I am the proud owner of a shiny new .ME domain name which I have been attempting to use with my 1&1 hosting account. 1&1 resolutely refuse to accept however that .ME is a valid top-level domain and their domain tools reject the name with “Invalid domain name. Please include a top level domain (TLD).”

Contacting 1&1 support about this issue has been fruitless. I first contacted them back in July 2008 and their response was:

As much as we would want to cater most TLDs, so far, .me TLD is not yet
supported by 1&1. Our admins will be informing our customers when we
are going to support .me TLD.

Two months later it was a different excuse:

Unfortunately, there is a bug preventing you from adding .me domains to
your account. Once we have a resolution for the error, we will contact
you. We apologize for the delay.

More recently the response was:

I understand that you wish to use .me domain name with your hosting
package.  We currently working on resolving this matter regarding the
.me domain name.  I apologize for the time it is taking.  We appreciate
your patience in this matter.

Well the “bug” is still there and I still can’t add my .ME domain to my account.

If you have stumbled across this post because you are experiencing the same frustration, please add a comment and when I have collected enough I will send the link to 1&1.

UPDATE 01/04/2009: No this isn’t an April Fool joke – having just checked again today I see that the 1&1 control panel does now accept .me domain names!