1and1 99 cent domain transfer...BEWARE !!!

I had a little domain with a little site that I kind of wanted to keep and it's domain was up for renewal...



But I wasn't wanting to pay the $15/year fee - so I looked around a bit.



I found that 1and1.com was doing a 99 cent promo - and yes - I've seen warnings about them, but I thought 'how badly could they screw up a domain reg ?!?'.



Very badly, I found out after all.



Unlike other registrars, their transfer took a week to start with.

After it was supposedly done nothing worked - no settings could be changed for the nameservers or anything.

Wasted loads of time & energy trying to get 'support' only to be told, 'sorry, our site is broken and we'll have to escalate your request to our higher level support'.

(This from someone who barely spoke english, of course...)



Here's their tricks:

1. ALL their different reps barely speak english and can actually DO nothing.

2. Their domain services ONLY work if you also buy their hosting (I had my own hosting).

3. They effectively steal/hijack any domain they transfer and you're stuck with them for at least 60 days.

4. If you can reach an english-speaker they will keep you on the phone to try and upsell you rather than allowing an order to be cancelled.

5. If you get your order cancelled they charge you anyways.



And finally:

If you do cancel a domain transfer order with 1and1, your domain is lost.

(As mine has now been...)



My learning here is that 1and1.com is the worst of the worst - that is just what I learned from this.

(Of course YMMV.)

 

Another bunch of bananas offering low cost domain reg. is Freenom.
Their features are poor and their support is worse than useless...but their rates are cheap.

If you want a cheap domain reg. and can spare 60 days, get one there & pay for a few years, then start a transfer to a better company for cheap after that.

This way you get a few years for way less as you keep what you paid for at one place when transferring to another.