it would be passed to their legal department. Finally, you cannot speak to anyone in their complaints department because thet dont take calls, only emails. My next step is to support you with a legal claim to get last years money back. Not a lot, but its the principal! UTTERLY USELESS SERVICE
Best of luck in recovering your costa and loss of income etc.
Look, are these the same people whose adverts have suddenly started up on mainstream TV? Build your own website etc etc at 1&1… well out of curiosity I tried just now to have a look at their packages [as I have a website with FreeWebs] and the server just doesn’t respond!
I’ll add my 2 bits.
A year ago I received notice our account was being closed.
Turns out a customer of ours who didn’t want to pay for our work had phoned them, said he was director and actioned account closure attempting to retrieve his domain name for free, and was given just about every detail of the account possible.
More recently I’ve been asking them for a year to stop billing my wife’s foreign credit card which was used for a one off payment and resume billing my company account, every time I update the cpanel it reverts to her details.
Turns out this has been masking the “sale” of TWO exchange servers we never asked for, don’t want and don’t use. They refuse to cancel and when I told them I’d go to court and move elsewhere they replied they’d be delighted to help us move.
I am writing to the CEO today and in 14 days I expect to be petitioning the court. My £2.50 a month is now roughly £70 although the charges they make vary and actually working out the numbers in a preemptive discovery excersize was a nightmare of nonsensical data.
DO NOT BE TEMPTED BY LOW PRICES.
Maybe not the worst company I’ve dealt with (I have car insurance) but definitely a key ingredient in a pot of disreputable soup.
I can’t tell you how angry I’m with them. They are the world’s worst domain provider. I would be happy to spend my own money to take them offline. They are a disgrace to the internet ecosystem! Such companies should go out of business!!!
Thankyou and Hi mark,
One of my website name renewals was up, saw the email from 1&1 and thought ok it’s on direct debit no problem.
Next thing I knew I received a letter from a debt collecting agency for (I forget the exact amount but near enough)£5.98 plus their fees.
I paid the debt collector after calling them.
I was so angry thinking why didn’t 1&1 phone me!!! I called them they told me my debit card had failed. This was because I was sent a new card!They insisted they emailed me/contacted me on their website, i don’t look there for emails!!! Their customer service is diabolical!
Moving forward I have a number of domain names only with them how can I move them bearing in mind they all expire at differant times..I really want to do this. thankyou.Janey
I completely agree with the comments on this blog, I have 100′s of domains, on co.uk and com. net and others.
I now use 4url.biz as they not only give service, they give the best prices and hosting.
I have used them for 3 years without problems.
1&1 have dug a hole for themselves that they will never dig themselves out of, they only want your money, and services? a dirty word for 1&1
cavet let the buyer beware
phoenixeagle
These cowboys should be removed all together. I had a package with them, and they took the payment early, and then changed it to a different OS. Now with webhostgiant who seem fantastic and have a free domain whois privacy protection through their CP.
Zachary
They are the absolute pits!
I have been trying to cancel everything I have with them for 3 years but its impossible.
I have emails confirming cancellation but the next year there’s a charge.
I eventually changed credit cards to prevent them taking money.
How, when there are so many great hosting companies around does ths shower of **** survive
what a shambles they are. Found I was being billed for a defunct domain. will not refund anything but last 6 months. however credit note is all I have seen not the money.
followed their instructions to move other domain to webhosting uk and they cancelled contract and didnt transfer domain to new company. so now no website no emails nothing zippo. Gonna have to wait until I can talk to nominet monday.
Barry
Wish I’d read this and some of the other sites setup to complain about 1&1 before I registered a new domain with them.
I had a problem 2 years ago with a domain I held and no longer required. I cancelled it online clearing stating that I wanted it to end at the end of the period I had paid for.
I got an automated confirmation e-mail.
However, to my surprise several weeks later I received and invoice/receipt for a further £10 they had taken from my account. How, I fail to see was possible when they card details they had on file had already expired and I chose not to update them, thinking it would stop them from billing me just in case.. i was wrong!!
After several e-mails, they eventually agreed to refund the money after threatening to get my credit card company involved.
I since considered that perhaps it was my mistake, and I’d had no cause to contact technical support for the 2 years i held the domain.
Therfore, I recently decided to give them another chance. I’m not using their hosting, just the registration service, but now I’m having second thoughts after reading all this and other sites!
I see I’m not the only one! In July 2011 a sales guy from 1&1 phoned me telling me all about Mail Xchange. I said thanks but I won’t been needing that. Guess what? They tried to bill me for it in October. I am still not sure if it is cancelled! Then, they phoned me again last month telling me all about MyWebsite Plus and how I could have the facility for 30 days for free to see if I liked it. Well, I went through their cancellation procedure within the 30 days and, since I wasn’t convinced I had done it correctly, I emailed billing, complaints, support —- just in case. A variety of responses came back, each saying different things – not enough info on your email, go to this page and that… and THEN ..I just received an email with a PDF invoice for 3 months of this unwanted package!! They are awful! I think they fully know what they’re doing -ripping people off very very badly. What am I going to do? I can cancel my direct debit but then I’m afraid they’ll start with the debt collection agency stuff which I really don’t want. It seems so hard to move my website when I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’ve just got two domains and a small simple website with just a few pages. Any ideas?
Hi Graham
Thanks for your comments, yes 1&1 are now advertising on TV
As you can see from all the comments here, there are a lot of unhappy customers
Best
Gary
After the trouble I have had with this company I think they should lose their licence to trade.
So much hassle to get a refund and no option to disable the auto renew feature. I bet this has stung many people in the past.
On the flip side, they have recently sent me a refund for something…but cannot tell me what…I have cancelled all of my packages with them (eventually) and I am now with Bluehost & GoDaddy for hosting and domain registratin respectively.
1 and 1 are the worst company I have ever come across. I have been trying to close my account for months and there are constant problems. It has ended up costing me a fortune and they still refuse to close my account. I consider 1 and 1 to be thieves of the highest order and I sincerely hope that what I have written here will save at least one poor soul from dealing with this dreadful company. I have since had dealings with other hosting companies who have been great, really helpful. It doesn’t have to be like this! I truly hate 1 and 1 from the very pit of my soul, I have never felt rage and hatred the way I feel it for 1 and 1.
Good thread this.
I am suffering simmilar issues. One and one are great as long as you don’t deviate from what their computer system will do automatically.
If you do, be warned that their customer service is truely awful. I have spent over a week on the phone to their phillipeans call center to get a simple domain change done.
As other posters have mentioned the staff at the phillipeans tech support center are beyond useless.
You will have to try and explain your problem again every single time you call up and 9/10 times they won’t understand it.
Be prepared for endless “we are monitoring your domain”, “your patience is appreciated” statements while they send the request back to the U.K. where is dissappears into some unknown mailbox.
They appear to have no way of directly contacting anywhere outside of the phillepeans.
If you are a business user avoid at all costs at the moment.
Is anyone being persued for money from 1&1′s debt collectors, for accounts which have been cancelled. Has anyone, escaped unscathed from this situation. Is there a standard method?
please help,
Roland