My Account Locked with 150-200 domains inside

[ep2002]

Please read my story & put my URL on your site if you have a site outing 1and1.com

I've spent all night putting links on my links page & need some to point back to mine.

I read a journalist is suing them, so I'm going to follow up with her.

http://reviewsofcompanies.com/category/companies-i-had-problems-with/1and1com-they-are-so-bad-they-deserve-their-own-category/

Thanks


Michelle

[Highland]

A little bit of devil's advocacy for a moment (and I am no friend of 1and1)

First off, they're right in that they are not responsible for you keeping your domains current. Granted, their tools leave a LOT to be desired, but you do need to keep track yourself. An Excel spreadsheet could help a lot with this. Even with 300+ domains you're only renewing them once a year. Remember, 1and1 is cheaper for a reason. You get what you pay for (which is part of why RegisterFly went under).

I hate to tell you this but Godaddy does some of the things that you mention 1and1 does (like no transfer 60 days after renewal). ICANN is investigating them (http://webhosting.devshed.com/c/a/Web-Hosting-News/ICANN-Strives-to-Stop-GoDaddy-and-Others-from-Domain-Name-Abuse/) for this and other practices. And if you cancel a domain with Godaddy they do not refund you and you lose control of the domain. Seems to be an industry practice.

Third, most of your issues (beyond the account getting locked) are largely due to 1and1's tools, of which I am no fan. Godaddy (who does domains first and foremost) has run rings around them in the domain dept. But, as I said before, you get what you pay for. Part of your frustration is that the tools don't scale well so you with 300 domains had a very hard time.

If I were you I would talk to their accounting dept. They're based in the US and when I had to cancel a server after having had 60 hours of downtime from one of their tools failing (thankfully it wasn't mission critical) I had no problems. They didn't hit me for the cancel fee and refunded the charge that had just been put on my credit card. I moved my mission critical sites over to The Planet and kept my good 1and1 server (seriously!) for some private hosting we do.

Incidentally, you missed a key reason not to register with 1and1: glue records. Never did find where you could create them.

[ep2002]

Hi there,

Thanks for the quick response.

Ok, a few things:

1. Yes I agree most of the problem is their software, but they designed it that way for a reason. I have only ever been with Go Daddy/Blue Razor & now 1and1.com, so I have no idea if most, if not all, domain registrars notify you when a domain is coming up for renewal.

I shouldn't have to set up an excel sheet & waste money getting someone to do that for me. Even if I did do that, the Excel sheet doesn't have a date notification system on it to let me know 2 wks. before, that my domain is coming up for renewal.

2. As I said, I've been with GD before, & while they tried to make it hard (only one incident is in the back of my mind), I was able to do what I needed to do & transfer to 1and1. They couldn't stop me, & they knew it.

Even back then they sent out 3-4 notices, so I won't even compare Go Daddy with 1and1.com, not to mention GD has an office of the president where you can speak to someone live. 1and1.com avoids talking to you at all costs.

3. My assistant already spoke to billing. I had him call b/c I knew I'd blow up. Even with him trying to be reasonable about it, they said no & I know they can do it, b/c they did it the 2nd time there was a problem & I wanted to cancel the domains & get my money back.

Now I have no domain, & they are locking my account b/c I haven't paid the bill. I told billing I was talking to complaints b/c they e-mailed me again saying the bill hadn't been paid.

I never heard from them again, & I went about my biz b/c I had already e-mailed complaints several times & got no show of good faith, just the "you can't get your money back, tough luck."

They know the domains were canceled, in fact I went into my account before they locked it, & they aren't there. At first I thought 1and1 was being nice, they cancelled them & just weren't going to charge me, but no can do, they locked my account, & didn't even bother to warn me or try to discuss it.

3. What are glue records?

4. I wrote away to ICAAN (I think), it's hard to remember now & no one ever got back to me. In fact I wrote them back when I thought they were going to charge me for the 2nd set of domains I had thought I had canceled.

I didn't pursue it b/c 1and1 gave me the money back & all was fine.

I'm pretty sure the reason they locked me out, is b/c they saw me moving all the domains I could over to GD.

I couldn't afford to move them all in one shot, AND b/c 60 days hadn't passed for a lot of them, I had to wait anyway.

I managed to get around $300 worth moved over, but that was it.

Also, you say 1and1 is so cheap, but since they raised their prices, they aren't that much cheaper than GD.

GD now offers free privatization (first year only) if you transfer or purchase 5 domains at once. The difference in prices is like 30 cents or something like that b/c GD charges that 20 cent fee that 1and1 doesn't tell us about.

Thanks & TTYL


Michelle

[Highland]

I don't agree that they designed their software in such a poor way for a reason. I find that the worse the user interface, the more customer service calls you take. It could very well be that 1and1 is so large that they are simply apathetic to their call volume but if you ignore call volume it could come back to haunt you. I won't try and defend their call center either, since they are the friendliest unhelpful people on the planet. 1and1 is only a good value if you need no tech support.

I shouldn't have to set up an excel sheet & waste money getting someone to do that for me.
If I were you I would keep one anyways (Godaddy makes it easy since they will export your domain list in a CSV format). While it is in their interest to notify you, you need to remember that nobody will ever watch out for your interests like you do (not even Godaddy). "Shouldn't have to" isn't a very good reason why you didn't notice something with your business was wrong. I'm not saying 1and1 shouldn't try and notify you like Godaddy does either.

Incidentally, if you have 300 domains you might want to look into the Godaddy Discount Domain Club (https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/club/landing.asp?ci=8994). We have about that many domains and you'll make back the signup fee and then some.

Glue records are how you run your own DNS. If I want to run ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com I have to be able to define where those addresses will resolve to. I never figured out how to get a 1and1 domain to do that.

Complaining to ICANN is the best way to deal with it and if you really want to hit them on this, pursue your complaint. ICANN seems more willing to investigate now and a good ICANN investigation of 1and1 might prove beneficial to everyone.

[ep2002]

Hi again,

Yeh, I won't pay $90 just to get $3 off.

I had 300 domains, I let a ton go. I think I have (can't see now b/c of 1and1 locking me out) 200 some now.

I don't think you are understanding me & it seems you are picking out only one part of my whole case. I don't expect companies to run my biz for me, but I do expect ethics & a company to run a service properly.

In fact my assistant & I were discussing this very thing last night, & I REFUSE to believe this is just a customer service issue. It's gone way beyond that.

A customer service issue is when a customer is unsatisfied. This isn't about me being unsatisfied, this is about me not willing to pay for domains I canceled, them refusing to credit me so I can pay the other domains on the invoice, & them locking me out with NO NOTICE, & taking hostage all the other domains that are in there.

If they locked me out of just the invoices on the invoice, ok, that may be logical to me, but they didn't do that.

I still believe that they keep that design in question b/c it works for them. Their entire cancel procedure is made to be difficult.

It's the moral obligation of every company to allow a client to cancel easily. You can't hold a customer hostage no matter how much you want their money & based on what I have read, even people who have cancelled have been charged by 1and1, so while mine is a design & notification issue, how 1and1 treats the other 100's of people who have been scammed by them shows that their whole system is in place to draw every penny they can out of every client they get by any criminal way possible.

Also, their e-mail notices don't match up with the dates the domain was supposed to renew, so they design false dates letting the owner think they have time when really they don't. That may be what happened in my case, I don't know.

If you are telling me that GD is the ONLY registrar who notifies their clients of when the domain is to renew, then I'd give 1and1 some slack, but I highly doubt that is the case.

There is no way you can't know how your business runs. Any biz person who cares about biz knows EXACTLY what is going on, what their clients think about them, how many people are complaining about them online, etc.

Just the fact that 1and1 has had Sebastian & the CEO there for years speaks volumes about how solidly rooted that company is. It's not like they have such a high turnover & therefore the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

When a company gets TONS of complaints, they have to listen. If they don't, that's b/c they are committing fraud in some way & have no conscious. Businesses are made up of human beings. They aren't deaf mutes (no offense to people with disabilities).

I will call ICANN, thank you :)


Michelle