I hate dealing with phone menus. Nobody likes them and companies who have direct-to-human phone numbers stand out. But, you get what you pay for and that's probably why 1and1 is one of the cheapest domain registrars. Also, when I am promised a 24-hour "e-mail back" time and I call 36 hours later, and am told to wait an additional 24 hours, I'm extremely dissatisfied. What happened to human interaction? Why can't I get a call back instead of an e-mail response?
In addition to the customer service, the service itself is horrible. Most registrars are able to update the root DNS in minutes, since the recent Verisign upgrade. How come 1and1 has to approve each change? It makes it slow to update my domains, and is unacceptable. It should no longer take 24-48 hours for propogation as ICANN and Verisign have dealt with that delay.
How come I can only have 5 glue domains? I have 7 domain names. If each one is hosted separately, I might want glue for ns1. and ns2. for each domain. But, if I don't have a hosting plan through 1and1, I can only have 5 "subdomains." I don't need real subdomains since I'm not using 1and1 for DNS hosting. I just need glue records, which only take up less than 1KB each. Data storage is not that expensive that 100 or 1000 glue domains could not be permitted for free. Because of the subdomain issue alone, I will be transferring. I know that after ICANN fees, my business is only worth a few dollars each year, but it only costs 1and1 a few cents each year for all of my domain names, and would cost less than a single cent to allow 1000 more subdomains. So business is lost because of subdomain rules. Pretty foolish idea, I think. Shouldn't subdomains be granted per domain, not per generic account? I'm paying for each domain, not for a base account. It's too late now though, I'm transferring to a much more reliable registrar now. Cunts.