
The Worst SaaS Cancellation Policy on the Internet - fruithunter
http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/the-worst-cancellation-policy-on-the-internet
======
ChuckMcM
File an FTC complaint about them, and a BBB one, and send a complaint to Dun &
Bradstreet while you are at it, and post something on ripoffreport if they are
still around. Then change your credit card # ( get a new number / card )

Sounds like these guys are exploiting the same flaw in CC payments that a
number of phone services, domain name registrars, buyer protection services,
etc exploit which is that there is no way to 'pre-decline' a charge to your
credit card. They will keep charging your card (regardless of your
cancellation) and when you complain they will send the CC company a copy of
your _initial_ signup / agreement and won't include any follow up
documentation. You will have to send your email as documentation as 'proof'
month after month. Many people just give up and pay the the money. The local
news station has a consumerist segment they run now and then, this sort of
scam comes up frequently.

Clearly you are not alone:
[http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/1and1-internet](http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/1and1-internet)

~~~
kintamanimatt
Actually, my business bank in the UK (Barclays) can apparently block card
payments in advance. I know because it took an astonishing amount of work to
stop HasOffers from billing me after my trial had ended and been cancelled.

------
nate
This is a tangent, but I had a similar reaction to Honest company (baby
products) and cancelling. My wife signed up to their trial subscription
delivery thing for diaper for our newborn. This is Jessica Alba's company.

We sign up for the trial online. The diapers were fine, but we still liked the
indicator strip on the Pampers better. So my wife goes to the website to
cancel. Can't cancel online. Great.

So she has to call. But then she's on hold for 10 minutes, at which point
being a brand new parent, she needs to nurse the newborn and can't be on hold
any longer. So she emails to cancel, no response.

A second call, another 10 minute hold time, and almost giving up again, she
finally gets through to someone to cancel and she has to go through a series
of questions before cancelling.

Honest seems to be preying on new parents who simply don't have the willpower
or time to deal with cancelling. Checking out reviews, it seems a lot of
people have this 10 minute "hold time". I'm suspicious it's just an automated
wait time, and their representatives aren't really that busy.

~~~
nicksergeant
I used FancyHands to cancel my Honest subscription. Glad that was money well
spent.

------
dlgeek
I've found with businesses like this (though not 1&1 specifically), the magic
word is "chargeback". It helps you cut through the bullshit because if they
get too high a percentage of chargebacks, their credit card processing fees go
up (and they can even lose the ability to charge cards).

~~~
jusben1369
I know what you're saying but a chargeback is really for a charge that you
believe is fraudulent/have no idea why it was made. That's certainly not the
case here. So folks like 1&1 usually have proof that you willingly signed up
for the charge. If that happens you can be blacklisted and other merchants
suddenly won't accept your card. It then costs $99 to get off that list.

~~~
rstupek
Believe it or not a chargeback doesn't have to be for things you consider
fradulent. We see people all of the time chargeback for services provided. All
you need to do is issue the chargeback. 99.99% of the time it will go through

~~~
jusben1369
I know it's abused like this as you say. The point is that for merchants for
whom there's a lot of buyer remorse (dating sites etc) they enact clear steps
to show you knew what you were doing and will then dispute those chargebacks
(they have to or else they will get dropped)

~~~
steven2012
Merchants very very rarely win chargebacks. They can represent all they want
with proper documentation, and they may even win the first chargeback, but
that win can easily be reversed by the credit card company, if the customer is
persistent enough, with no explanation to the merchant. I know this because
I've worked in credit card processing.

So any time you run into an issue with a merchant, if they look like they are
acting in bad faith, you should just chargeback and stop wasting your time.

------
mcmillion
1&1 is terrible. I tried them once with a VPS. After three or four days, they
still hadn't provisioned the VPS for me (you heard right, it's a manual
process), so I promptly cancelled. A few months later they started hounding me
(via email and phone calls) to pay up on the $15 that I supposedly owed for a
free trial.

Absolutely terrible company.

------
ChrisNorstrom
1and1 has extremely aggressive telemarketers.

They once called my computer illiterate father who can barely speak english
and instructed him to go to trial.1and1.com to sign up for MyWebsite.

Another time I refused the MyWebsite trial and the aggressive-pissed-off guy
on the phone signed me up anyway. Twice. I finally got $350 refunded after
months of complaining.

Always hang up the phone. Yell "no no no" and hang up immediately. Always.
They use phrases like "I'm going to sign you up for that so you're all set."
and "ok you're all set with the mywebsite service". They don't ask you if you
want a trial. They opt you in. It's up to you to interrupt them.

I love their services however.

~~~
m_mueller
> I love their services however.

wat?

------
TamDenholm
I absolutely loathe 1&1, i've taken more than a few clients off of their
hosting and its been an absolute nightmare EVERY TIME. A client of mine got so
annoyed with their service they stopped paying and asked me to move everything
out of there. After umpteen phone calls and emails i managed to do it, but it
took weeks. I ended up having to pay to reinstate the service just so i could
get access to it in order to move it, and since the client had lapsed on their
payment, it had eventually went to a debt collection agency, because of that,
1&1 had refused my money, said i had to instead pay the agency, they would
then tell 1&1 and then reinstate the service.

Was an absolute nightmare...

Personally, i think these are the kind of companies that should be bought by
the big boys, because there's SO MUCH opportunity to win here. They have a
massive user base that is VERY poorly looked after, buy the company, fix shit
like this, and you can make a huge impact. Another option would be to try and
topple the incumbent, doesnt take as much money but its a lot harder.

------
0xeeeeeeee
Gosh. I can't stand 1&1\. When I was in undergrad I bought my first domain
from 1&1 because I really had no idea where to buy them.

I've received phone calls from them for 4 years. The always end with "Yes sir,
we will remove your number from our list"....so either I'm on a lot of lists
or they are lying to me.

------
phdp
I was scammed into adding on the website builder to my package. I was sitting
at work and I received a call. I took it and a sales guy started trying to
sell me on this. I explicitly asked him whether I would see any recurring
charges if I said yes to this trial and then took no further action, and he
assured me that was the case. I really just wanted him to shut up so I could
go back to work. Imagine my surprise 4-6 months later. I was looking at my
invoices and I notice this line for the builder! They did reverse the charges
(I had just received the second bill and they bill quarterly), but it had to
be done over the phone and during east coast business hours. Well, I work
those hours.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
You were "scammed?" What? That story literally makes no sense.

How did the salesman get hold of your personal information and payment
information to sign you up to this service?

Also how did you think a trial would incur no recurring charges after the
trial expired? Particularly if you left it for 4-6 months? How long did you
think the trial was?

Sorry but that post could not be more nonsensical if it tried. And the line "I
really just wanted him to shut up so I could go back to work." just further
adds to the confusion. So you signed up to a trial to get a salesmen to leave
you alone then left it for 4-6 months, and then got upset when you got
charged?

~~~
chris_wot
Sounds like he expected it to end.

------
rgawdzik
It should be illegal to not offer online cancellation for an online service.

------
jusben1369
There needs to be a general logo/sticker/proof seal. "You can cancel a
subscription the same way you can buy a subscription" If you can sign up for
something online and buy it within 3 - 5 steps you should be able to cancel it
online with 3 - 5 steps. If you need to call or visit a human to sign up for a
service then it's fair that you may be required to call or visit a human to
cancel it. How many people would more confidently purchase/avoid purchasing if
that was on the checkout/payment page?

------
grhmc
My favorite part is when you go to their 1&1 reviews page
([http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/reviews/1&1/user-
reviews](http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/reviews/1&1/user-reviews)) it
invites you to "Try 1&1" with a referral code.

------
dmourati
Wow, I'd heard of 1&1 but never imagined what kind of users take them up on
their free trial offers. It sounds like their business model is smoke and
mirrors. They maybe got a page out of the Comcast playbook.

Sorry to anyone who has ever signed up with 1&1.

------
busterarm
I remember well over 10 years ago when I first used 1and1 when they started
aggressively advertising.

Piss poor service, a few years and a couple hundred bucks in erroneous charges
later and I finally managed to cancel them but not before getting sent to
collections and having the only stain on my credit (which has long since gone
away). The collections agency they use is as bad as they are.

They are truly among the absolute worst service providers on the internet,
along with the similarly-famous Network Solutions.

Avoid at all costs.

------
brianbreslin
On all the products I've sold in SaaS form, we've made it a point to let
people cancel easily. Sometimes I question if we made it too easy, but then I
think to Wheaton's Rule, and also the fact I'm saving time not staffing a team
of assholes to block cancelations.

I can imagine tons of possibilities to work to reduce churn, but this 1&1
stuff is nuts. I'm sure tons of people don't cancel because $9/month isn't
worth their time right now to call.

------
re_todd
This is very timely, I was thinking about signing up with 1 and 1. Can anyone
recommend an alternative with similar services and price?

~~~
nfriedly
What exactly do you need?

~~~
re_todd
Cheap linux hosting for my php and wordpress projects.

~~~
logn
If you want a general VPS:

Digital Ocean, Linode, Rackspace, Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine

Digital Ocean lets you provision the lowest spec servers of all those, for
$5/mo.

edit: if you just want Wordpress, check out
[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/)
although I've never tried that service. They give you a VPS with various apps
pre-installed, e.g.,
[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results/?page=1&se...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results/?page=1&searchTerms=wordpress)

~~~
re_todd
Great, thanks!

------
andrewmunsell
They are truly terrible, for multiple reasons. I encountered a similar issue
when canceling with them earlier, where they actually asked for my password
over the phone:

[https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/one-and-one-asks-for-
your...](https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/one-and-one-asks-for-your-
password)

------
overgard
Ugh, these guys really are the worst. I had a credit card expire, and instead
of letting me just update the card details, they sent it to a collection
agency and when I called their customer support to just give them updated
details they refused to help out. So you know what? I'm never going to pay
them. Assholes.

------
brok3nmachine
1and1.com actually allows cancelation online. I found this out years ago, when
the pain became unbearable from using their services for over 8 years.

[https://cancel.1and1.com](https://cancel.1and1.com)

Oh, and I attained this URL after calling customer support.

~~~
steve_benjamins
Author here: actually the article talks about this- you're unable to cancel
the My Website (their most popular service) using that website.

------
wildpeaks
This is pretty much the same story with eFax: never ever ever EVER signup for
that thing.

------
VeejayRampay
Based on what I'm reading they should really rename their company 1^1...

