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If for any reason you miss a payment (we changed banks) 1and1 will only attempt contact by email prior to sending one to a collection agency.
In spite of the extreme previlance of bogus billing, they refuse to inquire into or correct a situation by phone or mail. Their simple response is 'we are a green company'. They wouldn't even resolve this elementry issue after contacting their billing department directly.
Well I probably now have a negetive mark on my company's credit standing but they have lost multiple accounts over $18. Their CFO must be a financial wizzard with zero relationship skills.
Do not use 1 and 1! First they advertise free 3 month trial, to me that means you should be able to cancel during that period, but no you have just entered into a tear contract that can't be broken, I was just told. When I ask for a supervisor twice she refused. The reason I wanted to cancel: the business package I purchased advertises newsletters, autoresponders etc.. I have spent all day trying to get a newsletter signup/unsubscribe feature on a web page and in emails. Every time I call it's a different answer. All my info tells me I should be able to access HTML source code with an icon provided but when I try it...It says you must upgrade to WSB Plus at >$9.99 extra a month. The feature clearly should be there and the tech kept trying to convince me that it works instead of transferring me to a supervisor for a fix or refund! I'm still not sure if I'm going to be able to cancel! What do the think a customer paying a year of fees against their will will do? It even says 3 month free trial! Since I'm unable to access source code I'm sure there will be many other listed features that don't work or at least very limited. DO NOT USE 1and1! Oh, one more thing, while working in control panel I kept loosing THEIR connection, not fun to keep logging back on.I just hope they don't read this before I try hard again to cancel the TRIAL contract!
I signed up with 1and1 many years ago for a dedicated Linux server, $50 a month. A couple years ago, I decided to sign up for another server for $100/month and planned to migrate my old server to it.
However, I never did manage to move all the websites to the new one, so I have had both for a while.
The new servers have been problem free.
But for the old one, I never notice the server going down or anything. However, twice they have had to move the server. The second time they did that, they totally screwed it up. The console port given to me got connected to someone else's server, and I would assume my server got setup to other people's console port. Network was down and they took more than 24 hours to resolve the problem. There was no way to escalate. They said they knew there was problem but still took more than 24 hours to fix. All my clients' website and emails went dead for those 24+ hours.
A couple of weeks ago, they decided to move the old server to a totally different physical location. The move seems to have gone well. I finally managed to move all my clients off the old servers, and decided to make a final dump of all my files before I discontinue server. All of a sudden, two days ago, I lost network connection to my server. I was able to log in via console, but found the network setting to be quite strange (it uses dhcp). I rebooted the machine a few times, tried manually change the network setup on the fly and nothing worked. I open support call and they tried booting into rescue mode and couldn't help. So they sent me email and tell me it must be a software config problem the only way is to back up my data and re-image. Ok, how do I back up my data if the network is down? Well, I already did a backup a couple of weeks ago, so I don't mind loosing non-important stuff from the last 2 weeks. So I went ahead and started a reimage. The reimage didn't work at all. From the console I can see it booted via PXE but went into a Debian test kernel. I saw the machine rebooting by itself many times. Sent a couple more emails and never heard back after more than 6 hours.
I am looking for another company now. There is no way I can stay with them. Or I will have to get an additional server and back up my active client sites as VM. I can't image what I am going to do it they screw up my other server. Their support absolutely sucks.
I used them a few years ago and they were great I had no problems at all. I went back to them again and still no problems. I don't see why people are complaining. They are a great host and I never had any problems canceling or renewing any package and/or domain I had from them.
Customer support does not meet my expectations in any way. There is no urgency and poor escalation procedures.
This week, I inadvertently messed up 1 single file on the server and my local server. I requested a simple RESTORE. I explained that I was 'down' as a result of my error. The support person told me they would escalate the issue. It has been 3 days and 5 phone calls later. Call center is in the Philippians. Admins are in the USA.
Best lines...
1) What's the difference between a backup and a restore.
2) "we don't have the ability to call center... we only have e-mail to send request".
3) You are not the only customer with escalated issues.
They should be out of business, the billing practices are horrible, they do not listen to customers. This company will send to collections without even your knowledge and then charge a ton to restore your service, bait and switch, STAY AWAY!!
I hosted a personal website on 1and1 for a while. It worked okay, but, when I decided to let it expire, I learned why they have such a bad reputation. They default to an auto-renewal of your account, which they never tell you about. The result is, if you are not reading all of your junkmail from 1and1 (WHICH YOU WILL GET TONS OF), you won't notice the one email they slip in telling you of the re-up. If your card has not expired, you will get charged. If your card has expired, as mine did, they send you to collection without further notice. I've never had a bill go to collections, but now I have with them. For a (&*^^* $20 bill! AVOID THESE SCAMSTERS LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!
We use 1and1 for our company email. I would say that our emails work properly about 40% of the time. I am certain that we would be more efficient as a company if our emails weren't constantly causing us grief. Sometimes, we can't login to our emails at all. Sometimes it kicks us off in the middle of emails. On a lighter, but annoying note, our email signatures are listed at the bottom of the page instead of under the email. In other words, if there is a thread of emails, you have to scroll down to the very bottom of the thread to see the signature. I have learned to cut it and paste it under my email each time I send one. Quite annoying. I am usually not one to complain about something like this, but I regret my choice of 1and1 and wouldn't recommend them if my life depended on it. I can't wait until my contract with them is up so that I can move on.
Registered a domain. Canceled before renewal but the cancellation did not go through properly. I contacted billing and was told charge would be forgiven IF i sent my account info through the mail. I replied to let them know I was uncomfortable sending account info through the mail. the final reply/correspondence I received from them was telling me the package was canceled. So what else would I assume that they held to their word and forgave the registration fee? Instead. 3 months later I get a 27$ bill from a debt collector agency. I call billing and am told that I should have given my account info, as it's safe to send passwords through the email (uh what?). The guy who told me this was the same person who emailed me to say the package was cancelled (as opposed to saying 'We won't forgive the charge unless you give us your account info'). Then I told to email complaints. The guy that replied was the same guy from billing who told me that the charge would be forgiven.
Awful service. Use Godaddy, Netfirms, or Name Cheap are far superior registrars. I wish I had checked out reviews sites first. They will take your money and leave you high and dry. DO NOT USE THEIR SERVICES.
DO NOT USE 1and1 if you are ordering a domain from them, they will AUTOMATICALLY RENEW your plan without your authorization. Even if you cancel one day after the receipt of their invoice, they will NOT give you a refund. They'll only cut & paste from the terms and conditions like robots. Actually, they WON'T refund your money unless you cancel before the subscription period ends. Beware with this company.
Their cancellation of auto-renewals is a trap where their support and billing are more than happy to lure you in. Then, your domain is set to a "soft expire" state. Actually they freeze it for any use and demand money for the reversal.
They also tried charging me with the more than 10 times of the displayed invoice amount refusing any explaining. They failed only because (after the auto-renewals experience) I was lucky to cancel their payment agreement from inside of PayPal just in time! Never use direct credit card payments with them! They are crooks and "dedicated" thieves, meaning thieves without any shame, scams who are pretty aware of their wrongdoings. With the lowest possible "F"-ed rating of the Better Business Bureau they have nothing to lose.
1and1 has the worst customer service and cancellation policy. They trick you into downgrading your package when you call to cancel and then act rude and obnoxious on the phone when you try to actually cancel. If you want nothing but trouble for a price that ends up not being so cheap after all after they continuously bill you and add all sorts of fees to your account, then please by all means sign up with them.
This the a company you should avoid, as at any time, if you have technical questions that you disagree with their answer, they will shut down your service WITHOUT letting you know!
How can you put business in such a company? Do not ever use 1and1.com or you are prepared to suffer business loss.
Has long standing intermittent reliability issues.
works great for months then can be down for up to 1 1/2 weeks. This happens about once a year. customer service and support are basically non existent.
That said the price and features you get are fantastic. Much better than any other host I use. The reliability and service though are the worst.
Evil, Draconian business practices, illegal billing practices. In exchange for horrible service, the unconscionable User "Agreement" requires you to waive your rights to sue, rights to join a class action lawsuit, rights to file a chargeback, and any rights whatsoever. You lose your statute of limitations rights too. THE WORST DOMAIN REGISTRAR AND WORST WEB HOST ON THE PLANET! To cancel your account, they require certified letters to be sent to both them and their lawfirm, after which they might close your account sometime after 30 days - giving them more time to OVERBILL YOU and still send your account to collections. They are being sued and investigated in several states, have an F RATING with the BBB and over 10,000 complaints filed against them with the FTC and state of Pennsylvania.
Go to their website and read their T&C and their other 7 contracts that you automatically become obligated to once you buy a $1.99 service. They are after your credit card account, and you will never get it back. Cancel your credit card account and they sic their collection agency after you. That's right - THE ONLY DOMAIN REGISTRAR ON EARTH THAT USES A COLLECTION AGENCY, and not just for past bills, but future ones as well, since cancellation is impossible and always denied when you do it.
If you want to be stuck with a 20+ step cancellation procedure when all other registrars use 1 or 2 clicks, then go with 1&1-you poor sap.
If you want to be billed every year for life for domain registrations and hosting that you canceled two years ago, pick 1&1.
If you want a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, 1&1 will do that for you too, but they will charge you for it until your credit card is maxed out and they demand another credit card.
They will send you to a collection agency, even if you've canceled.
The problem is their autorenew system. It is very confusing and doesn't work. You have to log out of your regular account, log into a sub-domain, mark the domains to cancel auto renew and pick one of the ambiguous options for the domains. You have to then wait for an email (that in my case didn't come) and click to complete cancellation.
When I asked the rep why my domains weren't canceled, he said an email was sent. I told him there were no emails. He said sometimes it doesn't come. I had no idea.
Now they want money even though I canceled the account.
1and1 is treacherous. They are bad. Do not use! You are warned.
I too was screwed by 1and1. It turns out I was unable to access their website using my Safari browser. My credit card was stolen, screwing up my auto-renew, and they sent my account to collections. It is now on my credit report. I originally ordered a full site, but only parked this particular site. Telephone records of my asking to downgrade teh site were not logged. They kept billing me at a high rate. I've been screwed more ways than one. Also, I found it difficult to reach these people on the telephone. I now use hostmonster, which has it's own set of problems, but at least you can speak to someone about any issue. I will vote with my feet and move my other site off in the next month prior to it's expiration.
If you want a poke in the eye. 1and1 is the place to get it.
totally crap! a bunch of criminals. I was stuck with them and fees were outrageous. It took me 3 months for a long complaint process. they would not refund nor cancel the account. No customer service. They really live up to the buyer beware philosophy. Be careful, if you can go with someone else. I moved to godaddy.com and its great, not the best but heaven compared to 1&1.
What more is there to say? I'm another victim of their auto renewal policy when I specifically took my credit card off so they wouldn't auto renew. I told them that...so they said go to the cancel site...it was too late and a few days later NCO collection is calling me saying, 1and1, my "creditor", has sent this to collections and it's going to hit my credit report. Well it did, but NOT as a collection, as a standard account showing as a key derogatory. NOT just one, but 10, one for each package they sent to collections.
I feel so helpless and cheated. I mean those crooks stealing money is one thing, but they are RUINING my credit and my future. They are worse than a bad host, they are the worst organization I've ever dealt with. Seeing all the other posts I realize I'm not alone, but how can they so this to sooo many people without consequences?
The service of this company is a true shame. They must be embarrassed of them self. The customer support is the worst i have seen. My history with them is related to their VPS Services. I got one of their packages and after few attempts to get in touch with them about few questions i just went for the purchase. (Phone support is Quick but tech appears to have little knowledge of the options and technology they are using). I canceled my service with them,few hours after the server was set up. I realized the terrible fact that after you purchase one of the packages they offer( Must say they look awesome in terms of ram and features) the IP addresses are limited to 1 only.... This is incredible, two Gigs of RAM dedicated and Nothing... you can't use it. Lets say you want to use your service for a share hosting of a couple of site, no ssl support is possible. Then why they included an ssl certificate in the packages. The worst came when a month pass after the cancellation and i have FULL charges on my credit card statement. I have to dispute them, only like this could get my money back. 4 hours with their service, almost two month of headache. Keep away of this company. They are terrible.
I signed up for a 6-month hosting plan and domain nam with automatic billing. There was an error in the last name on the account and I tried to have it corrected by following all their instructions. Not only did they ignore this request, they never resolved the issue. It was decided not to renew and the auto billing in PayPal was canceled. 2 months before the end of the 6-months, we switched to Go-Daddy and ran into more problems with their support about transferring the domain name servers. Finally, after many discussion and 1 month later, we were able to obtain the transfer authorization from someone who actually understood English and was helpful. 5 months later we received a collection letter saying we were delinquent in renewing the service. We no longer had their service and cannot even log into their system. Their support was notified about the cancfellation many times and igored our emails. They keep writing so I am in the process of notifying the SEC, BBB, ICAN and the 3 credit bureaus. DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH 1and1. Since the old CEO left, it has been nothing but problems.
After reading all the bad comments about the customer support I dreading calling. But they have been great! I ordered a package that wouldn't meet my needs so I wanted to upgrade to the next tier while maintaining the sale price. I got someone based in American on the phone right away, they where easy to understand and very knowledgeable. They even transferred my to tech support, which I'm guessing was not in America, and he was great too.
I am very happy with 1and1
1and1 is a total looser. the customer service is a joke. only 1 out of a dozen times did i actually get someone that knew what they were doing 1time. i am trying to transfer a domain name, i gave them the correct info and they are still asking for the same stuff. the phone service is usless. they wanted a form signed by the company selling the domain and a letter on their letterhead which i supplied, then they asked for a company letterhead again. when i called, they wanted the minutes of the last board meeting for this company. what kind of crap is that. they won't let you speak to a human in that department. i guess they are scared that i will be right they are just idiots. i am looking right now for a new web host. i hope anyone who reads this will find another service to host. GUY
1and1 is a company without a conscience. Liars, cheats and thieves. Not trying to spam this site, but I posted my whole story on RippedOffConsumers.org. Close to 100 pages of proof that 1and1 is incompetent and cares nothing for their clients. In the four months i have been dealing with them, they have screwed up my account in every way possible, and turned me over to a collection agency based upon fraudulent charges to my account. Then they tried to blame me for their internal systems being broken even after I submitted dozens of emails from their own tech support department proving their failures.
Just avoid them. The few dollars a year you may save will result in way too many hours of headaches when they screw something up, which they will.
Very disappointed with their reliability. Have a dedicated, managed server package. Have had several downtime incidents, most of the time, they are long enough so that we are making the call to revive our servers. Bad kernels, requiring rollbacks, TCP/IP issues, bad Apache rollout, the list of reasons has been long. Have lost creditability with us, and we signed up 3 months ago. We seem to be doing all the management, and reliability has just been poor.
I will never do business with this company again. They charged me with a late fee when my credit card I had on file with they expired, they didn't even try to collect payment yet they said "payment was refused" on my part. Their billing department is a joke, their complaints department is even worse, in fact it is so bad they won't even give out its phone number to customers! That is no way do do business. STAY AWAY from this company!
1and1 is the WORST host ever. You can go a year and a half with no notices from 1and1 and all of sudden you may wake up with ALL your domains suspended, and ZERO FTP access to anything. Absolutely no notices will be sent prior to this notion. Even if you decided to switch hosts right there, you can’t because they'll hold your web sites' files hostage. I can’t call them to complain because their phone support only stays up until 5PM EASTERN!! wtf?!?! That’s 2PM in California! I HATE 1and1 AND THEY CAN BURN IN HELL. I lost daily revenue on the time my sites were suspended and held hostage. I WANT TO SUE.
It has already been said. 1and1 is a poor service with intentionally deceptive corporate policies, they couldn't care any less about the consumer. If you give them a credit card number you will likely need to cancel the card in order to get them to stop charging annual fees. Pass by the cheap price tag and seek value elsewhere.
Called customer service several times after faulty billing issues. Each time I was on hold for over 18 minutes. I was then greeted by an angry employee who treated me as though I were some kind of enemy instead of a valued customer. I then decided to become an ex-customer.
Uggh. This must be, by far the worst Web Host in the WORLD. Or at least in the United States. If you have a domain name or multiple domain names, they are set to "AUTO RENEW". 1AND1 does not really tell you this up front, it is in the fine print. I had a big bill and they have all these strict rules on how they process your payment. I had two invoices but only one contract number so they would not even let my spilt my two invoices into two payments. They told me either I had to pay it on the spot or they would not be able to accept payment. They would barley budge and they DID NOT tell me that my other invoice for $250 was not paid for yet. So I could NOT negotiate that invoice because they already gave me a one time courtesy on the $450 invoice to take off some domain names to help get my invoice down to a reasonable amount I could pay. On top of this, they could not try and run my credit card on the spot to see if it would even work! They DO NOT process credit card transactions over $500 on the spot do to "security purposes." So I won't even know if my credit card payment went through until Monday. Since they only process transactions on business days and it is Friday (today after 12:00EST). If this is how they want to retain customers, they are in for a treat trying to offer services to the United States market. I give this company 2 more years until they are acquired or bankrupt. With this kind of service they will not be in business much longer. Go-daddy will eat them alive. The ONLY thing 1AND1 did right for me this time, is the fact that they opened up my control panel so I can manage my domain name accounts over the weekend. Honestly I think they should not even lock the "Administration" side of the control panel until you have a grossly over due balance. I was only a couple weeks late and they did not even remind me that my bill was due by phone, mail or email. You are just supposed to know when you are up for billing or by going to the "Account" panel under billing on the 1AND1 control panel. I also hate the fact that with a 1AND1 domain account you are only allowed up to 5 sub domains TOTAL. This does not mean 5 sub domains per domain name you own but 5 sub domains per ENTIRE account. So if you own 100 sub domains you are out of luck, you better choose wisely what you want your 5 sub domains to be for your entire account of 100 domain names. They told me on the phone that they could not offer me more sub domains do to "security purposes." I responded, "Really? Due to security purposes huh?" This is a horrible policy and it is REALLY in place to make you have to upgrade to one of their other more expensive web services that offers more sub domains in a package type deal.
Also on another note I heard their customer service is horrible for their dedicated hosting services. They pretty much make their prices reasonable by cutting out any kind of support and if you have a kernal bug on your Linux server, you pretty much have to wipe out your server and start new with one of their SPECIAL disk images for a clean install. You can not just use your own software do to "security purposes." That is always their excuse "security purposes." I am so tired of hearing that. I mean really tired. 1AND1 will tell you if it's a server problem, server service, sub domain question or if you are trying to pay a bill over $500. It is most likely that their answer to you is going to be "Sorry, do to security purposes, we can not help you sir." I think I am going to transfer all my services to Go-daddy in the near future. Please ADVISE, don't go with 1and1 unless you like feeling as if your being "thrown around like used dog toy and then stomped on a few times". The 1AND1 people on the phone may try to sound helpful but they really can't do anything for their customers. They all seem to be following a "strict set of guidelines" that are written in stone, seemingly from some higher order above the glass ceiling, and there really is nothing the 1AND1 customer service people can do to help you with your web service issues and problems. It is not entirely their fault, it is the fault of bad upper management. I believe if upper management truly cared about their customers, had better vision and more fair rules about how their business model should work, maybe my experience would have been different.
So I hope everyone will do themselves a favor and take their domain, e-mail, webhosting, vps, server, ecommerce and other web businesses else where. You will save your selves a lot time, troubles, and big head aches if just take your business to another web service company.
These guys really bent me out of shape. There service is OK, but the billing really terrible. To get a billing error fixed, I have exchanged more than 7 emails and talked to 3 people and have received 4 different answers for the same question. I am moving my sites out and looking for a decent host.
I registered several domain names because 1and1 was cheap.
You get what you pay for.
Two domain names were flagged because they were close to the name of another famous Internet company. I was trying to be clever, I learned my lesson.
I called and emailed to get a refund, they never processed. Time limit passed and I was stuck paying for the sites. A year later, websites are renewed and charged again.
I called again to cancel. They make this process very, very difficult. Log into a different site with teeny tiny links ( so you can't find them to cancel).
Click a few options to cancel, then wait for an email that never came. Called ...again ..... canceled ... again !!!! Never received a refund.
ARG !!!!!
Tech support is in India, can barely hear them and the voice delay is very irritating.
If just want a place to park a unique domain and never require assistance, 1and1 maybe for you. Good luck on canceling if you every change your mind and want to opt out. Best bet is to transfer or just remove your credit card information.
Worked with a client with 1and1 as a
web developer. Was astounded by poor
quality of tech support. The gentlemen on the
phone had terrible english and little IT
knowledge. Turned to email to try to resolve
my issue, which had to do with importing RSS
feeds. Spent over a month going back and
forth with zero progress. With each message
on the same email thread a different
representative picks up your case and often
will ask you for your customer information
again and case history despite them assigning
my case an ID number. Just avoid these guys
and hopefully they'll fade away.
I have just had the worst customer service experience. I cancelled my service and was assured that all bills were settled. Then 3 months later I receive a collections notice for $5 for services and $20 in late charges. I called in to explain my situation and they would do nothing for me. They said it was my fault for not giving them an updated email address when I cancelled. They sent an email to my old address which was hosted by them and they refused to send me a bill through regular mail. I will never do business with them again and I strongly suggest that you dont either.
So, they offer SSH access, which I thought was cool so that I could get on there and run a few scripts, right? Wrong. You try to run anything and they'll shut you down. This is a site I had up for almost a year -- but you run a script, and not only will it not run (they must have some process that just kills other processes) and then they lock your whole account. No more getting to your files, nothing. Hope you have a backup (I did, thankfully).
The few times that I have tried to contact their support, they are really not very helpful.
Will not recommend to anyone and will migrate my existing domains on other accounts away. The only thing good is the price... but if that's all you are going for, there are plenty of other hosts.
If you want a good host, go with U2-Web. They are a little more expensive that some others (U2-Web currently costs $10/month) but the service I've received there over the past two years (with other accounts) has been excellent.
These guys really bent me out of shape. There service is OK, but the billing really &*^$%#. I requested they cancel my account, by e-mail, the method they use to communicate with me. They did not do so or let me know that I owed them money, they simply sent it to collection. OK, I owe them additional money, but it would be nice for them to communicate that to me rather than send it to collection. I hope the collection agency gets 90% of the money.
I feel this is not ethical and I will never do business with them again. Take your own chances!
Frequent downtimes, messy configurations, no backups, no automatic backups, no way to get to your email files to back them up yourself, when files disappear they have no backups (what if a server fails? how do they replace all files?). Poor customer support. Wait, atrocious, not poor. Stupefyingly nonexistent, I should add. Nothing more to say, really bad service. not worth it. you can even get hostgator and you'll be better off, and those guys suck. Yep, I tried them. Hope this helps someone avoid 1and1.com. If you like the price, you should know that they will try anything to charge you twice, or to charge you for services you never used. They also remove invoices if you tell them they charged you twice for something you never used in the first place. They stink. ew.
I have had a service with them for around 5 months, Business Shared Hosting.
The pricing is great, very cheap. Nothing much to say about it.
The customer support is absolutely horrendous. I talked to this "professional" and I didn't understand a word they said. It sounded very foreign, like an Asian or African accent maybe. They said they would send an email to my email address. They did, but then I did not recieve the pre-created pdf.
The reliability is fine. Why it gets a lower score is because it takes so long for things to set up. A whole day to just get a shared account running? While some companies offer a whole dedicated server up in 2 hours. Which makes 1and1 ridiculous.
Some other things I do not like. There is no feature to let others have some access to your account. You must give the real admin password and username to let them have access. And at that level they can just spend a ton of money without having to re-enter a credit card or such.
There databases do not work right. When I attempt to use dreamweaver to connect, or even the sun microsystems software it will not connect to it remotely. I have to use phpmyadmin which is really horrid for me.
The software packages are not worth 600 dollars. Because the serials that come with are not for the actual software. But a modified software. As I downloaded GoLive CS2 from the internet and used the serial it gave and it was invalid. But when I recieved the "software cds" it came it a unopenable to vista format.
I would not recommend it. Its cheap, and a fine host. But, I am sure there are much better ones elsewhere.
This "jury" page is pretty one-sided. In retrospect, I suppose that mostly dissatisfied people are drawn here to gripe - given the page title "jury".
My experience has been pretty good, but I am only using them for their registrar service. Well - I recently added email, but it's too early to make a call on that one, albeit the webmail is down today.
Many of these mega-sized outfits excel at the basics - registration, dns, etc. Some of them have a hard time with hosting. I cannot really say anything about the hosting with 1and1 (don't have an account with them), but I have discovered that the mega-outfits often provide mostly shared hosting accounts.
Anyone who has serious web hosting needs should probably choose something other that a shared hosting account. (By shared, I mean that perhaps dozens, or hundreds, of customers use the same Apache server (or whatever server), using it's "virtual server" capability.
The security details are very difficult in such a situation, and one bad apple can bring down the whole cart. If you're in need of a serious web hosting environment, you should consider dedicated or "virtual dedicated" hosting. I'm not really sure if 1and1 provides such a thing, but if they do, it might very well be a better and more viable options than shared.
A note to the page creators (of this page) You should provide a means by which the various ratings can be set to "n/a". (For people like me, who have never needed to have any customer support interaction, etc)
I've used 1&1 for a few years for a number of client websites and am quite satisfied with their service. As a web developer it is always a pain trying to find hosting. My last web host (FatCow) was bought out and the service became terrible so it was time to switch. A friend had been using 1&1 and recommended them.
I warily tried them and have slowly been switching my clients over ever since. My only complaint is that they don't have a reseller setup, but sometimes it is actually nicer to not have to worry about that!
The service is based in the Philippines and is well trained in my experience. They answer promptly and although occasionally I have to repeat myself or explain something in a different way, they try very hard to follow and seem quite knowledgeable. I'm doing advanced Drupal implementations among other things so we're not talking just brochure-ware sites.
I'd recommend 1&1. I think perhaps many people have a bias against off-shore support, but I'd recommend looking at the knowledge quality behind the accent.
They have horrible billing practise and will rip you off. Horrendous business ethincs.
They store your credit card details with out permission, they report you to NCO debt collectors for no reason and with out adequate notice.
I am surprised how they are in business and how come no one filed a law suit against them. So much for consumer protection laws !! i wonder if the law enforcement is sleeping at the switch !!
I don't think I have ever come across a consumer organisation as bad as 1and1 in my whole life. They nearly killed off my new internet venture through their poor service, and are the only company I have ever come across who do not reply to over 100 attempts to contact them through every channel. Someone hacked my 1and1 account and registered some domains through my account, which were used for phishing. Despite intervention by Nominet and the Police, 1and1 did not reply to any of my communications with them. They are a dreadful company.
Summary: An ISP that cares more about bottom line numbers than quality.
My embryonic web venture was hugely disadvantaged by the fact that one of their disk mirrors had failed. Website often unavailable (as server rebooted often) for at least a week; support was very evasive about the cause until I eventually connected with one of their support people who revealed that the mirror was rebuilding.
At least one week? to rebuild a disk mirror? Says to me that they have too many users/too much data/too much load on their servers. Their redundancy measures, in this case, just did not work.
To be fair, they refunded one month's charges, and recently my web pages have been delivered with less delay, but still....for any semi-serious project, I would recommend you avoid 1and1.
I've been with this hosting company for over 2.5 years. They were great at first, but now are just downright horrible with technical support. My business website has been down for over a week and no one in L1 Tech Support can fix it. Worse yet, they escalate cases that no one on the back end can fix...or has the time to. L1 Tech Support is in the Phillipines. They are masters of apologizing, promising, and delay. I'm still down over a simple DNS entry...and they simply don't know how to fix it! Unbelievable. AVOID!!!
My experience with 1and1 is simply that of harassment, no less. It's so hard to cancel service with them. My contact with them expired nearly one year ago, I called them to cancel before expiration, got confirmation over the phone. Then they kept billing the renewal. Disputed through email to no avail. They sent out collection agency. Didn't want the headache, I paid the collection agency. Now nearly one year later, they're trying to bill me for renewal again!. I can't help wondering what kind of jerks and bullies are running this company.
Been with them for over 6 months now, had one scheduled downtime to upgrade servers and another just yesterday where they told me my site was dead but the server was fine so they couldn't do anything.
Otherwise customer support was quick to reply via email and quick to pickup over the phone. Not very helpful or understanding of the problem, tech support seems more like customer support that they don't understand a thing technically speaking(server resources for example).
The MySQL databases are limited to 100MB per without a way to merge/expand them, that's only for dedicated. I do warez linking and haven't had any issues from them SO FAR.
On November 21st, I notified 1 and 1 of my decision to change to another service provider. I received a confirmation to change transfer domain name on November 28th. I contacted 1 and 1 on December 4th. I again contacted them on December 5th via a conference call with my new service provider and domain register. I then confirmed the domain transfer again on December 8th. My service provider had sent three requests to transfer since November 21st. I reviewed my file on-line and found that my account was finally cancelled via the billing module on December 13th.
How is it that this outfit can take so long when most other companies can have the domain transferred within 72 hours? There people are a bunch of idiots!!! I am also sick and tired of the fake English accents and American names (i.e. Shaun) sounds more like Rashmid to me. All of the Shaun's I know do not talk in broken English. I have not sat since November 21st without E-mail and my websites being up!!! I wouldn't recomment this outfit to anyone even if they were the only web-hosting company on earth. Not worth the agrevation. STAY AS FAR AWAY AS YOU CAN FROM THIS COMPANY!!!
I absolutely hate 'help desks' that insist the problem is not theirs, but yours. Welcome to 1and1.
For 7 days, 80% to 90% of the time I was unable to access any of my sites hosted with them due to 500 errors. The errors were being caused by something OUTSIDE of my account and not with my sites (which have been running fine for over a year).
It took me 3 days to convince 1and1 that there was a problem with the server. The first 3 days were dealing with 'answers' from the 'help' desk that ranged from 'Delete your cookies' (yea.. right.....) to 'Convert to PHP5' (had anyone bothered to look, they would have seen all my sites have been running as PHP5 for nearly a year)...
Finally one day they decided to forward my ticket to the 'admins'. I think 'admins' is just another name for 'black hole'. Every day my site was down, and every day I got back the same thing: 'Your ticket has been closed, there is plenty of memory/CPU/whatever'.
After 6 days, I called to cancel my service. It was then the billing department that told me to email 'complaints'. I gave them the ultimatum that I was taking my business elsewhere if they didn't fix/move me in the next 12 hours.
Wonder of wonders if I didn't get an email back (from someone who spoke English) telling me he had got this 'escalated' ticket and he had moved me to a new server.
This problem should not have taken 6 hours to resolve, let alone more than 6 DAYS.
Just cancelled my package but charged £60 for 6 months, which I won't be using as I've transferred all my domains! They are operating illegally and I'll be making sure that they feel the full force of the law they wish to ignore! DON'T BOTHER WITH 1&1!!
1and1 is horrible and there customer service sucks. First the illegally save your credit card information and try to bill you for services that you did not authorize. Their customer services sucks, as well and lastly they will send you to their collections agency NCO and ignore the fact that you have tried to resolve your issues. I am currently fighting NCO and I just fill a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and I suggest you do the same.
Doing business with 1 and 1 is like a vacation in the twilight zone, somehow they changed my email address to one unknown by me, then they could not communicate with me!!! they freeze the account and send me to a collection agency for $40 and I cannot even solve the situation because the collection agency does not have the information, I tried to pay 1 and 1 and they will not accept, this is a very strange situation. The only good thing is the pricing but pricing is only good if you receive the service. I tell the world to stay away from 1 and 1.
I sent 1and1 a support query and it wasn\'t responded to after a week, I then received an email saying my hosting had been cut because the DNS hadn\'t yet been pointed to 1and1.
I know it hadn\'t been pointed as I was testing the site on the new space before doing so!!! and received the email at the exact time I needed the space!
So, I called the 0871 number to ask about refund if I cancelled the service (because I wernt being tied to any host who didn\'t want to do things my way, the customer\'s way.
I called; Both times cut off.
1st time: called billing; tranferred me to cancellations dept. cut off en route
2nd time: called billing; tranferred me to cancellations dept, then back to billing without me saying anything. Then cut off
3rd time: called billing (took down a name = Anna); who transferred to technical department!!!!! (not cancellations!!!)
The technical chap was actually helpful - he said to cancel I needed to go online to cancel.1and1.co.uk.
I didn\'t actually expect to cancel today, but it was 1and1\'s apprach which provided me with that decision. I had experiences of 1and1 some years ago - thinking they may get better and their control panel perhaps being a good one. I won\'t do business with 1and1 again.
Our initial experience with 1and1 was good but we experienced serious problems with customer support and communications when we tried to expand our package. We called the sales dept at 1and1 to request an additional SharePoint site, received very curious service and were told we would soon receive an email. We did not receive the email that day so we called again and were told it may take up to 24 hours to set up the account and to send out the email. Following up the following day were were informed that there was no record of the request and nothing had been done.
Support was curious and professional; but unable to provide any additional information, to allow us to speak to a manager or to correct the problem. Their only suggestion were to start the process over by re-submitting the request online.
SCAM when it comes to canceling service
After sending in the written request for cancelation, they still charge you every 6 month for their services. And when you do get some one on the call, they tell you that it’s not in their hands to do a cancelation.
SCAM!!! Stay away from them. Initial setup is cheap, but than you pay through your nose!
I\'ve been a customer of 1and1 since around 2003 when they were offering their free hosting package for 3 years. Since then I honestly have nothing to gripe about with them. Their support is great as web hosting goes. But as someone who has had a website and has actually worked as an admin for some time, I could be just brushing off some things others might find annoying and don\'t consider any of the minor issues as having relevence at all.
Here\'s a set of questions you might want to ask hosting companies with regards to their services: http://www.microdevsys.com/WordPress/?p=470
All in all not a single one I called from the dozen or so, has had technical support where two support staff on two different occassions / days gave me the exact same answer. The answers I got were always close but never the same. From the dozens of hosting companies I called, none had this 100%. For me, that\'s expected and is the only thing I keep in mind, but it\'s also human nature.
Everything else is perfect for me. In all my time with them, I have not caught them where my site wasn\'t available. I suspect there was time for sure where probably my site was down but I haven\'t caught that yet.
By far I have to recommend 1and1. I\'m sure it\'s probably not for everyone out there but considering what I\'ve seen in this industry, I\'m not surprised at all why they are the #1 host.
I\'m through with them....several times a year it goes down for literally days with no response or assistance forthcoming from 1and1....their support is horrible.
I have so many issues with their webmail yet they always give me the most bizarre instructions to try to assist when I call them.
As of this moment...my domain (www.dechiane.com) has been down about 3 days.
Worst experience ever. Billing practices unbelievable.Customer Service severly lacking. Google 1and1 and llok at the massive number of complaints then go elsewhere. If your experience was like mine contact the BBB, Federal Trade Commision, and the parent company -United Internet in Germany and complain about the way the company is being run by the current CEO-Oliver Mauss.
I have been a customer for over 5 years and I am now fed up with their tech support, billign support, termas and conditions and theor overal customer service attitude.
I am a consultant that has placed at least 15 clients on this service and like to try out their new products to see if I can recommend them to my clients.
THE PROBLEM - do not ever ask them for a credit or to change anything!
I tried their MAilXchange - by adding it to my already substantial package - I found it quite unusable for my clients and cancelled it before - what I thought was a 90 money back guatarntee period.. But now I am told that this is only for NEW clients.. Not for services you can add on.... and now I am stuck with something I tested for a week and I have to pay for it for a year!
I called and eventually got to speak to a \"r\" Damian in the US billign office who stonewalled me and basically told me that it was tough and that I am stuck paying and he did nto care if I took my business and my clients business elsewhere...
They send our surveys and never take note or respond to customer comments or negative answers...
My recommendation - DO NOT USE 1and1 - They hate custoemrs and will do not like talking to people.. note that there is no way to get hold of any manager or senior executive.
Sure it is going to take some work and some time to move from 1and1.. but I will do it and they will lose thousands of $ of my business every year..
I\'ve recommended all my website customers to 1and1.com, and NONE of them have ever complained! Not once!! (about 48 customers so far).
I also use their domain and hosting service with ZERO complaints.
Their support team answers the phone within 1 to 3 minutes and
has always assisted in a consistent manner.
(Yahoo Internet Support will put you on hold for 30 to 45 minutes
ever single time...it\'s simply insanity to waste that much time.)
My site has NEVER been
down. They has an easy to use interface for the FTP connection and
also setting up email. Lowest prices in the nation too!!
I don\'t even know where to start:
- first, in order to cancel ANYTHING you have to fax.
- if you log into their cancel.1and1.com it cancels everything.
- If you\'ve been overcharged for something, GOOD F****ing luck getting refund.
- They will NOT notify or let you know that your account past due. My credit card expired, and bam! my account is in collections.
- This happened TWICE.
- Now they suspended my accounts in 2007 (december) it\'s 2008 October. I called in to transfer a domain only to notice all my packages has been deleted! WTF? I called, apparently, i didn\'t pay for some \'free\' hosting fee that i didn\'t properly cancel. She can\'t even tell me what it was because \'they wiped everything clean\'.
- So now my account is in Collections. I haven\'t received A SINGLE call from neither collection nor 1an1. Not even a letter.
- Now my business name is threatened to be released into public domain unless i pay \'redemption fees and file redemption form\' to retain my domain! MY DOMAIN I PAID FOR!
Thanks 1and1 for making my life complicated.
Anyone tried Better Business Bureau?
I would like to get enough complaints together to shut that company down. People shouldn\'t be getting screwed by shady business.
On top of that, they outsource everything, as they are not even real company with real assets.
This company has the worst support of any hosting company I\'ve dealt with since 1997. I\'ve been trying to get several issues resolved for over 3 weeks, and it\'s still not resolved. Yes the price is cheap, but you\'ll pay dearly if you need support. I do not recommend this hosting company, and would pay 5x more for good technical support (English speaking would be a PLUS). Actually, I would prefer that the servers work properly, then I would not require support at all.{lunarpages}
WARNING:
Do not sign up with 1&1 unless you are looking for troubles.
The hosting package is average as well as the price, so no particular issues here, but the support is miserable.
The lines are mostly noisy, you may end up talking with someone in asia that is walking down the street chatting with friends (really!) and that\'s if you can get hold of someone.
In my case I have a dedicated server that is down for over a week without apparent reason. The few times I was luky enough to reach a person and understand eachother, they could not tell what was wrong.
So here is again my warning:
Do not signup with 1&1 unless you are looking t=for troubles!
Well I see that I am not the only one that feels they are useless and incapable of giving any real support. Only been with them a few months and it has been continuous battling with web site slowing down unable to connect to database and then all I can get from them is when they tried it was up. For F-sake the fringing fault is intermittent what part of this don’t they understand? I have reached the stage I don’t even have to read the replies to my tickets as they are all the same copied and pasted off a whole lot I would expect. If the problem reported is A use b1 reply I can just see it. So now the battle comes to cancel my account by the looks of it
I\'m surprised at the low marks 1and1 receives, but it sounds like most were billing issues, with an occasional real problem. Also, I think a lot of people on here are just cheap shared hosting accounts, and sorry folks, but you get what you pay for no matter which host you use. Think about it, if you\'re guaranteed \"x\" number of GBs or storage and \"x\" GB\'s of transfer, none of the hosts would stay in business, ever! Good hosting costs money, get over it.
With that in mind we have 2 services at 1&1. Dedicated hosting, and Exchange hosting. So far, the weakest part of the chain is the support staff. The servers have had great uptime and reliable service, the exchange is a little slow (slight delay in sending), but other than that, it\'s been good.
I don\'t care if you\'re at Go Daddy, 1and1, dreamhost, blue host, if you\'re not running a dedicated box, you\'re going to run into trouble from time to time because loading 400-500 domains on a box will simply lend itself to issues. Stop complaining, pay your bills, and step up to something other than shared hosting...otherwise, you\'ll always be disappointed because you want the world, but you don\'t want to pay for it...life doesn\'t work that way, and neither does shared hosting on any cheap \"bargain basement\" hosting platform.
I've actually had a pretty good experience with 1and1. I have 5 packages with over 30 domains and have had very little trouble with them. I will say, their support is a pile of.. well, you know. However, their pricing is excellent, packages excellent, and I've never been down... except....
When I first started using 1and1, I was down every few days, and at one point, 4 days. Completely unacceptable. I solved this problem by sending an e-mail to customer support explaining that they should expect a lawsuit for false advertising if the downtime continues (they guarantee 99.99% uptime per yer). Finally, someone smart switched my data to another server, and I've never had a problem since. None what-so-ever. If anyone else has a similar problem, I hope my solution works for you as well.
Their affiliate program actually does pay - I've earned just a small amount with it.
Something I learned a few years back - keep your domains with a different company than your host. That way if your host goes down, or there's a problem with billing, you can always switch the domain to a different host with ease.
Keep in mind, 1and1 has over 7.5 million customers, and most of the time, the only people that write a review are the ones who have had a bad experience. So really, even if 100,000 customers are unhappy, that's just 0.013% of their customers, haha. No, definitely not right, but just giving you an idea.
BTW, I do not work for 1and1, nor do I know anyone that does. I own and operate an IT consulting business in Tulsa, OK, USA.
Absolutely horrible hosting company. Downtime for my business package is every other week, and its usually down all day for them to fix it.
I am leaving this month to another hosting and I completely hate this company.
1and1 is a complete scam based company - they create loopholes intentionally that force the ongoing billing of your credit card they try to bill for services not needed or given. when taken to the attention of 1and1 employees they always want me to talk to NCO Financial, a collection service. And to top that off they threaten Collections even though my credit card expired a week ago and these 1and1 people don't have a courtesy of sending a letter for the payment directly asking through collection agency and we are ending up paying $56 for $29.94. WHAT A CHEATING STRATEGY. THEY ARE SO CHEAP AND ARROGANT AND RUDE( when they should have a month ago, last we spoke ) I am furious and recommend NO ONE USE 1and1.com
1and1 is cheap for a reason: transfers to/from the site are slow, bad customer service, did I mention SLOW? They charge you for service in advance, but then when my credit card expired, they sent my bill to a collection agency. Save yourself the hassle and stay away from 1and1!
1and1 is a complete scam based company - they create loopholes intentionally that force the ongoing billing of your credit card they try to bill for services not needed or given. when taken to the attention of 1and1 employees they cannot forward you to anyone via voice - email is their only recourse for Customer issues which so far has not been resolved for me. And to top that off they threaten Collections even though I have a valid argument since my Account was closed over a month ago but they are trying to bill me from 5 days ago for a 6 month period still to come. Because I am arguing with them they finally closed the account ( when they should have a month ago, last we spoke ) I am furious and recomend NO ONE USE 1and1.com
They will send your account to collections after your card expires then your site will be down for 5 days even after you pay them. It is impossible to cancel any part of your account. There bill department will hang up on you if you ask them a question. Oh and no matter how big of a customer you are they will still treat you like trash. I have over 50 domains and will be moving them to bluehost.com over the next few days hopefully one day 1and1.com will stop billing me. I imagine I will need a lawyer before that will happen... Good luck to anyone that is trying to use 1and1 it is truly a adventure that will leave you exhausted frustrated and wish you had never signed up with them!
The hosting is terrible. The customer support is terrible, you cannot understand one word they say, the pricing is far too expensive and randomly changes all the time, the hosting always went down, and now all of a sudden, my hosting was locked because someone emailed the abuse department and made a false report on me and I lost not only all of my files and domains, but I also have an investigation on me because of the false report. I do not recommend this hosting to ANYONE.
This is the worst hosting service. I had an account with them and it is the worst customer service, the platform is slow, lack of support, etc. I also have an account with godaddy and I can appreciate the difference. This is the last time in my life that I will use 1and1. They also charge you without notices and their personnel is rude and unprofessional.
1and1 had the worst customer service imaginable. People are not technical and follow typical off-shore support scripts. Their billing department is incapable of handling finances in a professional manner. They have a screwed up policy and wont go the extra mile to help you even after they have screwed up.
Don’t bother giving them your real address or phone number. They will only use your email address. And (as I found out) if its wrong would rather send your account to collections than call or mail you.
The 1and1 web site is extremely poor compared to other hosters.
I’ve experienced most of what other reviewers have complained about. I’ve moved my domains and hosting over to GoDaddy where I have had other accounts and am very happy with there.
There are three main issues with 1&1's hosted services:
It's Slow: The hosted exchange e-mail is painfully slow from both Outlook application and OWA via the web. Mobile access is a mixed bag. Windows Mobile devices are supported and sync up in decent time, but blackberry support is not offered, not even for imap access via blackberry.
Unreliable: The first year we had this service, we only have one very brief outtage, but in the second year we've have two outages of multiple days each. One of the outages required us to use a hard coded IP address to access OWA because the standard URL was non-functional. Also, for the multiple e-mail accounts we had with 1&1, they are clearly distrubuted across multiple physical Exchange servers since some users have access problems when other users do not. The root cause of tha appears to be when the account was created as that was what determined which Exchange server the account resided on.
Bad Customer Service: I've very disappointed with this one. Customer support is outsourced overseas and has all of the typical problems you can image as such: long wait times on hold, marginally competant person on other end of the phone, multiple calls required to resolve compicated issues. In short, if you need to call their tech support, set aside a lot of time and patience. The more complex the issue, the more frustrating the experience will be.
I recommend using a different provider:
When it was time to setup a second company's hosting services for web and e-mail, my experience with 1&1 led me to research and select a provider by the name of 123Together.com, which I have been very satisfied with. Compared to 1&1.com, 123Together.com has their act together, and they in-country support teams so communication is not an issue if you do have to call them.
Absolutely horrible. The ones saying that they got good service obviously just started hosting with them, not knowing whats coming to them!
I have been with 1and1 for 3 years, and its been going down hill as the days go on. JUST SAY NO TO 1and1!! Absolutely horrible service, DOWN TIME WAY TOO OFTEN, unreliable tech support, horrible horrible horrible.
The people giving 5 out of 5 on this site probably are the employees of 1and1 trying to boost this topic up. Dont listen to them!!
I am about to cancel my account as we speak! Good bye 1and1!
I signed up for a 1 yr contract w/ 1and1 10+ months ago and am looking forward to moving to another webhost. I have attempted to use their support multiple times and although they try to help, they are not adequately trained beyond what is already in the FAQs most of the time. Out of approximately 10 calls I have made to support, I talked to 1 person that knew things beyond the FAQs which I was thankful for. My issues are as follows:
- E-mail is slow
- E-mail is unreliable. Sometimes I can't get into it and they recommend that I do some ipconfig commands so that their server can be found again. Inconvenient when I have urgent e-mails waiting.
- Many e-mails w/ graphics do not display correctly, nor can I click on embedded links within received e-mails.
- If I close an e-mail before all the graphics display in an e-mail, I have to logout of 1and1 and log back into my e-mail account.
- I can't seem to change the size of the e-mail window.
- If I am in the middle of typing an e-mail and I go to do something else and come back, it automatically logs you out w/o saving. I have tried many times now to have 1and1 tell me how to not autolog me out w/o success. Why is this such a hard setting to find or implement?
- It takes far to long for e-mail to come up after you have logged in
- Website builder is the worst tool I have ever used.
- It crashes IE
- From a word processing and formatting perspective it works worse than the alpha/beta versions of the first PC text editors. On some of my pages, I can't add a friggen blank line!!!! It adds it, then when I save the website, the blank line disapears.
- It puts in all kinds of useless HTML crap on your webpages. I found this out when I was having problems adding a simple picture. I went to my ftp area and pulled all my pages to my computer. All of them have the most unbelievable HTML crap and its totally unorganized in one run on sentance. It took me hours to pull out all the useless HTML out of just my index.html page.
- I am now learning HTML to manually update all my pages which totally defeats the purpose of an easy website editor.
- When I want to start adding some useful features like adding javascript, they want you to pay $10 more per month. Not very obvious when you first sign up. Similarly when I wanted to add a shopping cart, they wanted $10 more per month.
- I guess $10 per month is cheap for a webhost..... and you get what you pay for in this case.
As soon as I figure out how to get my e-mail transferred, I am going to U2-web. U2-web has been very responsive towards my questions and their reviews on web hosting jury have been very complimentary.
My short answer is to avoid 1and1 if you can. I've been with them for around 3 years - and they've got steadily worse. They're okay, until you need support. I thought their prices were reasonable, and one of their main advantages - but they're not actually that cheap, and once they've got you involved in a billing cycle, it's very difficult to get rid of them.
Changing web-hosts is a hassle – but after being pushed a little too far by 1and1, I decided that enough was enough. After doing some research I found a superb web-host who charge half as much as I was paying with 1and1; I'm completely shocked how much better a host can be.
I dislike 1and1 for the following reasons:
* billing errors
I've had emails and billing responses sent to me in error - requesting I pay x-amount of money. Responses have sometimes been completely unintelligible half-complete replies to other customer's queries. I got to the point where I had absolutely no confidence in the company at all.
* unexplained downtime
There have been times when I've been unable to access my webspace / website, and databases associated with my account; unluckily for me this occurred while I was demoing a site to a client. I received no apology or explanation from 1and1; rather than own up, their policy seems to be to hope customers won't notice.
* automatic account locking
At one stage I was unable to make a payment because the billing departments IT system was down. Subsequently my account, was locked and sent to a debt recovery agent, making all my domains and sites unavailable for nearly a week.
* no flexibility
To get anything more than basic hosting, expensive upgrades are needed. The level of functionality vs. cost often seems arbitrary; for example - why should I pay over £72 pounds a year extra just to receive SSH access?
* no follow up to complaints
I've sent complaints on numerous occasions and not received responses. When I have received replies, they've been 'stock' replies - standard templates. They don't listen and it's impossible to speak to anyone who can actually help. Everything is run according to scripts.
* automatic rebilling
I cancel my account - they respond; not by refunding me the money I'm owed, but by re-billing me for each domain previously registered, using brand-new two year contracts!
I sound like I'm ranting - and I suppose I am. I'm just deeply dissatisfied with this company - and still slightly shocked that they can get away with such levels of incompetence.
Avoid 1and1 like the plague - there's no such thing as a free lunch.
They sent me to collections for items I never wanted renewed. They didn't call me or mail me prior to sending me to collections, and I had no idea that I even owed the money. Even if they turned out to be right, and I did owe the money, how about a reminder via mail or a phone call prior to sending me to collections?
Their service was so difficult to use that I stopped using it month ago. My client lost interest in their website, so I was just hoping to let it expire.
I then emailed them for an explanation, and they simply gave me instructions on how to cancel my account.
1 And 1 are big in the UK, their uptime is OK, but their Support is terrible. Outsourced to Cheapistan. Their self-admin control panel is a mess as well, slow and convoluted. Not recommended.
I think you need to bring back you help desk to our shores. Let me explain.
Beginning sometime in May I called your support in the subcontinent to try and resolve why I could not transfer the registra of my domain, daamonturne.com from your company.
After some effort I discovered that the were sending all correspondence to rp@daamonturne.com. I explained that that was an inactive email address and that they should send responses to bobprobstjr@hotmail.com.
After some time my request was not followed up on so I called them again. I asked them what email address they had and was told rp@daamonturne.com. I told them AGAIN do NOT send to that address IT DOES NOT WORK! and again gave them bobprobstjr@hotmail.com
Still not resolves I called again the still where using rp@daamonturne.com I really got angry and demanded that they change the managing authority email address to bobprobstjr@hotmail.com before I got off the phone with them.
Finally this person told me that I had to send a request to them with proof of my identity and that they would send me a confirmation code by email. I asked them what email address they would send it to and, guess what?. They gave met the rp@daamonturne.com address. I asked them if they were all about of there minds. I asked them how many times I need to tell them. I asked them what is so hard to understand, that that email address no longer works and that they had to send everything to bobprobstjr@hotmail.com.
So I send the information to change the managing authority email to bobprobstjr@hotmail.com. Two days later I email them to see why it is not done...NO RESPONSE.
I email them on day 3, still no response. I email Illinois and on day four the whois managing authority is changed.
So I start waiting for my confirmation code that is needed to authorize the change of registra. after the second day I call your outsourced helpless desk support team for the code. They told me it was sent. I asked them to whom they sent it and, get this, rp@daamonturne.com.
I was paralyzed with unbelief. After all the times I told them it was an inactive email and that it need to be changed they still did not get it.
I asked WHY ARE YOU STILL SENDING TO THAT ADDRESS? !!!! Followed up with HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO BE TOLD THAT IT DOES NOT WORK!!!!
After a long scripted response of possible excuses the real problem with using outsourced support became apparent.
They do not think ahead.
Do not anticipate.
Do not think about how to be helpful.
Do not think outside the box.
Do not have an inkling of anything beyond what their scripts say.
Do not care one bit about the customer’s problem or needs.
The reason why they still were sending to rp@daamonturne.com is that I never explicitly asked for them that they need to change my 1 and 1 account email address!!! Apparently telling them
"DO NOT SEND IT THERE!!!"
"IT DOES NOT WORK!!!"
"SEND IT TO MY NEW ADDRESS!!!"
is not asking "Please tell me where I can get a form that I need to fill out and fax in order to change my accounts email from rp@daamonturne.com to bobprobstjr@hotmail.com."
I believe that they are taught from an early age that if they go beyond what is being taught to them they will suffer. So that is why they are as bad as a computer at help real people.
But for some companies even a computerized support that speaks is as good but Outsourcing is still cheaper.
So now I have to wait another 5 days for yet another change of email address.
I anticipate that it will be even longer because of their track record so far.
I don't know what you are going to do about this but if I ever need to use you r company again I will kill myself and make it someone else’s problem dealing with you.
STAY AWAY - i have several sites hosted with them and a few hosted exchange acounts. on thursday at 23:50, their exchange server went south. it is now Monday 09:00 and it is still down. i am going on 4 days without email! i cannot do business this way. i will be changing hosting companies very soon.
Support sux. never talk to the same person twice and each time i have to explain what is going on and each time, it will be fixed with in a couple of hours since the administrators have raised the priority level to high!
Pricing is not bad, however, at this point i will pay more for better / reliable server.
I initially went to 1and1 because it was pretty cheap, but you get what you pay for. Their eShop is very limiting in it's templates.
Not only will what you pay for be sub par, but you may get unexplained charges that they will automatically deduct from the account or charge card you set up with them. Good luck trying to get an explanation or the money back.
Pricing is good. The service is good for the cost. But!!! When something goes wrong at their end, you'll find a brick wall when you call technical support. I've had an intermittent problem for over two months now where a login dialog box pops up when you go to any of the websites I have hosted on their Windows Developer package. "Hosting XP requires a login" or something like that. It likely means that there is an authentication issue for the IUSR account. The problem is very intermittent, but they can't seem to fix it or even acknowledge it properly. Over the past three months I've made dozens of calls, and sent dozens of e-mails, many that don't get responses, some that do. None from anyone that can fix anything. Stay away from this provider!
Wow. What an awful company!
A year has passed since I cancelled my package with 1and1 and guess what?
I am still getting charged. And what's more, they won't take responsibility for the mistake, won't reimburse me and one rep even hung up on me when I asked for a supervisor (apparently they don't have any management there... could be the issue??)
DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS COMPANY. Save yourself some aggro and go with GoDaddy, or your uncle Fred, anything but this.
For the first couple of years 1and1 was great and I had no problems whatsoever.. then they slowly declined to poor service, reliability and customer/tech support.. Stay far far away from this unreliable, incompetent host who oversells their servers and has nothing but problem after problem..
They tell you you'll get X amount of monthly trasfer but what they do not tell you is that your site is inaccessible for multiple users over 20 at the same time if you use mysql and that for majority of your traffic that they'll see 500 errors..
What they also do not tell you is that error documents will not work for anything other than 404... that 401, 403, 500, etc do not function to anywhere you direct and only work to send user to their default page.. what they also do not tell you is that they steal a portion of your traffic... The traffic they steal is your 404 error traffic for any traffic that is not of extensions .htm, .html, .gif or .jpg so if you have .php, .asp or any other error traffic it lands on 1and1s parking page for which THEY earn money from your traffic..
Their customer support is the worst I have ever encountered in my entire experience on the web in the last 10 years.. broken english or poor english.. difficult to understand irregardless of their english level, 100% incompetent and no knowledge whatsoever., they're nothing but outsourced phone reps and not techs at all.. they take messages basially and then forward to the real techs.. what would normally take moments at a real webhost takes 24 to 48 hours with 1and1.com and even then they don't get it done...
I have had it up to here with them.. 1and1 over the last 5 months have single handedly destroyed my business and has caused me to lose thousands of dollars in sales.. Due to their poor reliability I have lost clients, customers and my reputation has suffered as well.. Also due to their poor reliability I have suffered loss of search engine rankings as their poor services often show 500 errors since their shared servers stuff thousands of clients on them, so you can never have more than a handful of people on your website at the same time or it crashes, conveniently when it's a google spider..
The last 5 months with these people have been an absolute NIGHTMARE
1and1 is cheap at first, but they will tack on hidden costs without notifying you and without you realizing. They will then send you to collection over 6 or 7 dollars (the collection is inevitable since you were never notified of the charge and never got a bill).
They took out a client of mine into redemption even though he had a credit in his account according to the billing department.
The site was out of commission for over a WEEK (still is down) and they seem to care less. Every time I call, all I get is - the ticket has been "escalated". Apparently "escalation is only our our frustration and not their actions.
I would AVOID them like the PLAGUE. Use godaddy.com someone else NOT them.
1and1.com is a shit company, I've had my website down for day because of 1and1's crappy service. I've had 20 domain names with them at one time, i'm moving them all over to hostforweb.com. I'm still in the middle of trying to move my domains. If you use 1&1.com you will be screwed, they will cost you a lot of money and even more time.
Vaun Norwood, UglyKittyMedia.com
Tech support and customer service is difficult to understand and not knowledgeable. To get a good, knowledgeable answer or fix usually takes a MINIMUM of three calls. Really! In fact, I made it a point and standard procedure to call a second or third time even though I supposedly got an "answer" because the second or third call would contradict the first one.
Also, their package doesn't offer as much as other providers. I'm now at godaddy because they offer .net/ajax at a much lower, standard price without having to "upgrade" to something much more expensive like 1and1.
I also was "misinformed" and listened to the customer sales rep and was told a six month contract. I should have read it, but I "trusted" the rep and just went through the process without doing my double/triple checking. My fault. I guess I'm a bigger idiot since I'm the idiot who listened, trusted, and dealt in business with idiots. Oh well. Lesson learned and now that's the past.
1and1 was recommended to me because of troubles I was having with godaddy. From the beginning I should have known when it took them forever to figure out how to set up my account. Now they have a mysql issue where my shopping cart could no longer connect. When I spent numerous hours on their outsourced script readers they kept telling me it had nothing to do with them. Needless to say I had to hurry and move to another host. Even when I called to cancel the guy was so rude and quickly threw me on hold.
I have been with them for 4 years approximately, for awhile now anyway and I got sent a new updated atm card which I had on account. When It came time to renew, it lapsed, they charged me a late fee, when I called to express situation, it's all about reading terms and agreements. No need to call customer service because, it's all black and white.
Also Domains are set to auto renew, you don't set it to, they do, so if you don't want domains, your screwed for one year with them, black and white.
This is not a people company, they are in it ONLY for the almighty buck at any cost. Don't look for them to feel your pain, because they won't. No need for customer service, because it's all on your back, there there to give you a spot to put there website, if you are an expert and are able to seo on your own, would be good for you, a complete do it yourselfer, but if not I would go with sitebuildit or something like that that will be there for your success and care about you as a human being.
I have never had a worse customer experience in my entire life. I had a credit card stolen and I forgot to update my account with 1&1. I have (so to be had) over 70 domains parked with them. Three went into default and I didn't even know until a client told me he was locked out of the account and they were about to launch a website.
1&1 had sent me to collections for $16 dollars and locked all 72 domains. I called immediately to rectify the problem and explained the situation. No help was offered and I was told nothing could be done and that I would have to wait 3-4 business days before they would unlock the domain.
I called back the following business day to ensure I was in the clear and that the charge went through. Three days later the account was still locked. I called 1&1 and told them what was happening and they said the account still had not been paid. "How could that be: I explained since I had my bank statement in front of me and they had charged me.
I got send back over to collections which had no record I had ever called. I got sent to another department and they figured out I paid for someone elses collections bill. I still am baffled by that one and a little upset at my bank for allowing a charge to go through that was not my name or my address. Either 1&1 gave me the wrong code to call to collections with or I wrote it down incorrectly. Regardless, I had to clear my name and address with collections so I have no idea how that was even possible.
I told collections my problem and he seemed interested in helping. He told me to fax over the statement and he would fix the problem. I faxed it over and called to confirm only to find out that both 1&1 and the collections agency had closed and nothing could be none. Keep in mind that at no time was I ever told time was going to be an issue and that I told them I needed the issue resolved by morning for the client releases (hopefully) the site live.
1&1 was great until I really needed their assistance. At no point in time did I feel they even cared. Even after sending a letter to the survey they sent did I hear anything. I can't tell you how frustrated and furious I am. I would never recommend this service again.
I will also be looking for another provider that is more proactive. They said they sent emails but I never got them. And they only have one email address on file so no other form of contact was attempted. My address and phone number were correct in the system. I know that because two days after I found out the system was locked, I got the collection letter in the mail.
I will shortly be moving all my domains and my server to another hosting platform as soon as the account is unlocked. I guess I got what I paid for.
Terrible service. you will wait on hold for 30 40 minutes waiting for someone to assist you. Very unprofessional managers. I was sent to collections even after I sent 3 emails to billing@1and1.com to have them update my credit card information and they failed to contact me or assist me in anyway. Being a customer of 1and1 has been the worst customer experience I've ever had. Use Godaddy.com they're quick, fast, cheap and there service is unbeatable.
I had Exchange Hosting with these people and no-one in Support could tell me how to share Contacts properly, amongst other things. Also the performance was a disgrace.
Having cancelled everything I was still being charged for some of the Exchange accounts - it has taken six months of phone calls and emails (with non-sensical replies) to finally sort this out.
A useless isp whom I will never use or recommend again.
I have 2 separate domains through these people. I paid for one domain in December 2007 for the whole year of 2008. When they tried to charge my debit card for the second domain in March 2008, the charge failed because i had closed the account. I received no invoice and no communication from 1and1 about this. What they did, instead was to lock BOTH domains, even the one I had paid for. Then, when I called, they said the paid-for account would remain locked until i paid for the second one. Not only is this unreasonable and a breach of their agreement to provide my domain hosting for one year as a result of the prior payment, they were incredibly rude about it. The supervisor told me that all they cared about was whether I was going to pay the last bill or not.
First off, I am in the process of removing webhosting off 1and1 for two reasons.
1. On more than one occasion my websites have got corrupted. Everything but the home page disappeared, including links
2. Their 'photo gallery' failed repeatedly after I had set it up. Works for a while then stops.
3. Billing: Because my registered credit card had expired, I didn't bother to update it as I was considering switching anyway. They referred me to a collection agency for ADVANCE payment. Obviously, if I had failed to pay for a supplied service, that would be ok. But collection agencies to collect ADVANCE payments?? To add insult to injury they also suspended my account, so all my domain names stopped working for several weeks. To date, despite having paid the collection agency AND updated my credit card information, the account remains locked! Their billing department gave me some bull about havig to have it verified by the parent company in Germany, which apparently, in the days of instant commerce on the internet, will take 1and1 several days to accompish!
Leaves a sour taste in the mouth. This is not how to build customer loyalty, 1and1.
I have never ever been angrier dealing with customer support. On Dec 10 2007, I requested the cancellation my entire package with 1and1. To final this cancellation, I need to click a link from an email that they sent me after I submitted the cancellation request. I got their email, clicked on the link right away. They did not send me the cancellation confirmation email.
4 months later, on March 2008, they billed me for service. April 8, 2008, I called them to clear this out. I got to the first representative, she told me that I never click the link to confirm the cancellation. No matter how I tried to explain I did. She was so insisting on that I did not click the link. I called the second time, another lady answered me so rude in an uneducated way. She kept telling me that "you did not click the link" in a very rude way. I asked to speak to her supervisor. That guy disrespected me. I got the impression from him that I am a liar. I assumed there could be a problem with the system. He replied that "why don't you accept that it is your fault?". I got so angry. My English is limited so I couldn't say anything while I'm pissed. I hung up. That evening, I decided that I've had enough and just wanted to end it for some peace of mind. I went through the whole cancellation process again. I got the cancel link from their email. And again, I did click the damn link. Guess what? I haven't received an email confirm my cancellation, just like before.
I have to call them but I so hesitate. They talked to me so rude, made me feel like a stupid foreign woman. I so hesitate to deal with it.
I have been with 1and1 for about 8 months now and it has been nothing but perfect. I have never witnessed a second of downtime, my websites load with blazing fast speed, and there customer service really isn't bad at all. Sure they might be foreign and not speak the best of English but I have never had a problem with getting my questions answered. As long as you set your payments to them to be automated (I have seen people had problems with their billing issues) and your not going to flood them with support questions (I have submitted up to 2 a day for about a week straight at one time due to my own fault and received nothing but polite, well spoken, helpful answers.) Sure my questions weren't all that difficult but I have never had any problems with this host so I have no reason to complain.
Overall this host is great. Good support, good server speeds, reliable hosting, awesome prices! 5/5 A+ Host I recommend to all.
I would have rated 1and1 a 4 out of 5 because being an absolute perfectionist, I NEVER give anyone maximum marks. That would mean there is no room for improvement, which is NEVER the case.
I agree that 1and1's support is the weak point. Their prices are the best, their reliability is rock solid, I don't know of a better host.
However, I give them a five because of the below-grade remarks on this site. I can't believe any professional would choose godaddy (barf) over 1and1. This guy obviously has never tried building a dynamic site.
1and1 offers services that are very valuable at an affordable price.
No 1and1 is not perfect but they gave me free hosting for 3 years with over 99% uptime. I've used 1and1 for four websites, www.sixth-sense-game.com, www.thomascreed.com, www.ronhutchisonphotgraphy.com, www.781dine.com. I guarantee every one of those sites is up and running. I think most complaints are coming from people who have billing issues they won't admit to or they aren't taking advantage of the LAMP configuration. If you don't want your website to go down, pay your bill automatically. Problem solved. I've heard horror stories about holding domains hostage, again probably people owing the company money. I don't have any plans to change.
Actually I really dunno what to write about 1and1 that others haven't written before. But a few points
* I was actually looking for 0 out of 5 option in the Ratings dropdown. Webmaster, pls include for hosts like 1and1
* Several ppl seem to think that their support is outsourced to an Indian company. I live in one of the techiest cities in India - Chennai. I'm privy to several top companies and I can assure you that the lack of technical knowledge and discourtsey is not something you will find here. And English is spoken very well in India, even among the basic Tech level crowd. Wre are at least 50 years ahead of 1and1 in terms of language, knowledge and politeness.
If they are indeed using an Indian BPO, can someone let me know the contact details...I'll personally pay a visit to settle some long penidng scores :-)
*Like my pal says, 1and1 have institutionalised cheating. Period.
I took a sane decision and moved to GoDaddy and Modhost 3 years back. No problems at all. But then after an experience with 1and1, even someone replying to your emails would seem heavenly :-)
I was with 1&1 for three weeks and that was enough. My site would be up and working and after working for 2or 3 days all of a sudden one page could not find my MSAccess db. I would call and one time told "just a minute...ok try it now". It worked. The next time I would call and be told "it's your script" and I would ask how could it be my script, it was up and running for three days? Little did I know they were in changing my pages. I left to another host after three weeks and have had 100% uptime since. But they are still holding my domains hostage. There is more to web hosting than price.
On Thurday 14 February 2008 I was alerted by a client my website was down. At 3:38 PM central I placed a call to 1 and 1 tech support to report the problem. At 3:50 PM the tech support system answered the call and informed me it was a billing issue. Confused I called the billing department at 3:58 PM central Thursday. The recording stated they were closed for the day.
At 8:06 AM central Friday I called the billing department at 1and1. the call was answered at 8:20 AM. At this time I was informed I had a past due balance of $29.95. I asked why this had not been brought to my attention sooner? Why did I not receive an invoice or bill? why did I not receive a notice that there was a billing problem with my account. I was provided with NO ANSWERS to these questions. I was simply told if I wanted to restore the hosting service I had to call a collection agency and pay the bill. I would then have to call 1and1 back with the confirmation number provided by the collection agency.
Reluctantly I made the call to the collection agency. I am now told a "late fee" of $18.95 was added as well as a collection fee of $8. After some argument I paid the bill so I could get my site back up.
At 8:36 AM central Friday, I placed another call to 1and1 billing with the confirmation number provided by the collection agency. Again a long hold of more than 20 minutes before an answer. I provided the information required and demanded the password be reset, and the site restored. I was told I would receive an email confirming the host restoration. At 9:48 AM central I received an email from Shireen Major
Transfers Department at 1&1 Internet stating it will take 3-4 hours for the "system" to catch up.
I sent several more emails and placed numerous calls throughout the day on Friday to restore my site. All emails were unanswered and all calls were disconnected after long waits on hold.
I CALLED OVER THE WEEKEND ... 1AND1 IS CLOSED. I CALLED MONDAY MORNING ... 1AND1 IS CLOSED.
ON TUESDAY 19 FEBRUARY 2008 I BEGAN MY CALLS AT 8:01 AM CENTRAL TO THE BILLING DEPARTMENT. I WAITED ON HOLD UNTIL 8:14 AM. I DISCONNECTED THE CALL AND CALLED BACK THIS TIME PRESSING 1 FOR SALES. AT 8:20 AM SOMEONE ANSWERED IN SALES AND PUT ME ON HOLD FOR BILLING. I AGAIN WAITED ON HOLD UNTIL 9:12 AM WHEN I DISCONNECTED THE CALL. I IMMEDIATELY CALLED BACK AND PRESSED 2 FOR BILLING HOPING SOMEONE ACTUALLY WOKE UP AND CAME TO WORK THIS MORNING. NO LUCK. AT 9:49 AM I DISCONNECTED THE CALL AND AGAIN CALLED BACK THIS TIME PRESSING 1 FOR SALES. AT LEAST SOMEONE EVENTUALLY ANSWERS AT THIS DEPARTMENT. SURE ENOUGH THE CALL IS ANSWERED AT 10:01 AM. I IMMEDIATELY ASK FOR A SUPERVISOR. I AM ASKED WHAT DEPARTMENT AND I STATE I WOULD START WITH THE CALL REP'S SUPERVISOR. I AM AGAIN PLACED ON HOLD. AT 10:32 AM I DISCONNECT THE CALL. I CALL AGAIN PRESSING 2 FOR BILLING. THE CALL IS ANSWERED AT 10:58 AM. I EXPLAIN MY COMPLAINT TO THE OPERATOR WHO IS UNABLE TO TELL ME WHY MY ACCOUNT REMAINS LOCKED. I ASK FOR A SUPERVISOR WHO CAN TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM. AT 11:10 AM SUPERVISOR DAMIEN ANSWERS AND TELLS ME HE CANNOT UNLOCK THE SITE FOR AT LEAST 1 - 3 BUSINESS DAYS FROM TODAY!!!!!!!!!!! NOT FROM FRIDAY WHEN THE MONEY WAS EXTORTED FROM ME BUT FROM TODAY ... TUESDAY ... FIVE DAYS AFTER RECEIVING PAYMENT OF $57 FOR A $29.95 BILL. WHEN YOU ACCEPT PAYMENT YOU ARE OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE A SERVICE. 1AND1 OBVIOUSLY KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT SERVICE. THE SUPERVISOR CANNOT ANSWER MY QUESTIONS REGARDING WHY I WAS NOT CONTACTED ABOUT A BILLING PROBLEM PRIOR TO TAKING THE SITE DOWN, CHARGING A LATE FEE AND SENDING THE ACCOUNT TO COLLECTIONS.
HE ALSO COULD NOT EXPLAIN OR JUSTIFY SENDING THE ACCOUNT TO COLLECTIONS WHEN NO SERVICE IS PROVIDED WHEN AN ACCOUNT IS SHUT DOWN. SUPERVISOR DAMIEN ALSO CANNOT EXPLAIN WHY IT WILL TAKE THREE DAYS TO RESTORE THE SITE OR WHY IT IS NOT THREE DAYS FROM THE TIME THEY EAGERLY TOOK MY MONEY.
SUPERVISOR DAMIEN AT 1AND1 SUGGESTED I WRITE MY COMMENTS TO COMPLAINT@1AND1.COM. I DID SO AND THE EMAIL WAS RETURNED AS NOT A VALID ADDRESS BOTH IN THE SINGULAR AND PLURAL VERSIONS.
How can a company charge a late fee without first presenting a bill with a due date? How does a company expect a client to pay a bill when a bill is not provided? How can an account be sent to collections without a service being provided? How can you take money from your client (in this case $57 for a $29.95 service) and NOT provide the service????? 1and1 has no answer to any of these questions. And HERE'S a question for all of YOU ... how does 1and1 stay in business with such a lack of concern for their customers and their dishonest tactics?
I will be removing my site information as soon as the site is back up and immediately moving it to another host. I hope everyone who reads this considers the same.
It is 3:24 PM central on Tuesday February 19, 2008 . FULL payment for the 1and1 account was received at 8:36 AM Friday February 15, 2008. The web site is STILL DOWN, the issue remains unresolved, and I have received NO response from 1and1 regarding my complaints. Again ... 1and1 was paid for a service and refuses to PROVIDE the service.
Today my website’s is down because 1and1 internet disabled the website’s admin control panel since they failed to charge my credit card for the monthly hosting fee which is around $7.
They did that without my notice ,they did not even give me email notice. Suddenly, my website is completely down and I had no idea ,but I can only called 1and1 internet customer service
I made three calls and every call keep me waiting about 18 minutes. After the 3rd call (5 hours later) ,I checked my site and it was working eventually. I should have transferred my domain name 1 month ago if I have knowledge about php and my sql.
I hate to deal with their customer service.
Last year, when I want to cancel my VPS package, I called them and did it according to what the rep told me. But their cancellation procedure is a little complicated and tricky. Only after one month that my credit card was debited one more month’s fee did I recognize that my VPS is still active.
Actually, this is my only site which is still hosted by 1and1.com . I have transferred the other 5 websites to other hosting company since 1and1.com left me such bad bad experience
One more thing which is worth pointing out is that 1and1 internet continually send us email so frequently and I can only delete their email every time .I don’t even read its since I know 99% of them are all spam emails. They keep bombing my email address for the whole year. I am not against company sending valuable emails to customers, what I am against is you can not send customer emails too many times.
What I am writing this about article is everybody who is considering a web hosting company should carefully research before you make your decision. Of course, I don’t recommend 1and1.com.They throw the most dollars onto the major business related magazines and they ever buy 10 pages whole page ads on one famous tech magazine. But what they deliver is the world’s worst hosting and very bad customer service.I am very curious why such a crook company can still survive in a competitive hosting marketing.
This is the worst hosting company in the world! the only thing they can do best is cheating people.
I just signed up a managed server (150USD/ 1 month - contract 1 year) and it cannot be used. If someone interesting about signing up, please just do yourself a favor, contact me! i'll give my 1and1 server to you for FREE. DON'T WASTE your money on this company
You have been warned. DON't USE 1and1
Pricing on 1and1.co.uk is quite good but I cannot begin to tell you how many problems I have had with the CUSTOMER SUPPORT. They are based in the Philipines and that would be fine except that
- they don't understand English very well and so have trouble understanding you and expressing themselves
- they read scripted answers and cannot function if you ask them anything complicated
- they stammer and use unnecessesarily long phrases that sound polite to them but are a waste of time for a busy customer who is frustrated and needs a quick solution instead of fluff
It's terrible! This may sound petty but when your business depends on it, it really matters! To top it all off, one of their staff members was very rude to me yesterday. When I asked if if he was sure about something he was telling me, he said, "I have been working here for 2 years so don't tell me what to do." - all because I asked him if he is sure my webspace isn't 100gb instead of 8gb! When I asked to speak to supervisor he insisted on knowing what my nationality was! Reidiculous. I am this close to taking my business elsewhere.
I used their webhosting and domain services for 6 months and stopped and moved to a new webhost and wasted the last 6 months in payment. However, I told them not to renew my domain and they still automatically renewed it. I filed a complaint and then they deleted my account and removed the charges. Today I went to check the mail and found a mail from NCO financial Systems stating I have to pay 25.94 USD for a 6.99 domain that I did not even renew. If it wasn't 26 dollars, then my oh my, it would have been an awesome battle with 1and1. By the way, guys watch out for a pscyho at NCO Financial Systems, he hung up twice on me and shouted at me just for questioning about the bill.
However, he received a nice treat in return from me. About 1and1, Worst Service, Worst Support, Worst Hosting, Worst Web Corporate, Worst Everything except for their prices. I will try my level best to make my contacts avoid such companies. Take my advice and use the money on something else rather than spoiling with this company.
Regards,
Meer Tauhid Husain
Chairman, WheelsBD Ltd.
www.wheelsBD.com
Quantity over quality, check!
Outsourced support with language comprehension issues, check!
Predatory billing practices, check!
Excessive site down time, check!
Might as well throw your money out the window, check!
/Buyer Beware
Great service until it isn't working, that is. Then you call India. Never a supervisor available. Pathetic grammar. Not technically savvy. Repeat the same scripted answers over and over.
1and1 has the absolute worst service out there. All they care about is padding their pocket and screwing the customer. The customer service is of no help. If you cancel your credit card for any reason that you use to pay for the service, they will turn you over to collections. Do NOT do business with this company.
I switched from GoDaddy to 1&1 because of PHP limitations on GoDaddy. For the first year or so, 1&1 was fine. Then the server went down a couple of times, no biggie. The last straw was their latest problem with email going up and down at random.
The problem is their support. They get back to you quickly and can answer the simple questions quickly and easily, but on issues of their servers, the response is always "we know but we don't know when we'll have it fixed".
I can handle that for a day or so downtime, but we just opened our online store and put out flyers with our email address. Since the email account is monitored by multiple people, we used the webmail application to access it. When I told support that sometimes we could login and sometimes we get a 500 error, their answer was to "keep trying until it lets you log in". The longest time being over 40 tries before we could get in.
So, I'm moving my DNS to one company and hosting to another with much better customer service reveiws.
Have had great experience with these guys. I've had numerous others in the past, only for them to cause hours of work with every change they made to their systems.
Never had a problem with 1and1, except a server glitch, which they took care of within 40 minutes of my notifying them. Great prices and package deals, too.
Seems the negatives here brought their problems on themselves, but won't take the blame.
In some ways they are ok, but after only a few contacts with customer service it became clear that they felt like they were doing me a favor anytime they answered the phone or email/
In the end I chilked on a paying service to look at it but in fact I ordered it, in one click, without confirmation. I call them right away to cancel it but was told I needed to cancel it via email. I did this, not easy, and wait for the confirmation.
Finely I was told I canceled it for a date 3 months in the future. When I called to ask for a refund, I was treated like a criminal and a rip off for asking for a refund.
This company is a mess. All went well until they screwed up my annual renewal. Somehow they sent me to collections (I had an expired credit card on account). Ok, no problem. Paid collections. Now they still won't unlock my account unless I coordinate with the collections agency (who doesn't answer, and won't respond to voicemails). I'm now on hold with 1and1 trying to simply cancel my account. I don't have time for this, and want nothing more to do with them. This whole process has taken over 3 weeks. 25 minutes on hold now. No end in site.
Oh, and billing doesn't answer the phone. You just get a message saying they are overloaded, then it hangs up. Then you email them, and it takes about 5 days to get a response. That's customer service???
Don't do it! 1and1 stole my domain name! I had a free domain registration as part of a hosting package and when I tried to opt out of the hosting package they wouldn't let me keep or transfer the domain. They gave me many conflicting stories and now say that it was "purchased by someone else" although they are still the registrars and no one has developed it at all.
I SAY THEY ARE LIAES AND THEIVES AND I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THEM AT ALL.
There are some very good points about 1and1 - price and uptime.
However there customer support is next non-existent, if you have a major problem. Its based in the Philippines, mainly, and they seem to only have a basic grip on the English language.
Another point you should consider is that although it appears they are based in sunny Slough the servers are actually in Germany. This may well effect the way search engines rate your site. Check alexa to see.
It is not possible to speak to anybody in the UK and emails/Faxes are left unanswered even if sent to the German HQ.
If you have a one or two sites you may well have many years of happy service with 1and1, but if your site is for business look elsewhere.
Shame really
Using 1and1 to store domain names. Account magically appeared in deleted status and none of our critical domain names are working anymore. Called one and one 12 hours ago and got someone in another country. Claimed they were escalating to their admin dept as it was clear we didn't initialize the delete of our account. They would get back to me soon. Went to bed. Called back 12 hours later. Told by another person in India that "rest assured, they were working on it and would get back to me in a couple of hours". How can I "rest" when all of my production web sites are now not functioning and we are losing money and they seem like they could care less... Anyone know a good web hosting company? These people really are a disaster.
I am writing to let anyone out there who wants to put their advertisement out there to attract their clientele even if it is just d&d players not to go to 1and1. Their tech support folks are frustrating just to say the least and after 4 complaints to billing and 20 to them I finally got my blog oh but they never provided me the password, yet the jagoffs still asked for my credit card information and still billed me which caused my husband to close his account and request a refund. I had to go in to work and personally ask my boss to submit a refund for me since, at the time when I signed up I was employee and it was free.
Let me also share a wonderful work experience that I had with with 1and1 internet. Don't get me wrong for the first 6 months I had no complaints and everything was going according to plan. When I got the blog that is when everything started to go wrong. You see my boss the wonderful guy he is decided to teach me the work ethic: "you are spending too much time with your stuff and not helping the customer. My response, Sebastian, that is not true please take a look at my call logs and also my e-mails I have been working all day. "well your numbers unfortunately do not show it, come on" Ok, not a problem I increased my productivity so that he would not come to me with this again and he came up to me and told me, you know I notice you had trouble with your stuff, free website and all I know you have been billed I will make certain that money is back to your husband's credit card account right away. It took them 3 weeks to put it back, forcing David to open a secure account and instructing me to delete everything which is what I did.
Ok, that aside the main purpose for this discussion is the fact that a woman should keep her mouth shut in that office and not say anything to the men there unless it is work related or if she plans to go out with group of them after work. Yes, I was invited but that was just, whatever. Anyway, one of the boys, Ben Arnold decided to test my loyalty to the company by inviting me to go out with him and also other team members male and female, I told him sure if my husband can come along. He said no and explain. I did explain to him that I would not go out with him and I am only there to work and nothing else. Of course Ben kept on flirting with me and I kept saying that he is ridiculous and I would have contact my spouse, he kept laughing and for the next 4 weeks this bull crap continued. It started in May of 2007 and continued through July of 2007 when all of a sudden he resigned when I reported it after one of the female co workers got mad and told me that these men were a bunch of no good jack asses and she would not work long in a place like this. It does not matter who she is. I hope that you are not making it difficult for her either. Anyway, I went into HR and called ADP Total Source and complaint was filed. In August Sebastian mentioned that my work performance is more terrible and it is very likely that I will not work there past August, he suggested that I look for another position within the company since they could still use me in either sales, info or some other dept possibly fraud team. I checked with Richard and Brad and could not get any straight answer all I got was go to Richard he told me since I did not have necessary technical knowledge and SeGo already fired me he simply wished me luck.
Am I guilty in any all this, yes, but indirectly I made an error in getting too close to people there looking for normal people to be friends with just a pleasant colleague to work there.
Any of you women or men deciding to work there please make sure you read my story first before you go to apply and know what you may be getting yourself into if you make the same mistake as I did.
I say check out other hosting companies I think that they would not treat their employees this way or their customers.
During the trial period I determined that 1and1 was too slow, had unwanted email anomolies. I cancelled before end of trial, BUT they persist in billing me and reactivating the account. 1and1 tells me they are going to close the account, but then its left open, billing continues. It's an absolute nightmare and the procedure they've invented to do a cancellation is designed to fail. Did I mention they don't answer the phone?
Signing up has never been easier! Want to make a change to your service, or move a domain? Prepare for the neverending runaround. I have NEVER been able to talk to a manager when I'm unhappy. Whenever there's a problem, you're referred to their website, or to email Complaints@1and1.com. You'll never be satisfied with this company.
There's not much to say except that I have never had such poor service from any vendor in any business -- web hosting, hardware, software, whatever. Unbelievably bad.
Their support staff is in the Phillipines, and has very little training or knowledge. They seem to have no procedure for escalating calls if they are unable to answer. You wouldn't believe the crazy, non-sensical explanations I got.
Their billing department is in Pennsylvania. Of the three different people there I've spoken with, each was rude and unhelpful -- really appalling.
