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1&1 Internet Atrocious Support

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bdw

<Rant> :mad:

Has anyone here had any problems with 1&1 Internet support? I have been with them for almost nine years now and their support during this period has been the most dreadfully atrocious I have ever experienced from any business or organisation. I have crossed swords with them about this on several occasions and it just seems to get worse.

The only reason I have remained as a customer is that the prospect of dealing with their support during the process of transferring my websites is too daunting.

On Tuesday my email was rejected by a server in the USA because the 1&1 IP address it came from had been identified as a spammer (this is a fairly regular occurrence with 1&1 servers). I forwarded the bounce email with the details to their support. I got no reply, not even an acknowledgement. Yesterday I resent the email and once again I got no response. Today I have tried again but I am not holding my breath.

Their website says, "1&1's aim is to provide you not only with the best possible products, but also, the best possible support. The dedicated 1&1 support team has gained an excellent reputation throughout the industry in providing comprehensive after-care for the products you purchase."

That is just an unashamed and blatant lie as confirmed by this Google search.

Any one else in here having problems with them and more importantly does anyone know if anything can be done about it?

</Rant> :mad:
 
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You promote 1&1 to other people, via your website, you try to sucker other people into using them, knowing full well they are cr*p!!!

Then you got the front to come on here, saying how bad a service you offer really is.

On top of this you offer IT and web design/consultancy related services, but you don't know how to change host.

Your unbelievable!!
 
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I've worked in the hosting business for 5 years, so I know first hand how bad hosting support can be. It is actually one of those industries where you do get what you pay for. 1&1 are at the budget end of the market so I wouldn't expect anything good from them to be honest.

If its quality your looking for, I would pay a bit more and look for one of the smaller hosting companies that value their customers. Try calling their support before you join to see what they're like and how long they take to answer. Some hosting companies will help you in migrating to them.
 
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estwig said:
You promote 1&1 to other people, via your website, you try to sucker other people into using them, knowing full well they are cr*p!!!

Then you got the front to come on here, saying how bad a service you offer really is.

On top of this you offer IT and web design/consultancy related services, but you don't know how to change host.

Your unbelievable!!
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A bit harsh there estwig. I'm guessing that bdw is just trying to mak a bit of extra money from the referrals.

Regarding 1&1 all I got when hosting with them was SERVER UNAVAILBLE.

When I called the help desk all I ever got was "I'll have to escalate it to the next level". Then an email saying it was resolved; that's it. I changed all my customers over to another host.
 
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You promote 1&1 to other people, via your website, you try to sucker other people into using them, knowing full well they are cr*p!!!
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Actually I did used to promote them because their affiliate scheme paid well. I featured then on a few pages of my website but because of the support I had been receiving from them I binned them. The ad you saw was one that I missed but it is now gone. Thank you for pointing that out. I would not now recommend 1&1 to my worst enemy.

A bit harsh there estwig.
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Estwig do you know what? You are beginning to come over as a bit of a stalker. I have this image of you sitting there ready to pounce on my posts for any reason whatsoever and whether or not you agree with the points I am making. You are really not doing yourself any favours.
 
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It is actually one of those industries where you do get what you pay for. 1&1 are at the budget end of the market so I wouldn't expect anything good from them to be honest.
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I appreciate that but they do claim to offer "the best possible support". I will have to make the change eventually but in the early days I used them for quite a few of my clients. Moving them all would take a lot of time and obviously it is not chargeable.
 
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bdw said:
I appreciate that but they do claim to offer "the best possible support".
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This is marketing speak though. No company is going to broadcast on their website that "we only care about money and not customers... our support is absolute s*#t."

At the end of the day how much support would you give to a client that paid you £2.49 per month...... :)
 
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bdw said:
Estwig do you know what? You are beginning to come over as a bit of a stalker. I have this image of you sitting there ready to pounce on my posts for any reason whatsoever and whether or not you agree with the points I am making. You are really not doing yourself any favours.
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I don't like you, your a wrong'un.

Trust me I don't sit waiting to pounce on your posts, maybe your conscience is telling you something??
 
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I have used 1&1 Internet for several years without any real issues. I have also contacted their support section several times (by email) and I normally get a response within 24 hours.

Generally service availability has been excellent.

I am sure there are different / better hosting providers out there - but thus far I cannot fault 1&1.

I would point out I am using fairly standard hosting and email services - nothing sophisticated.
 
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I find their customer service very prompt. The problem being they don't seem to have a clue what the left arm is doing from the right. I cancelled a packaged under the distance selling regulations. 54 emails later I finally managed to recoup the money they'd taken out of my account dispite them giving assurances that it had been cancelled.


In my opinion it's a totally shambolic company and I suspect if they were a smaller one trading standards would have been all over them by now.
 
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bdw said:
Actually I did used to promote them because their affiliate scheme paid well. I featured then on a few pages of my website but because of the support I had been receiving from them I binned them. The ad you saw was one that I missed but it is now gone.
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Good move, them, along with Fasthosts are lousy. Hosteurope (123reg hosting arm) are not up to much either.
 
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I have also contacted their support section several times (by email) and I normally get a response within 24 hours.
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During the last nine years I have seldom had a reply within 24 hours and I have had several other episodes like this one (now waiting three days for a reply). I have them all documented.

One the most infamous occasion I raised a request with them on 23 July. Despite repeated requests to them for a response sent to several different email addresses I finally gave up on 25 November. I have still not had a reply and as I say, this is not an isolated ocurrence. I have had several other episodes like this.
 
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bdw said:
During the last nine years I have seldom had a reply within 24 hours and I have had several other episodes like this one (now waiting three days for a reply). I have them all documented.

One the most infamous occasion I raised a request with them on 23 July. Despite repeated requests to them for a response sent to several different email addresses I finally gave up on 25 November. I have still not had a reply and as I say, this is not an isolated ocurrence. I have had several other episodes like this.
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I'd be interested to know what was the problem that you reported ?

Where was the 1&1 system failing technically ?
 
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It was not the system that failed. It was the support for the system. My present problem is that I cannot email a contact in the US because 1&1's servers are beig rejected for spamming.
 
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bdw said:
It was not the system that failed. It was the support for the system. My present problem is that I cannot email a contact in the US because 1&1's servers are beig rejected for spamming.
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This is commonplace and you are highly unlikely to get any joy from 1&1 as it is most likely outside of 1&1's control. Many hosting companies use blacklists of IP mailservers and as a result BOOM mail is returned.

e.g. I have a client who is on fasthosts, my email is sent directly to the blackhole at source, it is not returned to me it is dumped stright into oblivion by fasthosts (as I was forced to use the orange mailserver) I spoke to my hosting guys who gave me a different mail port to use for my outgoing mail (Orange blocked the normal mailport to force me to use theirs). Now mail form the SAME ADDRESS as previously, but from my own IP mailserver gets to my client.

My point being that the problem is more than likely outside of the mailserver company (in this case 1&1)'s control, it is normally third party mailserver blocking (Although sometimes server configuration can get a mialserver rejected).

It took 3 weeks to get Fasthosts to admit that they block mail at source without the option to whitelabel the incoming mail address.
 
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bdw said:
It was not the system that failed. It was the support for the system. My present problem is that I cannot email a contact in the US because 1&1's servers are beig rejected for spamming.
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As you say their system hasn't failed technically - it's a support response issue.

Are you paying for any support service above standard ?

It's worth bearing in mind that the support included by most ISPs is just a basic level of support - not a guaranteed service level. Although as I said my basic support requests normally get a response within 24 hours.

But if you are expecting faster and more complex support, it may well be beyond that covered in the basic ISP support.

The other point is that since there is no technical failure, 1&1 may not see it as a support issue - at least not one they can solve.
 
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GeorgeM said:
The other point is that since there is no technical failure, 1&1 may not see it as a support issue - at least not one they can solve.
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They really ought to respond though shouldn't they? Even just to say it is outside their control.

I can understand the reluctance to transfer the domains away from them. With most domain name providers this is very simple but 1and1 make this an absolute nightmare. I have had to do this for several clients over the years and the process is always slow and cumbersome.
 
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My point being that the problem is more than likely outside of the mailserver company (in this case 1&1)'s control, it is normally third party mailserver blocking (Although sometimes server configuration can get a mialserver rejected).
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Perhaps, but I think they are in a better position than me to sort this out. That is why I pay them hundreds of pounds per annum.
 
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bdw said:
Perhaps, but I think they are in a better position than me to sort this out. That is why I pay them hundreds of pounds per annum.
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I would be very surprised if the contract you have has a 100% email delivery guarantee as a material condition.

They only have to provide whatever your terms and conditions of contract state, and while this m,ight not be ideal, as long as they are working within their contract there is not a lot that can be done :(

Have they just blanked you then? as in completely no reply to your emails, not even an acknowledgment? don't they have a ticket system? What about telephone support, what have they said? (although after having spoken to fasthosts customer dis-service the other day, you might well find out you know more than them :D )
 
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GeorgeM said:
I have used 1&1 Internet for several years without any real issues. I have also contacted their support section several times (by email) and I normally get a response within 24 hours.
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Wow - I bet that's fun when all your sites fall over and you sit there for 24 hours waiting for an email?
 
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abpublish said:
They really ought to respond though shouldn't they? Even just to say it is outside their control.

I can understand the reluctance to transfer the domains away from them. With most domain name providers this is very simple but 1and1 make this an absolute nightmare. I have had to do this for several clients over the years and the process is always slow and cumbersome.
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As OldWelshGuy says, if I was not happy with an ISP, I'd move to another provider - I have done so in the past, and would do so again. Happily I have no need to do that at present.
 
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I'm using 1&1 too but havn't had any major probs with them. Only once where the system went slow and I couldn't edit my site or check any e-mails.

But i'll probably cancel it in September because there are just too expensive. I'm using the business package with the e-commerce option but other then that I havn't had any big problems and whenever I e-mail them if I need to I usually get a quick response.
 
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Only once where the system went slow and I couldn't edit my site or check any e-mails.
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I seldom have any problems with their system but the topic is their support and I am still awaiting a reply (5 days now), which from experience I now know I won't receive unless I try a different angle.
 
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Try running a trace route to the non receiving mail server from your pc - this will tell you where the block is, as others have said it may not be your recipients isp
 
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So the issue is with SORBS then not 1&1. OK 1&1 at coprorate level might need to negotiate with SORBS to find a way to clean their servers up, but no tech support guy is likely to be able to help.

Mail blocking on this scale is aproblem and there is another thread currently running about other ISP's having their mail servers blocked.

Good luck with getting this resolved by someone in a help desk cubicle in a sweatroom in Mumbai :)
 
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I can't fault 1&1 for a basic budget service. I've used them for a couple of simple html sites that I host on behalf of some other people but for my e-commerce sites, I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.

Support has usually replied within 24hrs but sometimes that's just not good enough, especially when your customers are facing a database error when they come to your homepage because someone on the hosting end has been performing "maintenance".

My current host for e-commerce sites replies within 1hr of opening a ticket and are happy just to chew the cud on the phone over a "can I do this from a technical point of view". Responsive, friendly and highly competent.
 
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9 years? Get real!

2 strikes and they're out. You're at the mercy of a third party and you've no one to blame but yourself.

Take the good out this situation, top of your list will be support when shopping around. You should be getting a reply within the hour.

My host / datacentre always respond within about 3 - 4 minutes. That's what I pay them for.
 
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You're at the mercy of a third party and you've no one to blame but yourself.
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Thank you, that's very helpful. I'll bear it in mind.

Support has usually replied within 24hrs ...
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I have now been waiting more than six days and I have emailed them four times without any response. I am now beginning to think that I am on some sort of support blacklist for complaining!

To compound this I tried to contact their legal team today about this other matter. I eventually got through to someone and asked to speak to their legal department. The obviously foreign lady at the end of the line asked me what it was about so I told her and quoted their reference to her.

She disappeared then came back and said that I should contact them by email. I told her that I had contacted them by email but they had not responded. She said that you can only contact the legal team via email so here was I being threatened with them closing my account for nothing and no one would speak to me about it.

She then said that someone from the legal team was responding as we spoke and that I would have an email in a "few moments". Having wasted more than ten minutes on a line that I was paying for I cut the call short at this point and checked my email. No email arrived and five and a half hours later I am still waiting.

They display total contempt for customer service.

.
 
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Thank you, that's very helpful. I'll bear it in mind.
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It actually is. You spend hundreds of pounds a year for a service you can't rely on. Your customers rely on you. Are they on this service?

Wise up and take your business to a reliable provider. 9 years? Come on.

Check out Kualo in the UK, Attenda or Rackspace if you want to step it up a notch.

Servint in the US are awesome too.
 
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From the discussions here, it seems 1&1 is perhaps not the right service provider for your needs.

You need a high availability, fast support response provider.

I'd recommend looking for an ISP who meets that spec.
 
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Wise up and take your business to a reliable provider. 9 years? Come on.
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I don't have a reliability problem. If you read my posts you will see that I have not mentioned any problem with reliability or service delivery.

You need a high availability, fast support response provider.
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Actually I don't.

The websites I have with 1&1 are all fairly straightforward, mostly plain HTML. They have no heavy traffic or demanding requirements. I seldom have problems with 1&1 service delivery. Obviously after nine years I know their systems quite well and I can generally sort things out for myself. It's just these occasions (perhaps two or three times a year) when their abysmal support is called upon that cause the problem. My clients have never have any real problems because I deal with it for them.

I seldom need fast response. All I need is for them to answer the bloody support requests I send them within one working day, which is what they advertise!
 
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