Hi Dsergeant,

Thank you for your post. Well yes that is indeed the sadness and the frustration. I originally selected 1and1 having taken some time deciding who to use. And from a product and pricing point of view I have indeed been very pleased with my choice. The last thing I want to do is spend time effort and energy moving to some one else - especially when the package is spot on for me.

This is one of the main reasons that I have posted on this forum.

In that there are any number of websites listing, comparing and scoring these providers. What all these site seem to, in my opinion lack, is an objective accurate picture of how painful or otherwise, it is to actually deal with these companies.

Obviously once you have invested your time and money with a particular provider there is a natural customer inertia. I feel sure that providers rely on this to profit from support calls resulting from poor service.

Your comment that by and large 1and1 are about average actually speaks volumes.

It implies that the consumer in general is getting very poorly served. I for one would happily pay more if I was guaranteed service. By which I mean speaking to some one who cares, someone who will take ownership of your problem, someone with whom you can communicate rationally and intelligently.

One would hope that one function of forums such as this is to improve the quality of service from providers. I do not know whether think broad band aggregate postings on particular issues good and bad across their various forums. If they do not then I think a great opportunity is being missed.

Hi John,

Well yes as with my response to Dsergeant the worry is that I am indeed cutting my nose off to spite my face.

Hence the appeal for some feed back from users that goes behind the statistics to get a true picture of other providers.

The point being that I don't want to spend a load of effort and then find I am no better off.

Regards

Hi elevator,

Thank you it is always good to get positive feed back. I will look at hostway. I have not heard of them before so that is very useful.

May I ask what problem you experienced with 1and1 and more importantly did you ever get it resolved. Obviously I still need to find a resolution to the latest issue I have been experiencing.

Rgds

In reply to a post by JohnMike:

Yes they are registered and hosted with 1and1. I had assumed that when transferring the domains that the new hosting service would also have to be the new registrar. Clearly I am wrong in this thinking.

Most want to be, but they don't have to be.

What is the idea behind doing it in two parts. Is it to make sure 1and1 don't mess up the domains during the process.

So that you don't end up with the hosting company trying to use the domains as hostage to stay with them.

I use Gandi.net - who are based in Paris, but they have a London office, and I have registered all my .co.uk and .org domains over there. You can use Nominet.org.uk website to check if you're the registrant (owner), and you can use the Nominet Registrants Online website to check and update your details. (1&1 should have sent these to Nominet, its required).

If you have domains that aren't .UK then its less obvious - each registry has its own rules.

I'm using a service owned by IOmart for a virtual server, for webhosting, and for email we use Google's Apps service, the paid for business, and the free "Google Apps Basic" for domestic. You just set up the entries on Gandi's control panel to point at the details Google and/or the webhost tell you.

Good luck !
(Edit - fix broken quote)

Edited by jchamier (Thu 01-Sep-11 19:53:27)

In reply to a post by JohnMike:

Hi Roberto

Many thanks for your reply.

It is interesting that you are suggesting that the hosting package remains with 1and1 until expiry. Are you saying this from prior experience. Obviously I want to make 100% certain that 1and1 do not charge me twice again. I would rather not leave it til the last minute to find out that they have.

Furthermore I would prefer that not to have any further dealings with 1and1. Quite frankly the stress that they are causing me is too much for me to handle it is making me ill. So I would prefer to cut all relations with them as soon as possible.

Regards

Sorry, I did have trouble wording that bit, and have confused you.

What I'm getting at is that you order domain/web/email hosting from whoever you choose, and again Tsohost are really good. At this point it doesn't matter which of the following you do first.

Copy your website to the new host. You now have it on both hosts, so you can transfer the domain hosting to the new one. It can take 24 hours or so for the new server address to propagate round the internet, but because both are there it doesn't matter which address the DNS someone going to your site picks up.

Similarly with the email. You change the target email server addresses, and it takes a while to propagate. But your old one is still valid so as long as you read from both and only send from the new one all is fine.

So within say 48 hours all website readers will see the site at the new host, and all email will end up there as well.

But - and this is the point I was trying to make - the old ones are still there! They don't lapse on moving things the way an ISP service ends once you migrate away. So you can't lose anything during the swap-overs. The old ones only fully disappear when the contract you have paid for expires.

Both Purple Cloud who I used to be with, and Tsohost now send reminders when things are expiring. Both give the option not to renew, or if it wasn't on auto-renewal (which I'm on with Tsohost) it just lapses anyway. It sounds as though 1 & 1 aren't that efficient, or maybe someone has missed the option not to renew.

Hope that clarifies things.

Another option where a provider is acting like this can be to contact Netmag magazine www.netmagazine.com (pick up a copy in Smiths).

They have a problem/investigation section where many people who have had no joy or response from similar providers all of a sudden get everything resolved once Netmag have asked a few questions!

Hi b4dger,

Many thanks for this advice. Anything that gets leverage on 1and1 so that they start acting sanely will be a good thing.

I will try and get a copy.

My time frame for acting is now very limited due to other commitments. I may have to return to the issue in a couple of weeks.

Regards

Thank you that makes sense to me.

Hi Roberto,

Yes that makes perfect sense as like a fail safe have both hosting packages running until you are sure that the new one is working.

But just to make sure that I have this right in my head I cannot have the domain registered in two places. That has to be with one or other registrar.

But the DNS servers can look at both hosting packages while the transfer takes place.

Hopefully I am correct in thinking that once the transfer has happened the original host will still physically exist but it will not be accessed by anyone because the DNS addressing will have been updated.

Regards

Basically, by the end of that, yes. You've got it.

Just to clarify, yes the domain has to be with one registrar or the other, but neither need be the web/email host - just it usually is at our level of expertise.

The DNS servers - there are hundreds/thousands around the world and it takes a while for all to get updated. None of them will look at both places, just some will look at (point to) the new address after a few hours and some could take 24 hours or even a bit longer to do so, so they continue to point to the old until then.

Once all have updated then as you say, the old web and email hosts still exist but no-one access them except you still can. (How varies depending on how you have things set up at your end).