Earlier today, I sent the following message to the entire list of 1and1 email addresses that i have been able to accumulate.
I am issuing a public challenge to anyone at 1and1 to refute your company’s incompetence.
http://rippedoffconsumers.org/1and1-complaints/1and1-incompetence-part-10/
I will be submitting ANOTHER set of proof that what you have now invoiced me for TWICE is fraudulent.
1and1 proves at every opportunity that you are incapable of even the most basic customer service, and I will continue to advertise it publicly until someone resolves your mistakes.
Sincerely,
Brian Gothard
I got the following rely from Joy in their Transfers department. Keep in mind that although I keep her on my list just because I send it to everyone I can, this is not her job, nor her responsibility. She is offering to step up and provide some actual customer service outside her area.
We’ll see…
Brian,
I cannot help you with your billing issues but I can help you with any transfer issues that you may be having. This issue has been going on for too long and I apologize for the inconvenience. Please provide me with a simple list of issues that you are having and what we can do to fix them for you. I will then sit down with the billing manager and make sure this gets resolved for you on a billing and a transfer level.
Joy
And my less than diplomatic response:
Joy, I appreciate your response.
Forgive me if I am not as gregarious as I generally attempt to be, but I have been abused by 1and1 for far too long to maintain a civil attitude. You just received another scalding email from me in response to Mr. Neally’s latest antagonistic and ignorant reply. I cannot stress just how fed up I am with your company. At every opportunity, 1and1 employees have sent responses that paint me as the bad guy, when every outstanding issue was caused by some failure in 1and1’s internal systems. I have been treated like I am trying to steal from you, when all I want is my account fixed as it should have been after the very first request.
I wish I could supply a simple list, but there are so many problems that have been ignored for so long that they have compounded into a truly monstrous fiasco. I have attached an Excel spreadsheet. I pasted each invoice into it and have explicit instructions for each domain name. The first two are the exact copies I printed, signed, and faxed to Damion Son and David Rubel. I cannot tell you how to fix it, just what requires fixing. The following is a much shortened version of the history. The complete documentation is posted at http://RippedOffConsumers.org because I got tired of repeatedly submitting the same stuff over and over.
You were involved in the original transfer from Mr. Seller to me of a block of domains. The transfer requested on December 10 did not complete until January 15 due to technical problems in your systems. I have several emails documenting this, one of them from you to Mr. Seller as you were trying to fix it on December 18.
During that period, the domains were accessible to neither Mr. Seller nor me. I had absolutely no ability to cancel any of the domains. Several expired during that time frame that I had no interest in renewing.
I received Invoice 356152559 for those expirations on January 8, (still seven days before I had access to them in my account). I submitted my first request to cancel them on January 10th by email, because that was the only avenue I had. I have submitted that same list, unmodified, on over twenty occasions by email and fax, and keep being told it would be fixed. That invoice is still showing unpaid in my account.
Five more domains expired during January, only two of which I wanted. I used the cancellation system, but none of them were canceled, and Invoice 356341592 was issued reflecting three domains I did not want. I have no idea why the cancellations failed. At the time, I was not taking the time to keep track of which domains go with which cancellation number, so although I have the emails, I cannot identify the right ones, but they all confirmed on January 23. I have since learned to keep track of everything on my own, since your interface does not correlate cancellation requests to domains in any manner that the customer can see, including the emails. Once the request is initiated, the only way to identify which domains were included in a cancellation is by keeping up with it myself.
Instead of fixing the invoice, they credited the whole thing. I don’t get it. The same fax included explicit details for correcting both invoices. They ignored the really old one and wiped out the newer one. That means neither one got fixed.
I have been very careful to keep every piece of documentation since then. I make sure I can identify which of your cancellation IDs go with each domain so that I can submit proof, because cancellations just don’t work as you advertise.
There is still a Late Fee on my account that appeared at some point. I was sent to NCO for collection, even though I keep trying to get this fixed. I refuse to pay your incorrect invoices. Mr. Neally evidently did something, because my account was unlocked yesterday when I checked it and I was able to make some DNS changes, but the invoices are still wrong and I expect it to lock up again at any time because the invoices are still wrong.
Today I got invoice 356714991. There is not a single domain on that invoice for which I am willing to pay. It includes 16 of the domains that I have been trying to cancel since January 10.
4 of the domains were canceled and transferred to another registrar prior to their expiration. I have all of the documentation to prove it.
The remaining 18 domains I sold to someone on eBay. They notified me today that only four of the transfer requests are working. The rest are generating errors. I canceled all of these so they would not auto-renew, but that should not block the transfer.
When I checked in my account at http://cancel.1and1.com, K-25178025-48 shows as “Voided”. I did not void it, and I again have no idea why it did not complete just like the other dozen submitted at the same time. The system does not work as advertised.
When I issued the cancellations noted above, the only choice I had was “As Soon As Possible” because 1and1 still had my account locked based on the original incorrect invoice. I chose “Cancel Domain Contract” because I did not know if the auction would result in a sale and I did not want to be charged for them in either case.
Now the 14 domains are no longer listed in my account, the cancellation orders are not in the list to reverse, and my customer cannot initiate the transfer. That is embarrassing for me, and I will have to refund their purchase, because I refuse to treat them as I have been treated and I have no illusions that 1and1 will fix it in any reasonable amount of time. That means I lose more money because of 1and1’s mishandling of my account since December of last year.
So, for Invoice 356714991 all of the domains with the exception of four are no longer in my account, yet Mr. Neally maintains that I am responsible for their renewals, and that it is my fault they were not canceled.
Antagonistic? Extremely! Blame the customer for 1and1’s failures once again.
I wish I knew an easy way to explain any of this, but I do not. I need my invoices corrected. I need my domain transfers to work according to ICANN policy.
And I need a way to pay you that does not involve allowing you access to my PayPal or credit card account for anything besides actual charges. You have proven you cannot be trusted with a blanket approval. Had I not canceled that blanket approval, I would have absolutely no leverage to get back my money for these fraudulent charges.
1and1 has an awful reputation for mistreating customers. I would be embarrassed to treat one of my customers as badly as I have been treated.
I am really really pleased to see somebody giving 1and1 the PR they deserve. I am a long standing (anonymous) customer – who has learned the hard way that even though the servers look cheap (rather affordable), the rest of the outfit (read the employees you will need to interact with) really are mostly terrible to deal with, and are often frankly ignorant and/or offensive.
Even with support for dedicated servers now coming from USA, the boilerplate answers “you will need to speak with billing about that” – really really annoy, as does the “you know nothing” canned responses.
Most recently I had the misfortune of ordering a new dedicated server – whilst they were fiddling with their website. The result was the incorrect product was provisioned for me – and although the screendump I have of the shopping basket shows clearly a different product from that they allocated to me, they are adamant they are correct.
Lucky for me, from my former dealings and more often than not being a “customer locked in under duress”, I opted to have a zero contract product and pay more up front.
Therefore I was able to cancel immediately and only loose a few hundred pounds.
I chalk that loss up to my stupidity – if you have any sense AVOID 1AND1 or I promise ONE DAY YOU WILL REGRET IT!