1and1 Horror Story

Friday, 27 July 2007

Our host (1and1) has finally decided it was time to deliver a backup of our site from a date before they had issues with their servers. The email came in at 1:32PM EDT explaining it was available.

The short of the whole story is (yes, it is much longer than this):

1) They had hardware troubles.

2) They put the filesystem hosting our website as read-only for about 48 hours as they checked it for errors (meaning nothing changes until they are done).

3) They refused to put our site on a different server. I could only contact technical support, not the actual admins, and they kept telling me to email complaints@1and1.com. They said it was not their call to put our account on another server. One of their technical support representatives admitted that if I went to their website and resigned up (a.k.a. pay more cash), that I could get service.

4) After the filesystem check was done, and our site was again read/write… several of their technical support representatives refused to admit that our site was having troubles, or that it was their fault… Until Denise showed them missing pictures, failing links, and corrupt PHP code.

5) Several of their technical support representatives said that they would email us with status updates. We received 0 emails until we called and spoke with a manager saying that we have received nothing in our inbox. We then received 2 emails regarding our “missing images” and during one of our calls to them, a technical support representative requested that we “cooperate with him” and email him the missing pictures from our site so that he could fix it for us… (you’d think I’d know how to upload my own pictures already, seeing how I put this whole thing together, huh??? And what about the corrupt PHP code and failing links?)

6) Two different people on their technical support team refused to admit that there was a problem with our site even though it was obviously malfunctioning…

7) After 6 more calls to the Philippines (nothing against the Philippines), regarding the corrupt and deleted files, a manager finally admitted that during filesystem checks, files can become corrupt and/or deleted (I already knew this). Compensation for service I paid for, that I did not get??? The manager told me to email complaints@1and1.com.

I had already done this from before, and we still have not heard back from them. Next stop… Billing department. 😉

I have two quotes from friends that explained it very well:

1) You get what you pay for.

2) When competing on price, something has got to give.

Well said.