Negative99

1&1 sucks.

I used to use (until 17 minutes ago) 1&1 Internet Hosting for all my websites, including this blog. Now, I’ve had problems with them frequently, but the past 3 days have been beyond anything readily comparable. Over the weekend the server that “hosts” my web content was up… then down… then up… then down. Since yesterday morning it’s been down - 19 hours and counting.

You may ask, “If you’re site is still down how are you blogging right now?” Great question. You see… since my site has been down I’ve had plenty of time to:

1. Call GoDaddy.com and order REAL web hosting
2. Migrate all web content (that I backed up manually with Adobe DreamWeaver) to GoDaddy
3. Create new MySQL databases on GoDaddy’s servers and run SQL population scripts
4. Change the domain’s DNS listings from 1&1 to GoDaddy
5. Wait for the so-called internet to propagate my new DNS info
6. Blog about the colossal suckfest that is 1&1

And I’ve made plenty of calls to 1&1’s Technical “Support” during my run with them… not the fewest of which were the recent salvo of a half-dozen hopeless inquiries. But calling 1&1 Tech Support puts the cliché back in worthless.

I have to go to bed for now… but I will update this post soon.

Here’s an update after a few days of calming down.

My entire set of internet property has been fully migrated - files and databases - to GoDaddy. Everything went smooth and is now working fine (there’s always a few rough edges at first).

After over 48 hours since I formally filed a complaint (which can ONLY be done by actually sending an email to complaint@1and1.com) they finally got back to me.

Thank you for contacting us.

I apologize for the delay of response. I understand that you have experienced downtime with your website. This is something I can only apologize for. The reason for the downtime was due to the issue with the server your sites were on. Our administrators were aware of the issue and have since resolved this matter. As a gesture of goodwill, I have added a month of hosting to your account.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

They added a month of hosting? I lost more than that in advertising revenue! And I like the part about the administrators being “aware of the issue”… yeah, every time I called them I heard the EXACT SAME spiel - “Our server administrators are aware of the issue… they are currently resolving the issue so it won’t happen again”. Whatever… I guess won’t happen again doesn’t include two hours later.