Mr N

I had not intended to make this blog a soap box for me to complain about the injustice of the world, but as this issue is related to I.T. I feel it is justified.

How long does it take to transfer a registrar and domain to 1&1?
How many emails to 1&1 customer support does it take to transfer a registrar and domain to 1&1?
How many telephone calls does it take to customer support to transfer a registrar and domain to 1&1?
How much downtime will be caused by transferring a registrar and domain to 1&1?

I’ll tell you the story from the beginning. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who wanted to move away from her existing hosting provider and after talking to her friends decided that BigSoft Limited offered her the right kind of personal services she was looking for.

After taking her on as a client I set about moving her domain registrar and domain over to 1&1 (who will hence forward be known as “the evil dragon” - except that if I do that Google won’t link 1&1 with really bad customer service and incompetence).

This has been going on for 3 weeks and is not looking like it will be sorted out any time some.

29 May 2009
I asked the previous domain registrar to unlock the domain and give me the domain transfer authorisation codes.

When I received the codes I went to 1&1’s domain website to move the registrar and domains across and set up my account. But for some reason the 1&1 system would not accept it. So I phoned up to try and get them to do it instead.
There system would not let them transfer the domain either.
“What am I going to do?” I asked them. They said that I should put the domain on as an external domain and when things settle down move it in fully. “Ok” says me.

Later in the day I start to get these emails from 1&1 telling me that my domain’s DNS doesn’t point to 1&1’s DNS servers and asking me to change it to point to their domains. This is a bit odd because I’m supposed to be transferring the whole thing over to them. I don’t have control of the registrar where the domain currently lives which is why am trying to move it to 1 and 1.

In the evening I get another email from them saying they have set up my account.

30 May 2009
I phone them up and said that I wanted to change the external domain to a full 1&1 controlled domain.

C131889015
In order to transfer your domains, just cancel the registered external
domains in your contract tool > https://contract.oneandone.co.uk/ and
order them from within your 1&1 Control-Center >
https://admin.1and1.co.uk/

I was a little bit worried about doing this because I didn’t want anyone to take control of the domains in between the times they were being cancelled and adding them to the new account.

I phoned to check and they assured me it would be fine.

1 June 2009
I get an automatic email saying:

You have ordered a change of provider for the domain

mydomain1.com
mydomain2.com

In order for this to be carried out, we require the express agreement of the domain owner or the domain’s administrative contact (Admin-C).

For the Admin-C or domain owner to provide agreement using the corresponding online form we have by email to the following email address:
…. sniped for space…

Hurray things are moving.

2 June 2009
The previous registrar owner emails me to say that they have received the email and linked the link to authorise the transfer of registrar for both domains.

3 June 2009
The domain wasn’t showing up in my 1&1 control panel so I wrote them a little message to ask what is happening.

C132174629
I have been trying for the last 2 weeks to move my domains to 1&1. Currently it says “DNS Settings Incomplete with Registrar” but the advice is to tell my registrar to point to your servers. I’m trying to get you to be my registrar and for you to host the DNS entries. I don’t want to host them elsewhere.

I had initially tried to move the domain over but the/your system was broken so they were added as external domains which I think has confused things.

The “DNS Settings Incomplete with Registrar” message is the same as it was last week before the transfer was approved by the previous owner and so it looks like nothing is happening and the transfer has stalled.

Please can you advise. Is everything processing normally? When can I expect to see the of this saga?

They replied quickly, with

We are glad to help you on your concern. For us to check it on our end, please provide us the domain that you are referring on this query. Your prompt response is greatly appreciated on this matter.

but they had clearly not read the first line of my question and as each of my domains was flagged with “DNS Settings Incomplete with Registrar” they had clearly not even check my account.

so another reply from me:

All of the domains listed in my account (like I said).

Next thin I get it another automatic email asking me to change my DNS servers to point to them.

4 June 2009
There has been a delay with the domain transfer and it is going to take a little longer. Need to wait 24-hours for the (external) domain entry to be deleted so that we can re-initiate the registrar transfer.
When the domains have disappeared from the admin control panel call Jonathan on x3925 for next step.

It has been over a week now and I am getting nowhere with the 1st line support. I haven’t been able to get though to anyone else at the company and the Muppets on the phone are pretty useless. So I decided to do what they had suggested and go into the contracts part to delete the domain as per their suggestion.

So wrote them another email:

Tried this and despite the site saying that the cancellation would happen immediately the status has said “Request being processes” for the last hour.

I went into the admin control panel section and tried to transfer the domain and it just says: “Domain transfer not allowed.”

Can you tell me what is going on?

5 June 2009
Got an email back from them:

The domain cancellation was initiated yesterday. Allow 24 hours for the domains to be removed from the account and you can add them to your new account.

Also got 2 more automatic emails from 1&1 asking me to change my DNS entries to point to 1&1 servers. So I phoned them up to try and clarify the situation. Explained the situation to Froilan got a case id: 132 498 016
He said someone would call me back and tell me what is going on.

6 June 2009
Bizarrely I got another email from asking me for my password.

C132498016
Before we remove the domain in the package, we require the control panel password for verification.

I’m not really happy about sending password through email so I phoned them up again. So sent them another email

What? you want me to email you my password? I left my phone number with case id 132498016. You were supposed to call me last night.

I’ve been on the phone almost everyday this week trying to sort this mess out. I can see that the domains are still stuck, and now this. I’m I supposed to continue chasing you or are you going to phone me?

They replied back with:

This is in connection to your email. As checked, it shows that the domains has already been cancelled. Please give another 24 hrs for this to be completed. Thank you for your understanding and patience on this issue

7 June 2009
Explained the situation to Joseph got a case id: 132 540 414
He said he would send it over to the transfers department with the highest priority.

9 June 2009
Today I got an automatic email from 1&1 saying both my domains were ready

1&1 are pleased to inform you that your registrar has made the required name server entries and your Internet site hosted on 1&1 Internet servers is now available through the domain mydomain1.com.

I go into my 1&1 control panel to find that I can’t edit the address of my DNS server.
Both domains are listed as external domains. So I phoned them up to ask what is happening.

We are looking into the issue you reported concerning the removal of the external domains.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience on this matter.

Further updates will follow by email.

10 June 2009
They never got back to me, so I phoned them back. Explained the situation to Arlene got a case id: 132 882 871.
She sent my messages to administrators and would get back to me with some time scales.

Your case was already handled by our higher level support however our back-office/administrators are still working on it. I understand that you would like a speedy resolution so I will be monitoring this case for you and as soon as I hear anything, I will drop you an email. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.

to which I replied

Thanks for getting back to me. You are the 1st person who has said any thing remotely sensible.

My domain is on a public web site, so I now have a system down situation. Currently your DNS server points to your holding page which is clearly no good for me. If I change the entries via my 1&1 control panel to my actual
address will this effect the process of repairing my problems.

they replied with:

Regarding your concern, We would suggest not to touch anything first on your control panel until an update from our administrator that it is ok now. This might cause more problem if you are going to make some changes
on your end.

The only option in my control panel is to change the DNS entry for the external domain which are currently pointing to a host somewhere inside 1&1 and not at my servers. By this point I’m losing the will to live and reply with:

C132874717
I am now on day 14 of what should have been a simple task to transfer a domain. I am now in day 3 of system down time.

I still have no idea when it is going to be fixed. No one has got back to me with even a ball park figure. I don’t believed you are working on the issue. I would like someone to call me back and explain what the problem is and when it
is going to be fixed.

I have spent the last couple of days Googling to get a phone number of someone inside 1&1 who can actually get things done but I keep running into horror stories, blog and news clippings about 1&1’s appalling customer service (and they are all recent).

I have totally had enough - 3 days of down time - does that sound acceptable to you?

My customer had send people to a different country to promote the brand and they are screaming at me. So I am screaming at you. If you come back with “our people are working on it” again I am going to write a blog as long as your arm describing in detail the disgusting treatment I have received and start telling the considerable number of people who ask for my advice on domain issues to steer clear of you.

[ By the way this is it ]

11 June 2009
I have now had 3 days of downtime

C132874717
I sincerely do apologize for this inconvenience it has caused you. As I check the escalations, the case was escalated to the 3rd level support which is the administrators. They are still checking on the case at the back end on what is causing the delay for the domain names not being deleted or removed from the control panel. I do understand your frustration regarding this matter, I do understand that you wanted this to be fixed as soon as possible. Basically the administrators are still working on it. There are already two cases escalated regarding your concern. Kindly wait for further email update from them. Thank you so much for bearing with us.

I wrote:

So far they have not contacted me at all. So far they have not provided any kind of time scale. Having waited almost 2 weeks, I am totally stuck. My domain is inside your system somewhere, but you can’t find it.
That’s just great. You haven’t offered me any time scales, you have no idea when it is going to be fixed, you have failed to provide any kind of solution.

So what you are basically saying is that I have to sit here in the dark and hope that someone from your admin department gets back to me this year… maybe.
The only advice is don’t touch.

With no apparent end in sight I have changed DNS entries via your control panel. I did this after asking twice and being told twice not to touch because the administrators are working on it, sorry allegedly working on it. I could have rewritten the whole thing by now.

After changing the DNS entries the whole thing look better already and some of the names have resolved. So far only:

mydomain1.com
www.mydomain1.com
mydomain2.com
www.mydomain2.com

So your advice about not touching was floored and has cost me 2 days of downtime and embarrassed my company, so thanks for that.

Perhaps you can change the DNS entries so that *.mydomain1.com resolves to my a-record address, so I can get my webmail.mydomain1.com working. Is this something you can do or do I have to wait another week?

12 June 2009
Today find that the my account is clear both of my 2 domains are gone. I’m a bit upset about this and am wondering where they are.

C132540414
The domains mydomain1.com and mydomain2.com have been removed from our system. Thank you for your patience

The trouble is, I didn’t want them removed from 1&1’s system I wanted them transferred over. So I phone them up again.

Explained the situation to Jhun got a case id: 133 073 781
He will investigate and I should call back in 2 or 3 hours.
I called back and he has gone home because it is 11.30pm in the Philippines. So I have to explain the whole thing again to the next person who is unhelpful.

I get another email from the support department:

Our administrators do check on your domains mydomain2.COM and mydomain1.COM and found out that it is already in its redemption period. Please do fill up the Domain Redemption Retrieval form in this link http://faq.1and1.com/miscellaneous/pdf_documents/9.html and faxed it to the number stated on the form. Once done you may then add the two domains back into your account. We sincerely do apologize for the inconvenience that this has brought to you. It is our pleasure to assist you. Your understanding and cooperation is highly appreciated.

Then 5 minutes later I get an email from 1&1 telling me to ignore the last email.
Please disregard the previous email message. Our administrators do check on your domains mydomain2.COM and mydomain1.COM and found out that it is already in its redemption period. Please do fill up the Domain Redemption Retrieval form in this link http://faq.oneandone.co.uk/domains/troubleshooting/5.html and faxed it to the number stated on the form. Once done you may then add the two domains back into your account. We sincerely do apologize for the inconvenience that this has brought to you. It is our pleasure to assist you. Your understanding and cooperation is highly appreciated
I tried to transfer the domain as per there original suggestion but it wouldn’t let me, so I wrote another email to 1&1 customer support explaining what has happened:

That’s nice but what about the rest of the work you were supposed to do?
My account now shows no domains, when it should show 2 1&1 domains.
When I go to the control panel, it says:

me is already registered.
Transfer of registrar to 1&1 for £8.99* / year (1-year registration
period)** .

Yes it is already registered with you! So what do I do.
Please help, I’m getting nowhere with your 1st line support.

Perhaps this little table will make you understand why I so upset:

Total time waiting for registrar/domain transfer: 14 days
Downtime caused by mess up with external domain - don’t touch we are
working on it: 3 days
Number of domains pointing to my DNS: zero

13 June 2009
Still getting nowhere so phoned up again. 1&1 cancelled my domain and gave it back to the world so it is now in the redemption period. Support tells me the only way to transfer the domains back to me is to fill in the forms and fax them back.
Fill in form: http://faq.oneandone.co.uk/domains/troubleshooting/5.html
They want to charge £25/domain, but they said they would wave that with another case id: 133 120 807.
They said it will take 2 days to process, so I downloaded the form, printed it out, filled it in, crossed out the bit that said I would be charged for cancelling the domain and wrote the case id above so they could look it up, scanned it and emailed it back.

15 June 2009
Phoned up after waiting 2 days and guess what? When I sent them the form it was Friday and they don’t work over the weekend, so nothing had been done. They told me to wait because now it was Monday there would be people in the office to process it. So I hang around waiting for them to get out of bed and come to work.

I get an email from their redemption department:

This e-mail is to confirm that we have received your domain redemption retrieval form for your domain. Please allow up to 5 business days for your domain to be restored back into your account. You will receive an e-mail once we redeemed your domain.

Get this - the email has the wrong account number on it. It’s talking about my stuff but with a different account number - I thought I had seen it all but getting me confused with some one else was typical and summed up the extent of the problems I’ve been having.

Hurray things are looking up. I spoke too soon, 5 minutes later I get this

Re: C132540414
The redemption form for mydomain1.COM & mydomain2.com was not signed you. We will need a new form faxed for processing of this redemption. Also, please note that you requested cancellation for these domains so you are responsible for the redemption fees.

No wonder they are not signed by me it’s the wrong account.

They had clearly not read the case number I sent, and are going to charge me anyway. I can’t wait to spend the next 2 weeks trying to get my money back from them. That’s another nightmare I don’t want to go through.

Then they send me the same message again.

C133154243
The redemption form sent for this domain was not signed by the account owner. Please resend the form.

So I replied with a note saying that they have been dealing with me for the last 3 weeks as the agent of the account owner and they didn’t seem to mind then so why is it suddenly a factor.

I am the agent for the owner.
I created it in their name.
I am the one who has phoned you up everyday for the last 2
weeks trying to sort out this mess.
It is my email address on the account and my credit card
and my phone number.

I got an email from redemption@1and1.co.uk which was a new email address so I thought they would be more receptive to working through the problems in hand. So I sent them the following:

1 and 1 advised me to cancel the domain because the original transfer didn’t go through. After I explained all this to the 47th person on your help desk they said that they would wave the cancellation fee because it was your fault. Which is why I have written the case number on the form.

If you read my case notes you will see that I’ve been trying for 3 weeks to transfer 2 domains over to you, but have been unsuccessful at every turn.

The main problem has been that I have been unable to speak to any one in the transfers department to clean up the mess. No one on the first line support could explain to you what the problems have been.

I’m so disappointed with 1&1.

15 June 2009 22:00
Heard nothing from the transfers department, so decided to give them a call. I was a bit concerned about this named signature thing and so wanted to clarify the fact that I am the agent for the account and am acting for the account owner (which I have set up and paid for). Spent an hour on the phone with Jed in (Philippines) customer support. Got another case id 133 269 093 with extra priority. I had almost the same conversation with Jed as I did with Jhun and he even told me that he would take it on himself to see it through (just like Jhun did). 8 pence / minute for about hour on the phone so that’s another £5 wasted. By the time this is over I will have spend over £100 and that’s if I work for free.

I helped navigate Jed to this page, so maybe it might stir them into action. Next up change my email signature to point to this page.

16 June 2009 13:30
Still not heard anything back from them so sent the redemption form again with the Account owner’s signature on it.

16 June 2009 13:30
They have reply to say that:

C132540414 (mydomain2.com)
C133334450 (mydomain1.com)
This e-mail is to confirm that we have received your domain redemption retrieval form for your domain. Please allow up to 5 business days for your domain to be restored back into your account. You will receive an e-mail once we redeemed your domain.

Not sure why it takes 5 days. The domain has been bouncing around their system for 2 weeks and 1&1 has been holding the registrar details. I’m now going to hold my breath for 5 days. Also not sure why the work requests are 794,036 apart! Waiting for the next problem to pop up - I bet you 1,000,000 quid that they over charge me for their initial blunder. Can’t wait to get into that

16 June 2009 20:20
mydomain2.com has been re-attached to my account. Not sure what has happened to mydomain1.com. Maybe they have to process the other 794,036 requests before they get to my other one. I had even written mydomain1.com before mydomain2.com on all correspondences and yet they did the second one first!

18 June 2009 10:30
2 days have passed and there is no sign of the other domain. It’s still within their 5 day period though. Bearing in mind my account is supposed to have extra priority, it seems *really* odd that there was any gap between re-instating them. I’m worried that their system has messed up again.

I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten about my other domain (C133334450 mydomain1.com). Both domains were submitted on the same form at the same time and yet C132540414 mydomain2.com was moved after 1 day, but there is no sign of the other (mydomain1.com).

I don’t want to wait 5 days only to be told I have to wait another 5 days because your system has made another mistake.

C132540414 mydomain2.com
C133334450 mydomain1.com

The weekend is approaching and their 24 hour / 365 days support service only works between 9-5 on weekdays, so it could end up rolling (or meandering) into next week.

18 June 2009 14:20
The request was answered and mydomain1.com was initiated.

26 June 2009
They charge me £25 for one of the domain cancellations - don’t know which one.

29 June 2009
They charge me £25 for the other domain cancellations.

20 July 2009 21:50
Got my bank statement through to find that they have charged me anyway even after saying they wouldn’t. I’ve since had my phone bill through as well; calling their premiun number to sort out this mess has cost me over £40. So to transfer my 2 domains has so far cost me over £100. How much am I going to spend on getting my money back?
Incidentally, you remember all those case ids I raised and all those promises they made about looking into my complaint? well no one has contacted me. I haven’t heard anything back from anyone about anything. I realised quite a while ago that they couldn’t care less but now they are actually robbing me. I want to do a charge back, but I’ve read other horror stories of 1&1 immediately suspending the affected domains until the money (plus an extra charge for administration - you understand) is paid. God this is going to go on for ages.

It dawned on me that they never sent me an invoice for the 2 £25 charges, they just charged me. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t notice! I pulled out their previous invoice which says they only handle billing enquires between 9am and 5pm. I forgot about their version of 24-hour support.

Stay tuned.

21 July 2009 11:30
Phoned up the billing line and got through to Kanwal in Slough, UK (my home country). Recorded the conversation this time which lasted 20 minutes (at another cost of £1.20 + normal phone charges). She had me on hold for probably 10 of those 20 minutes (that’s 60p in real terms). After trying to explain that they had over charged be she said that the case history was too long and that she had to refer me to Danielle Robson (also in the UK) and I got another case id: 136 753 406. Danielle was not in today. I had to really press Kanwal to find out when Danielle would be in, because by the sounds of it she was the only person in the UK who could do anything. After conducting what felt like a Spanish inquisition and being put on hold 2 or 3 more times I find out that she is off sick (and I quote) would be back in hopefully 2 or 3 days. I asked at she give me a call because all the other complaints I had made have been fruitless. I can understand if people are sick, this is part of work, but I’m more disappointed that there is no one else who can replace her. What if it’s not 2 or 3 days but 2 or 3 weeks? She seemed quite surprised that it has taken £90 of phone calls to tidy up this mess and said that they don’t refund phone calls. So the best case scenario is that I get the over charging back and I’m still £50 down. She suggested that I make a complaint and then gave me an email address. I ought to try it for completeness so I’ll post how that goes.
The gem I would like to remember from this encounter is that in the middle of explaining why I’ve been over charged she said “can I put you on hold” and disappeared for 2 minutes. Yet again I’m left feeling like I’ve just been mugged.

7 August 2009 12:30
Needless to say, “Danielle Robson” never called back. Nor did anyone else for that matter. I phoned the billing line again and spoke to Anna, who listened then said she couldn’t do anything and that I have to send and email to complaints@1and1.co.uk:

Complaints,

I tried to transfer 2 domains from another provider over to you.
mydomain1.com and
mydomain2.com

Your people added it as an external domain which didn’t work properly and wouldn’t let me update the IP address.

Your support department told me that the only way to transfer an external domain to a 1&1 domain was to cancel it in the contracts page and then add it via the control panel.

“
C131889015
In order to transfer your domains, just cancel the registered external domains in your contract tool > https://contract.oneandone.co.uk/ and order them from within your 1&1 Control-Center > https://admin.1and1.co.uk/
“

After doing this, the domain was actually canceled and release back to the world.

You then charged me £25 per domain to get them reinstated. I phone to talk to one of your support people who told me that they would wave the charge because I had been following their advice, see case id: 133120807.

2 weeks later you charged me anyway, and I have been unsuccessful in reclaiming the money.

In all, the process of transferring 2 domains to your company has lasted from 29 May 2009 to now. It has cost me £50 (£25/domains) in charges, plus ~£90 pounds of phone calls and 1 week of down time for my customer (the value of which I can’t estimate).

The damage to my companies reputation with this new customer has also been severely damaged.

David Newcomb agent of account:
## account details ##

–

This fiasco is still on going. They kidnapped my domains and now they are black mailing me for extra payments incurred by the errors of their support department.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

No heard anything so far.

This is the most appalling service and treatment I think I have ever received. Normally, once the service has been set up it runs all right, but if there is a problem then I (as a customer) am completely stuffed.

It took a week to convince 1&1 there was a problem. They kept on saying it will take 24-hours to settle down. When you tell them that you have waited 24-hours, they say that that one takes 48-hours! So you wait 48-hours nothing happens, and you phone up again then they tell you it should have worked by now.

Next comes the fun with priority requests and case number ids, where your problem gets escalated - I have 5 of those. On each occasion the 1st line support says “I will email you back” which they never do. No one has ever got back to me to let me know what the problem is, why there is a delay or how long my problem will take to fix. I have phoned everyday to no avail.

The 1st line support only talks to the other department via email so they have no way of increasing the priority of the work request. The other department (in my case transfers and domains) only seem to take priority requests after the 24-hour/48-hour time period is up even though there is blatantly a problem.

When the other department finally got around to my problem, they declared it fixed but had clearly not even read my case notes because the problem they addressed still left me with zero domains registered. I was no further forward than I was at the start.

Conclusion

I want to see my problems fixed and I want 1&1 to have good customer service, so here are a couple of questions for the top brass at customer services (such as it is) with my conclusions.

1) How can I complain? I should have spotted the early warning signs - there is no where to complain about service. No link on their web site, nothing in the FAQ. They are just not interested in helping in dealing with you at all.

2) When 1st line support is not working there is no one to talk to about your case. You are phobbed off with excuses and every time they explain your problem they say you must wait 24-hours, so All that happens is you sit around waiting for nothing to happen - which is great for them because you have to phone back and explain the whole thing to some one completely new. I was given the phrase “our admin staff are looking into you problem” everyday for a week with no sign or indication of when it is likely to be fixed. There isn’t even a note saying we are working on your problem, you have to phone up to be told that. I have a system down and they could not tell me if my problem was even going to be addressed this week.

3) How can I escalate my problem? The first line support are utterly useless. They wouldn’t give me the phone number of the transfers department or put me through to anyone who could help. When I asked for a managers name all I got were the names of team leaders who were all too busy to talk to me anyway so that was another useless waste of time. They won’t give out any numbers to anything other than this support line. You can’t get passed 1&1 1st line support and talk to any one who can help.

If you are looking for numbers then try searching on the internet for an alternative phone number? You might find these links helpful:
http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1069609085
http://www.simonjones.info/1and1internet/

Suggestions to improve 1&1’s customer support

• There is no culture of problem ownership, every support person just wants to get rid of you. Each time I phoned up I gave them a bit of time to read over my case notes, but each one of them was as clueless as the previously one and all of there suggestions and advice involved waiting another 24-hours.
• I have no immediate objections to overseas call centres as long as the level of English is good enough to have a technical conversation, and it a lot of cases it wasn’t.
• There is no avenue to progress calls. I know that the transfers department are going to charge me for getting my own domain back after they told me to cancel because it was the only way their system would let me do the domain transfer. Even though I have a case number which tells me that 1&1 have messed up and they are going to wave the fee - they are going to charge me anyway. The 2 departments don’t talk to each other, so it is no wonder that these kind of mistakes will keep happening.

Most of the time 1&1 might be ok, but when you have a problem it is just tough. 3 weeks in - 1&1 have lost both my domains and what to charge me £50 to get them back.

So to answer my original questions:-
How long does it take to transfer a registrar and domain to 1&1?
More than 3 weeks.

How many emails to 1&1 customer support does it take to transfer a registrar and domain to 1&1?
More than 20

How many telephone calls does it take to customer support to transfer a registrar and domain to 1&1?
More than 15

How much downtime will be caused by transferring a registrar and domain to 1&1?
More than 2 weeks

Take my advice and stay away.

Thanks
Special thanks to Simon Jones who said the only way to get their attention was to publicly publicise the trouble you are having. He too was also being blackmailed by 1&1. I think however my story of bumbling ineptitude beats yours:
http://www.simonjones.info/1and1internet/

More 1&1 horror stories
There are quite a lot of genuinely scary stories about 1&1 extorting money out of people and not releasing domains:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.domain-names.disputes/browse_thread/thread/04716357dbf0e4f9
http://www.wolf-howl.com/reviews/1and1com-web-hosting-sucks/
http://www.webhostingtestimonials.com/hosts_name.php?id=1and1-reviews-ratings
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-698302.html

Addendum: October 2010
Something happened recently on a totally different matter and I ended up talking to a customers services representative in the UK. He promised to get back to me, said he would take it on as his project and basically fobbed me off again. The other matter wasn’t going to go away so after battling my way through lines of cowboys and snake oil sellers I actually got to speak to someone in customer services who knew what the job of customer services was and refunded the money for the accounting problem I was having. I took the opportunity to mention all the trouble I had with them promising to refund the money related to the issue in this article and they paid up.