I was plagued last week with problems stemming from 1and1 Internet. I had seen numerous advertisements from them in some of the magazines I read, and their prices were quite low. I opened a business account with them earlier this year, but didn’t move my site and related domain registration until about a month ago.

When that all finally went through, there was a rather significant problem that I emailed them about. They assured me they knew about it and were working on it. Three days later I emailed again asking when it would be fixed, and again the said they were still working on it. After six days, it was still not fixed, and I was disgusted with the lack of service, especially on a business-level account. So I canceled and moved to BlueHost. Still a “discount” hosting company, but smaller and apparently more responsive. I encountered two issues, one of which they kindly explained was my fault and the other they proactively notified me about and resolved in short order.

But when I canceled my hosting plan with 1and1, they saw fit to also cancel my domain registration, dropping “thenorwoodhome.com” into a cancellation status for 30 days. I could either pay $40 to retrieve it through 1and1, or wait until it expired and try to be the first to get it back. So no site, and more importantly, no email except my seldom-used gmail account.

It ends up that this is not uncommon with 1and1. After over an hour on the phone with multiple agents, they will be refunding me the $40 recovery fee. And I’ll be transferring my domain name out just as soon as I can.