Never, ever buy domains from 1&1. Why? Let’s just put it this way: if a domain was a physical good that had to be shipped from one end of the USA to the other, or even imported from Europe to the States, it wouldn’t take as long for you to get it as it does when you buy from 1and1.
I’ve bought my fair share of domains via 1and1, and to be honest, on the few times in the past when I’ve needed the domain name ASAP, generally got the domain I bought within 24 hours. But now it’s been 4 days and 1and1 still hasn’t handed over the domain name that I bought and paid for. Instead, the domain shows up in the list of purchases with the status “The domain has been requested” – as if I care! I just want my domain name, and I want it now! The clients are waiting!
Just for the record, we’re not the only ones with this problem. If you’re looking for a good site to buy domains from, I can’t recommend LunarPages enough for their quality service and excellent turn-around times. 1and1, never again!
Update (March 29th, 7:45 PM UTC):
A quick call to the sales department gave me a most-helpful young man from the States who confirmed what I knew “the domain name *is* registered, but something’s clearly wrong with our system! Let me transfer you to support…” in India. The Indian support was far less than helpful “yeahhhhhhh… there’s something wrong.” When I expressed my, ahem, displeasure, he went further “yeaaaaaah…. 1and1 has a problem with our system holding up all domain name registrations. Aha.. Yeah, a problem”
Great!
Update (March 31st, 2:44 PM UTC):
Just received an email from 1and1 letting me know that the problem has been resolved and the domain name is finally functional. All’s well that ends well?
DynaDot has been pretty good for me as far as domain names go. Easy to use DNS, too.
You can buy domains from Name.com Been a long time customer myself. Takes no time in activating domains.
I have used namecheap.com and have been happy with them.
1and1 have to be the worst out there, I cancelled an account with them and it took them 6 months to give me my outstanding credit…that was after having threaten legal action on them!
I’m sorry to go off-topic here, but do you really feel it was necessary to mention the Indians, as if they were the source of the problem? I highly doubt they’ve been any less helpful BECAUSE they were Indians.
I understand your frustration, but you should really pay more attention to what you directly and indirectly imply.
I agree with Tom here. It was totally uncalled for.
The Indian thing i agree However if i buy in idndia fine indian support. if i buy in USA, USA sopport.
If i live in india i cannot buy a USA domain from 1 and 1 so why indian support for a USA product.
I’m not in any way saying that Indians can’t offer quality support; just that when a company outsources to India, it’s probably a safe assumption that they’re doing it to save money and not raise the quality. There’s no doubt that you can get excellent tech support from the Indian subcontinent, but not when they’re the cheapest bidder.
But 1and1 don’t provide their service just to the US. The provide internationally as well. So they are not going to setup customer office in every country they provide a service to.
In my experience I have seen some great Indian support techs but if they are out sourcing to save the most money, well they will get what they pay for. And it is up to the customers to do something about like not buy from those companies.
I’ve been a long time customer of iPower, myself. Never had a problem with domains. DNSExit, too.
iPower’s support is fairly quick via email. Have only had to call once: about changing credit card number 5 or 6 years ago. Prices are generally competitive.
I would highly recommend them for domain registrations.
I’ve had this same problem with them in the past… Godaddy seems to work the fastest for me.
If you get a parking ticket does not mean that you are a habitual offender.. right?
Relax and enjoy what you have.. I am sure you have benefited from 1 & 1 and I am sure that you would buy from them going forward.
Re: 1&1.
Thanks for the warning! I, personally, get all my domains from DirectNIC – fast as a thief, provide good service, and most of the stuff can be done on-line via your control-panel. DynDNS also qualifies for my Hot-Smokin’-Weapon award – and they won it too!
As far as warnings are concerned – Stay away from Just Host like the plague they are. IMHO, “Just Host” = “Just Hozed!”
Re: The “Indian” thing.
I don’t want to say that Indian tech-support people are not worth the powder to blow ’em to hell, but if you know of *COMPETENT* tech-support from these guys, I’d like to meet ’em!
What he said is that they have Indian Tech Support, and it sucked hugely. Sometimes American (USA) tech-support can’t troubleshoot their way out of a wet paper bag either. So what?
I was on the phone with a tech-support dude in the Philippines last night fussing out a cable Internet issue – and this guy was GOOD! His English was impeccable, and he knew what he was doing.
I’ve gotten German product support that was second to none. And I’ve gotten German product support that soils the phrase “product support” by being associated with it.
I agree, you get what you pay for, but that does not negate the statement that – often (AFAIK) – product support when it’s outsourced to India is – shall we say – less than stellar. And calling a spade a spade isn’t racist, it’s calling it like it is.
This whole “Political Correctness” thing is way overblown. When you can’t say a dude was from India in a blog posting – it’s time to hang ’em up! He didn’t call ’em a &*^%$#!!, or a ^&^%*$%!! – no racial slurs need apply – he just said the guy was from India.
Guys, it’s time to toddle off, take your Prozac and chill.
What say ye?
Jim
I wonder sometimes if things are held up because the payment processor hasn’t cleared or totally transferred the payment. I have seen something similar with hosting on occasion. A credit card or echeck is used and it takes something like 3-5 days maybe more for it to clear. They won’t give you your hosting account until it does clear. Although I have never had a problem when it comes to registering a domain name, but maybe it is something like this. At any rate glad it was resolved.
Same with me… still waiting after 3 days order. Haven’t received any news. just stick with godaddy.com or supercheapdomainname.com (no waiting, instantly get the domain name, never wait more than 3 minutes). Made mistake today, learned never “eat” the advertisement.
GoDaddy.com is even worse, don’t go there!
namecheap and NearlyFreeSpeech are good, affordable alternatives with excellent track records and wonderful service. Gandi’s currently the best, but they’re a bit more expensive (around double the price).
To say something positive about 1and1 . . .
I have been a customer with 1and1 for way more than 10 years and never had any significant problems. The servers are fast, the console works fine and prices are o.k.
Mind you, there is no “perfect provider”. You always have to average. None is best in every regard.
At times I had space and domains at other providers only to eventually transfer them all over to 1and1. Worst was certainly GoDaddy. Good experience but more of a specialty host for Joomla and other CMS was Bluehost.
But again all in all 1and1 is good.
Cheers,
Mick
1&1 has been pretty good for me, I am not wild about the wait, but the prices were worth it. BTW, they are in the Philippines not India and my experience with their offshore support has been great, always friendly and helpful which is more than I can say for some US companies (hello BofA?)
This process lasts for a couple of days, but sometimes can linger for longer. For the price, its not a “never” situation, in my view. If you are in a hurry, perhaps use a different domain registration service, however, for ease, if hosting the domain with 1&1, a lot of our clients want to host the domain there too. Having one bill and one account is often preferable to having 2, even if it does mean waiting a day or two.
Schedule for a wait when registering any domain!
However, the variation in wait times is a little confusing, as it seems to be quite arbitrary and certainly a 1&1 internal thing…
This just happened to me!
Tom, the author’s not being racist at all. He just mentions one chap was from the US and one from India. The Indian one happened to be less helpful. This doesn’t imply all Indians are less helpful. It is you that is applying stereotypes, not the author.
I have been using 1and1 in the UK, in France and in the US for several years. Until recently there were no problems but suddenly I began to experience issues with them at all three offices. Nothing major, just irritatingly bad service and delays when placing new orders. At the time of this writing, I am still waiting for the confirmations for additional domains and web hosting that I ordered recently.
I had already previously closed the account with 1and1 France (and sent a complaint to 1and1’s head office in Germany). If they take much longer to process the current orders, I will move everything to another provider altogether. 1and1 used to be good but lately they seem to have become rather useless on the customer service side.
The last few days I have had major issues with the customer service of 1&1. We only use them for domains and they cant even get IP swaps right. Three days later and we still have our money site offline. DNS glue or some BS that all our techs say is their fault…..
‘Support’ as they call it is comical. Be it India or wherever, they are totally hopeless and take at least a day – sometimes two – to reply to emails. And when they do they don’t solve the issue, it is just more Indianglish gibberish nonsense – because they are unable to read/articulate properly, they cannot take in details; and thus cannot give a coherent reply.
For hobby domains or people on a five quid budget, when there is no rush, they are probably OK. I got away with it for years with them because nothing went wrong. If you are running a business – forget it. The support is ZERO use when something goes wrong.
Even transfers of domains out of there (as I am doing now) take 5-7 days. I mean, what?
I am going to lose serious money this coming week because of 1&1 and I am not a happy bunny.
People please, if it matters – or is money, do yourself a favour and DO NOT use 1&1 for ANYTHING. Use only businesses that have native speakers answering phones. Yes, it costs more – but that is what you pay for.
The Russians have a saying: “Greedy pays twice”. It means that if you try to cut corners and save money it will come back and bite you when it matters most. And then you will pay more to fix it and to do it properly next time.
1&1 is the worst. Their new trick is to turn on auto renewals when I specifically turned them off. Then bill me when they renew and when I protest, turn over a few dollar invoice to a collection company. It had to happen twice before I realized they were doing it on purpose.
Every one they should know 1&1 they charge you by some delay, after some day’s then they will charge you 2 time’s
Becarefull with this company they are Thiefs
If you are stock with them
Do not accept the auto renewal
Do not trust them
Search for better company
They are %100 thiefs
Every one becarefull with this company
Jeder sie sollten wissen, 1 & 1 berechnen sie Sie mit einiger Verspätung, nach eines Tages dann sie werden kostenlos Sie 2 mal
Becarefull mit dieser Firma sind Diebe
Wenn Sie Lager mit ihnen sind
Akzeptieren Sie keine automatische Verlängerung
Vertrauen sie nicht
Suche nach besseren Unternehmen
Sie sind 100 %-Diebe
Jeder ein Becarefull mit dieser Firma
I wish I had seen this post prior to registering with them. I’ve been having this same issue for 11 days with “no estimated time frame to resolve the issue”. Terrible customer service, terrible technicians, I’m in awe with the lack of professionalism. It’s affecting my business which started 5 days ago and I don’t have the website or a business email due to their lack of integrity.
Hello, I bought domain from this registrant. Payment was accepted successfully. But after this I can’t login at control Panel.
I asked about my problem with login 1&1 helpdesk. Help desk suggest me call to their Fraud Department.
A call is nobody answer.
Very Usefull Service 1&1.
Absolutely agree this service is Thiefs and Frauds
I have recently registered a domain name with 1&1 and with my very first purchase I have been charged twice! Not only that, after the ‘double-charge-purchase’ they have sent me an email of ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RECEIPT blah blah blah. Just that short message, no any other useful/important information. I emailed the support team about this and asked them of some information on how long would it take to register my domain. I think I am lucky (or not) because I only waited for over two hours and I already received an email from them telling me to contact the billing & security department. What now? I waited two hours just to contact another department? So I emailed both and did not receive any replies. My domain is still not registered and I can see that someone may still be able to register with that domain (Is it possible?) But I must admit that 1&1 has the most cheapest with great features, they just need a major improvement in their quality of service.
I have a domain for my family hosted with 1and1.co.uk, it is setup to forward our email address to different gmail accounts. E.g. x@example.com forwards to me@gmail.com and y@exmple.com forwards to wife@gmail.com (other address go to different email providers.)
However gmail seems to consider most emails that come from a 1and1 email server to be spam. This is because 1and1 make no effective effort to stop spammer using its mail severs.
Likewise if you use 1and1 webmail, a lot of the emails you send will be marked as spam as most email systems assume that emails that come from a 1and1 server is spam.
So by being cheap, easy, and not doing enough checks on their customers 1and1 has now become useless for anyone that wishes to host a domain, while forward emails to anther email provider, or use the 1and1 webmail.
I had a few domains with them. I intentionally let one account lapse because I didn’t want to keep it. For some reason they thought a way to endear their company to me was to stack on about $100 of various fees and try to go the “collections” route. I wasn’t about to pay, they dropped it.
Then, a few years later, a domain on autorenew didn’t renew because of an expired credit card. I went in and put an updated card in, got an email saying it would be charged automatically, done – or so one would think. Found later that the account was locked, they had never charged it. Trying to get into their site and take care of it was impossible, I had to make multiple long calls to clear it all up. Pretty ridiculous. And once again their system tried to ding me with excessive fees – which to their credit they removed.
Overall, their customer service does a good job when you finally get a hold of them, but as a company they are a chore to deal with. No company should make it so hard to pay them.
…switched all of my domains to google and couldn’t be happier. So simple. So easy.
I just registered a domain from 1and1 and got a mail to wait till next mail to get started but till now 48 hours passed i didn’t get any single mail.
here is mail which i got after registration-
I would like to personally thank you for ordering your new
1&1 Instant Domain package. We are currently processing
your order. Once the order has been processed, you will receive another
e-mail with your contract details and general information to get you started.