<There is use of offensive language in this blog>

I received an invoice on the 8th Jan 2010 for two domain names which they are not even the registrar of and so I questioned it:

I don’t understand? These domain names are registered with another provider?

Are you saying you charged me for these? or your going to?

Tim Bowers

I sent this to their billing and support departments to which their billing department never even bothered to respond however I did get one from their general support:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting us.

We are sorry to inform you that you have reached the technical support
department. As much as we wanted to answer all your queries, however, we
are not familiar with the billing details that you wish to know.
Therefore we suggest that you contact our billing department directly.
You can reach them at 0871-641-2121; option 4 or 01753-490-404. They are
open from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday to Friday, excluding holidays.

Thank you.

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

–
Sincerely,
Irene Corpuz
Technical Support
1&1 Internet

Apparently their departments can’t communicate and this person couldn’t see that their billing was also included when I sent the message (not sure how technical this person could have been if they couldn’t see that?).

Anyway, I sent another pointless reply, pointless because they really are all just thick!

Ehhhh?

I replied to two addresses:

invoice@1and1.co.uk
And
billing@oneandone.co.uk

Attached is an image which will show this.

Tim Bowers

Yay! their billing department replied. Boooooooooo! Their still thick:

Dear Customer

Thank you for your email

Please re-send the e-mail below with your customer number or domain name
attached as we are unable to access your account with out them.

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

Kind regards

Billing Department
1and1 Internet Ltd.

Tedious isn’t it?

I’m sorry, didn’t realise your company was incapable of searching for my account with my E-mail address or name.

Invoice Date 08/01/2010
Invoice No. ***
Contract No. ***
Account No. ***

1 Basic Fee £ 00.00 a month 1 mo. 0.00 17.50
07.01.2010-07.02.2010 yorkshireparanormal.net yorkshireparanormal.com ghosts-uk.net
darkwear.net essexparanormal.net
2 Additional Domain com/net/org £ 8.99  a year 12 mo. 8.99 17.50
23.12.2009-23.12.2010 ghosts-uk.org
3 Additional Domain .info £ 8.99  a year 12 mo. 8.99 17.50
23.12.2009-23.12.2010 ghosts-uk.info

Kindest Regards
Timothy Bowers

Yawn…………… Here’s another of their replies:

 Dear Timothy Bowers, (Cust: ***)

Thank you for your email.

Regarding your query tow of your domain names has been renewed .

I would like to inform you that you can view all invoices in your
configuration menu. I have enclosed the instructions in how to access
this.

1) Please go to the 1&1 Control Panel located at
https://admin.1and1.co.uk, and log in to the Control Panel with your
customer number/domain name assigned to one of your packages and your
password

2) Select Billing from the Quick Menu on the left hand side of the
screen

3) Click on Billing Overview to find current and previous invoices
concerning the selected contract for each billing period

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards
Kanwal Zia
Billing Department
1&1 Internet Ltd.

Do you think I’m getting through to them?  Nahhh their absolute retards:

Mental retardation is a generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors with onset before the age of 18. Once focused almost entirely on cognition, the definition now includes both a component relating to mental functioning and one relating to individuals’ functional skills in their environment.

I know some people are way to over sensitive and will most likely choose to be offended by that word, but it fits!

Anyway knowing them they would try to charge me again so I log into paypal and changed the setting to deny they access to take funds for invoices, I then left it there and didn’t say anything else however today I received another e-mail:

Dear Ghosts-UK ,

We regret to inform you that your current PayPal merchant agreement limit is not sufficient to cover your recent invoice at 1&1.

Please take a moment to log into your 1&1 account and update your PayPal account limit as soon as possible, so that we can continue to offer your 1&1 services without interruption.

To update your 1&1 account limit,

1. Please log into your Control Panel at https://admin.1and1.co.uk, using your account number or a domain name from one of your packages and your password.

2. On the ‘Account’ page, go to ‘User Settings’ > ‘Payment Method’ and then select ‘PayPal’.

3. Click on ‘Go to PayPal’ and update your ’1&1 PayPal Account Limit’ by ticking the ‘PayPal Billing Agreement’ box.

For any other billing-related questions, please send an e-mail to billing@1and1.co.uk or call us on 0871 641 21 21 Monday to Friday (except holidays) 9am to 5pm.

We will be glad to help you with any questions you may have.

Best regards,

Your 1&1 Team
www.1and1.co.uk

 The thieves tried to take some money and not the first time either. I’ve just written and sent another mail back to them and this time I’ve not refrained from holding my tong, admittedly the use of language isn’t professional in official correspondence however they’ve just took the piss to much for to long.

You THIEVES!

Sod off and stop trying to steal my money.

Invoice Date     :     8/1/2010
Account number     :     ***
Contract Number     :     ***
Invoice Number     :     ***

Note your trying to charge me for two domains. Now lets use our fucking heads here and run a whois search on the DB:

http://whois.domaintools.com/ghosts-uk.org

Ohh look you are not the registrar!

Lets look at the other as well seems your so incompetent you probably need someone to wipe your own arse!

http://whois.domaintools.com/ghosts-uk.info

I’m sick and tired of you lot, your all criminals.

Now I informed you of this nicely just the other day, you chose to ignore it. You then send me another e-mail telling me you couldn’t take payment.

I hate your company you employ a bunch of fucking morons. I moved most of my services away along time ago because you kept stealing money an providing a crap service.

START READING WHAT I’M WRITING AND NOT WHAT YOU THINK I SHOULD BE WRITING, ANSWER THE QUESTIONS I RAISED IN PREVIOUS MAILS RATHER THAN DODGING THEM WITH SOME RETARDED GENERIC REPLY THAT YOU THINK WILL ANSWER THE QUESTION, IT QUITE SIMPLY DOES NOT!

Don’t waste my time any more, this is my last warning. Should you persist then expect legal recourse.

I’ve also made this public on the following url: (This blog)

As you can see, after many, many years of my being polite towards you and your staff despite your substandard level of service I’m now really getting annoyed.

Kindest Regards
Timothy Bowers

http://auroral.co.uk/2009/05/14/one-and-one-pulling-a-fast-one/

They contacted me and appologised (not the first time I’ve heard those magic words “Sorry” from them) and said the bills had been cancelled.

Dear Timothy Bowers, (Cust: ********)Thank you for your email.

I will ike to confirm the bills have been cancelled for the domains
mentioned in your email.

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

Kind regards
Nicole Sidawi
Billing Department
1&1 Internet Ltd.

Its weird because it took so long to sort, they appeared to have no idea how to comprehend the most basic of things so I blog about it and then it’s fixed…………………………………………………………
I’m happy now!

To whom it may concern.

To be clear my customer number is: ********

I refer to all accounts within my name and registered to me. I’ve had an ongoing issue with your poor technical and customer service including your billing methods and how you have illegal took money from our accounts without having permission after explicitly being told not to do so. This has damaged my family financially and left us with further bank charges to pay. I’ve tried to tackle this in a polite manner and got no adequate response, I’ve tackled this in a more aggressive manner due to you enraging me with your petty games and still no adequate response.

I have been in the process of transferring all my products away from you and to a reputable host who is capable of performing the simplest tasks which you seem incapable of doing. it’s a great shame, I’ve been a loyal customer of yours since around 2003 and the way you have treated me is disgusting.

Take this as my notice, you are to cease (that means stop) with any billing and renewal of any items. They will either be transferred away, renewed with another provider or left to expire. Please close down my account after completion. Should you require further clarification then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kindest Regards

Timothy Bowers

Your once loyal customer.

Its really sad, there a bunch of idiots who really don’t read or listen to what you say. As a company they have really let me down and I know I’m not the only one, across the net they get stinking reviews because of it.

Their poor customer service and technical knowhow, we had managed servers which didn’t give us root access, everything had to go through them, knightmare is an understatement.

They billed us for things we didn’t have, when we called for tech support we ended up giving them tech support to change simple things on our server for example one domain name had wild card (allows *.domain.com aka anything.domain.com to work, allowing a script to handle the url an example of this would be for use in WPMU) but others didn’t well it took an hour of explaining before they said they couldn’t do it because the servers were managed which we all know is absolute rubbish.

In January of 2009 they illegally took a direct debit which we explicitly kept telling them not to, as a result we incurred a charge from our bank because it was processed days before we had funds available. Their response is they can’t do anything because it’s automated, well in the UK it is illegal to take a Direct Debit when they are not given permission and instructed to cancel it. Our bank won’t give us the charge back so we are contemplating legal action against them for theft. So we moved them to Paypal for billing and told our bank to never allow them the opportunity to take payment again.

Anyway we moved our servers away and we started moving our domain names well now they keep trying to bill us for domains that are not under them as a registrar. We knew they would try for payment and so revoked their access to do so with Paypal also. This is what they sent us:

We regret to inform you that your current PayPal merchant agreement limit is not sufficient to cover your recent invoice at 1&1.

Please take a moment to log into your 1&1 account and update your PayPal account limit as soon as possible, so that we can continue to offer your 1&1 services without interruption.

To update your 1&1 account limit,

1. Please log into your Control Panel at https://admin.1and1.co.uk, using your account number or a domain name from one of your packages and your password.

2. On the ‘Account’ page, go to ‘User Settings’ > ‘Payment Method’ and then select ‘PayPal’.

3. Click on ‘Go to PayPal’ and update your ’1&1 PayPal Account Limit’ by ticking the ‘PayPal Billing Agreement’ box.

For any other billing-related questions, please send an e-mail to billing@1and1.co.uk or call us on 0871 641 21 21 Monday to Friday (except holidays) 9am to 5pm.

We will be glad to help you with any questions you may have.

Best regards,

Your 1&1 Team
www.1and1.co.uk

1&1 Internet Limited – Registered at Cardiff, Company number 3953678 – VAT No GB 752539027
Aquasulis House, 10-14 Bath Road, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 3SA, United Kingdom

To which I replied (Keep in mind I’ve already had a long dialogue with, e-mails, telephone calls and still I wasn’t getting anywhere):

I regret to inform you that your a bunch of idiots.

Most of the domains your trying to charge me for, you don’t have because I moved them to another registrar a while ago.

I can’t wait till I’ve finished moving all my services away from you.

Kindest Regards
Timothy Bowers.

 And their reply to this:

 

Dear Timothy Bowers, (Cust: ********)

Thank you for your email.

Your account has not been cancelled and is still active.

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

Kind regards
Esham Azim
Billing Department
1&1 Internet Ltd.

And another reply from moi:

Stop being so stupid.

Those domains are with another company.

STOP BEING A JACK ASS.

Kindest Regards

Timothy Bowers.

Yawn…. Some more from them:

We contacted you regarding a declined payment or an expired credit/debit card and have not yet heard back from you.
Our records indicate that there is an unpaid balance in your 1&1 customer account no.: ******** as listed below.

A recent payment may not have gone through due to a simple error, such as an expired credit card, incorrect payment details or incorrect settings in your PayPal account.

Please update or correct your billing information in your 1&1 Control Panel within the next 7 days to avoid any downtime of your package.

In order to update or correct your billing information, please go to https://admin.1and1.co.uk and follow these instructions:

1. Please log into your Control Panel using your account number or a domain name from one of your packages and your password.

2. On the ‘Account’ page, click on ‘User Settings’ > ‘Payment Method’ and select the payment method that you are currently using.

If you are using a credit card, select ‘Credit Card’ and proceed as follows:

Check that your payment details are correct. If they are correct as is or if you re-enter the same credit card details, please send a reply to this e-mail confirming that you have checked the current information and no update on your part is required. We will then charge the outstanding balance as indicated by your chosen payment method.

If your payment details are incorrect or outdated, please update your information and click on ‘Save’. There is no need to contact 1&1 as a new debit will be attempted automatically.

If you are using a PayPal account, please select PayPal and then click ‘Go to PayPal’.

Log into your PayPal account and verify your data under ‘My Account Profile’.

Please make sure to update your information in the next 7 days to avoid downtime. If we do not receive full payment in 7 days, we will freeze your 1&1 package(s) in accordance with our terms and conditions. If your package(s) are frozen is will take up to 1 business day to reactivate them once the matter is resolved.

Please be aware that if this matter is not resolved, you may be sent to a debt collection agency. If the account is sent to a debt collection agency a £15.00 charge will be added to the unpaid balance.

For further details, please find attached a payment reminder note in PDF electronic format. It can be opened and printed with the help of the program Acrobat Reader (download Acrobat Reader: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html).

For any other billing-related questions, please send an e-mail to billing@1and1.co.uk or call us on 0871 641 21 21 Monday to Friday (except holidays) 9am to 5pm.

We will be glad to help you with any questions you may have.

Thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter.

Best regards

Your 1&1 Team
www.1and1.co.uk

Hmmmm surely something is wrong here because obviously I did, and they replied to it. duhhh!
So another e-mail from me to them:

I’m not paying because you are not the Registrar of most of those
domains!!!!!!

Timothy Bowers

Guess what? Yeah you got it, some more from them:

Dear Timothy Bowers, (Cust: ********)

Thank you for your email.

Just to inform you that the outstanding amount (£44.77) on your account,
is for the renewal of your domain names: yorkshireparanormal.net,
yorkshireparanormal.com, ghosts-uk.co.uk, northernparanormal.com,
hauntedengland.co.uk which are still registered with 1and1.

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

Kind regards
Laure Mukoswa
Billing Department
1&1 Internet Ltd.

So I sent another which was the last one (11th May 2009) with no reply from them:

No they are not registered with you!!!!

Look at the whois database and it will show you that you are not the
registrar:

http://whois.domaintools.com/yorkshireparanormal.net

http://whois.domaintools.com/yorkshireparanormal.com

http://whois.domaintools.com/northernparanormal.com

http://whois.domaintools.com/hauntedengland.co.uk

http://whois.domaintools.com/ghosts-uk.co.uk

So how you can not comprehend that this bill will not be paid because
you are not the registrar is beyond me!!!!

Yawn your illegal activities really do become tiresome. You still owe me
money for illegally taking a direct debit at the beginning of the year.

Kindest Regards

Timothy Bowers

They are also now trying to do it for another domain name so I sent them this:

This is another domain name which is registered with another registrar.

Get a grip, this is pathetic.

http://whois.domaintools.com/ghosts-uk.com

Kindest Regards

Timothy Bowers

I really hate how much time this wastes for me, if it’s not one company it’s another. Currently we’re also taking legal action again Concept Solutions because of a incompetent job done on our garage, I really don’t want to go through this with One And One but it seems they may leave me little choice…………….

Possibly to be continued…..