This posting will hopefully serve some people well in the future. I have had a very frustrating time with 1&1 and I wish to share my story.
There are countless stories out there that are like this. You can find them in threads around the Internet.
My client started their web presence with 1&1 Internet, a cheap hosting provider that lures buyers in with a free year of domain registration.
When we migrated my client's site to a new host the troubles began. When it came time to renew the domain we approached things a few days early just in case there were any hassles.
Our initial plan was to transfer registrars. We settled on a one year renewal.
When we logged in to the account, however, nothing was there. During our transfer we had the hosting account closed and that took the domain registration account away with it.
We asked 1&1 to reactivate the account so we could manage the domain. We were willing to pay the extra year with 1&1 to do an update, that was a non issue.
Then the first cost hit us: $X reactivate the account because apparently we were behind payment (curiously, no notification about this prior).
Things take a long time in the queue though, so in that time that things were processing 1&1 let our domain registration lapse. So now the domain was in the redemption period.
Not their fault apparently.
Second cost: fee from redemption $X. Wtf, we had contacted them days before the domain was set to expire.
That goes on awhile and finally the domain is reactivated. 1&1 had setup a new account to provision us and somehow wired the domain up manually. Everything seems fine.
Days later a DNS update is made but we are not made aware of the change.
About a month later we received letters from 1&1 notifying us that the account was in arrears. Again? Didn't we like *just* pay 2x that fee to renew and redeem ourselves from their domain lapse?
Months go by and everything is fine. We gave up on dealing with 1&1 to transfer the domain. We figured since we renewed with them let's not rock the boat. It was such a hassle going through the previous issues I did not want to do it again.
As far as I know the disputed payment issue had been resolved (I spoke to billing first assuming such, but they quickly pointed me to tech support). I'll probably touch base with my client on this when we debrief.
So here we are with a functioning, renewed domain. Then out of the blue I get this webform request.
I thought it was a scam:
Web developer writes to let me know that our domain is listed in HIS 1&1 domain account and wants it out of there ASAP. Does not want to pay for it.
Says he contacted my client (no response). I'm thinking total scam. Then I run a whois. Sure enough, he owns it. I login to my client's account and sure enough it is missing.
Initially I responded to the developer to try to get an idea of what was going on with the file and he very clearly stated he just wanted it gone. I reassured him we had just renewed it so one would assume he's not incurring any charges on the account.
So here we are with an empty domain name management account and a pissed off guy that doesn't want our domain. Who is this guy? None of us know. He just wants us to have it back.
Still feels like a scam though.
We thought the logical thing to do would be to let 1&1 know about the issue. I wrote them a support ticket and neither myself nor my client received any response. I let this simmer for a bit as I was busy with another project and obviously in for a very complicated discussion.
I finally call their support desk and try to explain the situation. This was a closed-then-reactivated account and somehow provisioning (re)allocated our file to someone else.
It should be obvious. They have support records documenting all of what went on above. The domain was renewed by us just months prior.
The domain records have been set to LOCKED just as it was at the start of our issue. In other words, the *whole* time.
How did the domain get transfered then?
How?
If this person had acquired the domain on purpose, why does it still point to us? Why did they contact us?
It should be obvious that they re-provisioned our domain to someone else.
What does 1&1 say?
Why don't you give that guy a call and work it out.
I sent the guy an email to let him know we've made no progress with 1&1 and provided instructions on unlocking the domain so that we can begin the transfer process.
That guy seems to be offline. Great.
I went to internic and filed my first complaint ever. It said there was already a complaint against our domain after my first attempt would not validate. Hours later I realized that the other developer may be in the middle of a complaint process also. We shall hopefully find out soon.
