How Good or Bad is 1&1 Hosting?

I am a fool for not believing all the other reviews I had read. I just didn’t think it could be that bad, until they did it to me too.

In short, I had registered several domains with 1&1, then transferred them away. No problems here as the transfers were successful. However, shortly after the transfers I received a renewal invoice for the domains that were no longer on my account.

No big deal I thought and explained them that I no longer had these domains, so they should not be billed for either. The first reply I received contained no explanation at all, so I emailed them again and got the following reply:

“Unfortunately domain names are nonrefundable as stated during the
ordering process and in our Terms & Conditions
3.9. Upon cancellation of this Agreement you will receive a prorated refund
of any pre-paid, refundable fees for the remainder of any term.”

That seemed like a canned response completely irrelevant to my issue, so I emailed them again for the third time, and received the following reply:

“Our records indicate that your cancellation request was made after the billing due date for the domain. As such the invoice is valid as domain fees are considered nonrefundable.”

And after telling them the above was not true as I had transferred the domains out 40 days prior to the expiration date, and 10 days before even getting their invoice for the renewal fees, the last reply I got was:

“Our records show the effective date of your cancellation was after the billing date for the domains. As such the invoice you received is valid and the balance must still be resolved.”

So even though I had transferred the domains out way in advance (40 days prior to expiration) and before ever receiving any renewal invoices for these domains, they claim to still have the right to bill renewals for these non-existing domains. In other words they are charging me renewal fees without renewing anything, which is pretty close to stealing in my opinion. And therefore I am left with no other option that to make this public in hopes of having some good come out of all this.

Monetarily my loss was not a big one (less than $50), but it is annoying to have to waste time trying to resolve issues like this only to find out that they had no intention of doing the right thing but were scams from the beginning.

Please don’t make the same mistake as I did, and stay away from 1&1 instead.