Transferring away from 1and1

**nbreak** · 02-17-2009, 10:50 AM

Trying to transfer a few dozen domains away from 1and1.

I unlocked them, got the transfer code and initiated the transfer.

Two days later I get an email saying 1and1 rejected the transfer for 8 of the domains (no problems with the other ones, supposedly).
I go back into 1and1 and it shows some (but not all) of those 8 domains are locked (I am 100% certain I unlocked them).

So I give 1&1 a call and the rep tells me to change the whois info to public and try transferring again.
Naturally I'm a bit hesitent to change my info to public.

Has anyone been in this situation before? Any suggestions?

**draggar** · 02-17-2009, 10:55 AM

I had to change all of mine to public when I wanted to transfer out of 1&1.

**nbreak** · 02-21-2009, 09:59 AM

Update: all of my domains have been transferred successfully except for those 8 mentioned above. I didn't need to make any of them public, so I'm going to try transferring those 8 again without giving away my whois info.

I noticed the domains which were successfully transferred still show up in my 1and1 account. Should I cancel them manually via cancel.1and1.com?

**Banned: dn-101** · 02-21-2009, 10:13 AM

Make sure you notify 1&1 in writing in their native German that you got rid of them. Otherwise they will be charging you for those domains in perpetuity.

**veirsmill** · 03-25-2009, 11:57 AM

Hello pals, my first post here...
I have a few domains at 1&1 and they are about to expire. Since I can't find someone willing to buy them and I dont want them to be hosted at 1&1 for another year (they are not actually worth much), do you recommend me to transferring them away to some other registrar or just let them expire? Any suggestion?

**korganian** · 04-07-2009, 01:52 PM

1and1 is a complete nightmare to deal with. I made the huge mistake of registering over 1,000 domains with them. You would not believe how many dozens of hours I have had to spent trying to deal with their ridiculous nonsense. They have no bulk control features at all. They set all your domains to auto renew and force you to cancel your domains one by one at a time in order to turn off auto renew. And even after I canceled domains and got confirmation email from their system, they still renewed the domains anyway. Get this, they only bill you a month at a time for the previous month. The problem is that you don't get any feedback from them or any way to check how much your bill is going to be. When I call them, they tell me that it is impossible for them to find out what they are going to bill me for at the next monthly billing cycle. So when I called to complain about my monthly bill showing charges for the domains that I had canceled and gotten confirmation from them for the cancellation, they asked me what the confirmation email said, it turns out that their email confirmations don't list any domains so that 1and1 can still bill you after you cancel the domains. After this happened to me twice, I called and did it while on the phone with one of their reps in the Phillipines, I was able to get that rep to send me a confirmation email that all of my domains had been canceled (This required a 3 1/2 hour phone call). A couple days later, they again charges me for renewal of domains that were canceled. When I told the rep that I had canceled them, they again, like before, told me that I had not canceled the domains and would have to pay for them. Only after I was able to produce that confirmation email directly from their rep in the Phillipines, did I get 1and1 to stop billing me for domains that were canceled. Oh, and they don't even allow you to see a list of your domains with the expiration dates, all they allow you to see is an alphabetical list of your domains with no expiration dates. They even refused my request to send me a list with my expiration dates. 1and1 has zero grace period. That means that they put your domains into the redemption period on the very day of expiration.
So while other registrars give you between 12 to 40 days after expiration to renew domains without any redemption fee, 1and1 will charge you a redemption fee on the very day of domain expiration. What's more, they will make you open a separate account just for a domain to be redeemed into and fax in a form to process it. Their specials lure many unsuspecting domainers. My friends, you have been warned.

**rmnarmenta** · 04-07-2009, 02:24 PM

korganian, Thanks for taking the time to spell that out. I too had the same worries with them after one of my domains "automatically" renewed even after I explicitily asked them not to. After that I removed my payment method with them. Removing the credit card information worked best for me.

**katherine** · 04-07-2009, 03:20 PM

Let's hope the post by Korganian will be well indexed

It's not that 1&1 suck, they really suck

**draggar** · 04-07-2009, 03:30 PM

1&1 did the same thing with me - they renewed about a dozen names that I had canceled but they refused to so anything about it. It's also not like you can protest the charges since they can quite easily lock you out of your own account.

Within 48 hours all except 2-3 domains I was not going to renew were out of 1&1. I even ditched their Hosting.

**Jilo** · 04-07-2009, 05:30 PM

do not use 1&1!! i had a name with them a few years ago, i canceled the package - nothing happened, i canceled the package again - nothing happened, i emailed 1&1, no reply, canceled again and i thought it worked... then last month i got a payment of £4.72 from 1&1, and last week received a letter saying i owe them £4.72!!! Awful company