This started 2 years ago and our research has finally completed 1and1.com is one of the more "popular" hosting and domain service providing companys in the business. Lately me and a few other admins (who run a small independent research company into online fraud) were notified that 1and1 recently has been sending charges and billing users for items they did not request or order, but that they had questioned tech support via email and telephone about. Inquiring as to how the product or service worked, but not asking for ordering help. The first thought may be that the users account was hacked, but after constant digging with tech support, 1and1 claims the access to the account has no other IP's logging in, and has "no reason to beleive the actual account owner has not made the purchase". The next step the users were told was to contact the billing department, and issue a request for a refund and find what the charges are specifically from. When contacting the billing department the users are told that the items ordered are non-refundable "as stated in our TOS". Which has led many users to beleive that 1and1 itself either has a glitch in the system or is purposely charging users on the account and ordering items the user does not want, and also items that are non-refundable. The next step logically for us, was to have our admins from our own department purchase each of 1and1's hosting packages (except for developer). We had 10 users do this, 4 purchasing Beginner Account, 3 Purchasing Home Account and the remaining 3 purchased the Business Account. We specifically told the user to not order any extra features on the account. Simply order the basic version of each package, not purchasing any other features within the account. The users used the account for just a basic website, placed a few items on their webpages, being sure to not surpass any of the quotas for size or bandwith. We set out to have a few of the users cancel the package within the refundable period to be sure that 1and1 honored its refund policy. 1 User from each account cancel with no problems, money was refunded, no hassles other than the long hold times. The still remaining users we still had on the accounts were told to send them an email or call them by telephone questioning of products or services that could be purchased extra on the accounts, but to be sure not to use any leading words to make 1and1 assume a purchase, just ask basic questions about the product or service. Our users did this, after 3 months did not notice any unusual charges. So we were ready to beleive the users that notified us were just "rare" mishappenings with 1and1. We set out to complete this research for 15 months. (1 full year then a renewal, to see if any issues with renewing would occur) On the 10th and 11th month of the account (with our remaining 7 users still holding 1and1 accounts) 2 noticed some odd charges. When viewing the generated invoices 1and1 gives out on the account, 1 user was charged with a SSL Certificate for a full year of $49.00. He called the billing department as well as tech support to get this item removed since he had not actually purchased anything. Tech support told him only the day he had purchased it and that he would have to contact billing department for information on refunds. When contacting the billing the department he was simply told the item is non-refundable and the charge of $49.00 would remaining on the invoice. The second user was charged with Symantec’s Norton Internet Security, adding an extra $4.99/month to his accout, but still an item he had not requested or purchased. When contacting the billing department, he was told if he would like to cancel the service he would have to contact tech support, but was told his 3 month subscription that he signed up for (that he never actually signed up for) could not be refunded, thus leaving him stuck paying $4.99 for 3 months of his account. In conclusion, 1and1 I am sure many users use and do not experience these issues, but after receiving complaints from users, we took matters into our own hands purchasing accounts, to see if any of these issues occured to us. For only having 10 users, 2 being randomly charged for non-purchased features or services and 8 having no problems or issues at all. 2 out of 10 is still a high number for a large company to be having glitches and charging users for items they never purchased. We had originally thought maybe the users who contacted us were inexperienced with computers or hosting accounts, accidently clicking items and not knowing what they did, but our 10 users we selectively chose and were very experienced users. If you are wondering we did have a legal team put together an official report of these actions with our documentation and recording of the tech/billing phone calls. As well as documenting all actions we took during usage of the account. We have sent this report to 1AND1, and were simply told their legal team will look into it and they can not comment on the situation. To some extent this is on a small scale but do you want to be that user being charged for something you did not order? Would you be thrilled to pay $49.00 for an SSL you do not want or have any use for? Will keep you updated if any other updates come.
I guess it's a matter of opinion. I cancelled my 2 personal accounts and switched to godaddy. Still housing 1 with them for the simple fact I do not have the time it will take to transfer the account and its contents over to another provider right now
I had a heck of time trying to cancel with them a year or two back. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=22064