I couldn’t find a lot to like about 1&1.
Here are some of the reasons why I ditched them …
- Loyal existing customers can’t benefit from the same offers as new customers
- They took over 9 months to support the .me TLD in their Control Panel tools
- You can’t add TXT DNS records for domains hosted by 1&1 (so you can’t use SPF)
- They don’t renew UK domain names until the very day of the domain expiry
- You can’t register a new domain name with different registrant details
- Their anti-spam service sucks
- Their support people discuss your personal account details with third parties
- My web sites hosted by 1&1 kept suffering unexplained downtime
- They ‘improved’ their Control Panel and removed support for Macs!
I have never known their service status page show anything other then “All systems functional” even when their own web sites are failing with spurious error messages:
Finally, to add insult to injury they rip you off when you leave.
1&1 invoiced me on 12th May for six months of pre-paid hosting service from 10th May to 10th November. I finally moved over all my domains to another provider and sent 1&1 notice of contract cancellation on 3rd June.
I contacted 1&1 and asked when my refund would be processed. Their response was “the charges are non refundable“. I asked them to re-instate my account in that case and was told “We regret to inform you that your account is already terminated to which our system can no longer activate.”
I had been a customer of 1&1 for over 5 years and that’s how they treat me.
Great customer service – thanks 1&1 !
WebDiary.com 
I totally agree and I’ve been using them for even longer – I have had no access to control panel for 2 days – and that is just totally unacceptable. – Not even having the decency to tell me on a service page that there is a problem – meaning they waste more of my time ringing them to check – blah
K
I have been with 1and1 for 7 years and have just complained about this exact point:
“Loyal existing customers can’t benefit from the same offers as new customers” the first reply I got was to an faq on how to change packages, it ignored the fact that my complaint was about the price of the package compared to that offered to new clients.
I am not talking about a few months free or half price for six months but new clients can sign up to a package for £9.99 a month, the first few are free and then it is 9.99 for the duration. For me it would be £16.99 for the exact same package.
Its only the third time I’ve dared contact their customer service because each time I have been met with the usual stock answers that don’t even answer the query and that infuriates me.
I also asked for their details of their complaints procedure by the third time of asking I was told my previous requests for the procedure had been ignored because I was already in the procedure by sending the request. “Kafkaesque nightmare?”
1and1 clearly have a policy of getting people on the books with the offers and making it as awkward as possible for them to leave. That is their entire business plan.
So I urge anybody thinking about using them not to and anyone with them to leave as soon as you can and definitely before you build up any serious client base as I have done.
My leaving process will happen but it is going to take a long time and a lot of effort to sort out.
People I guarantee at some point that 1and1 will make you feel like this : (
More downtime for unfortunate 1&1 customers today –
We currently have some problems with some of our servers. We can’t say when the problem will be fixed but we’re working on it.
The control panel is also unreachable or working very slowly at the moment. Our technicians are already fixing this.
Please apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards,
Deborah Overstreet, 1&1
If you customers have the same rotten experience with 1and1. Ex employees also do, the benefits and salaries are bad. Technical Support is too broad that they can’t even give good pay and benefits. Management is the worst.
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I was with them for years. Recently they have been spready malware and spamming heavy using customers sites. 1and1 is a terrible company doing fraudulant things. Google blocked my websites as being harmfull. When I looked into it they said there were 426 sites on my shared server. WHile my domains were not serving malware they had a large list of those 426 who were. Therefore they 86’d all the domains. So if you host with 1and1 you risk getting banned on Google. Also they were using my emails to spam. At first I though I was just unlucky and being spoofed at random. But then I did some tests and sure enough, create a new email at 1and1 … that email is sending ads for boner pills. 1and1 gave me teh runaround when I reported these incidents. No wonder – IT WAS THEM!
I have dropped 1and1.