1and1 Internet Inc - Good Prices, Bad Service

I'm writing this, but no one will be able to read it for a while. The true address of my blog is steptolife.blogspot.com, but all my readers know it only as StepToLife.com. The StepToLife.com domain name (which I own) is registered with a company called 1and1 Internet Inc, a very large web hosting company and domain name registrar based in Pennsylvania, USA. The domain name is parked on the 1&1 servers, but I set it to forward to steptolife.blogspot.com, so that my readers will have an easier address to remember.

The problem is that the forwarding is not working, and 1and1 has been unable to help me. I've been using their service because their prices are wonderfully low. Until now I've never had a problem, and now that I do have a problem I'm discovering how terribly inadequate their customer service is.

You get what you pay for, right?

In fact I have 541 domains registered with 1and1, and approximately 40 of them forward to other addresses. One of the things I do for money is to build small websites, called mini-sites, that are narrowly focused on a specific topic. I create useful content for these sites, and I place Google Adsense ads on them. Then I use other advertising services, such as Google Adwords and Miva, to drive traffic to the mini-sites. I carefully select my keywords and adjust my bids so that I'm paying less with Adwords than I'm making with Adsense. I want at least a 1:2 ratio, in other words I want to make twice on one end what I'm paying on the other end, though 1:3 is better.

These mini-sites are all subfolders of my primary hosting account, then I simply set the respective domains to forward to the mini-site.

Anyway, you don't have to understand all that. The point of this post is to tell you that for the last three days, 1and1's domain forwarding service has not been working. None of the domains are resolving. They keep saying they're working on it. In the meantime, my mini-sites are useless, I'm losing money, and my blog is inaccessible through the normal address. I've told 1and1 that I'm giving them until tomorrow morning to correct the problem, then I'm moving all my domains to GoDaddy. They are one of the biggest registrars in the business and the one that is most used by domain name professionals. They also have fairly low prices for bulk operators like me.

By the time you read this, the problem will have been resolved, one way or another.

UPDATE: The problem is solved. I threatened to transfer all my services to GoDaddy if they did not get it fixed by morning, and guess what? They fixed it. I should have threatened them three days ago.