IONOS by 1 & 1

Due to an expired credit card, and an old full of spam email, my spouse missed a bill from Ionos which has hosted several sites for us for years. When my main business site was down, he checked and saw what happened. He paid for the domain names and restoration. He requested a change of email during that call, and put in a new credit card. He was told everything was fine. And it seemed to be. Two months later my personal blog was gone. Years of stuff. Fortunately the stuff was still on the server and we were able to save it, but my the domain name -- which is actually my name -- was sold. An email with a "credit" was sent to the old email that we thought they changed so we didn't even see that to track anything was wrong. The site was actually sold weeks after my husband had paid to reregister it! Customer service said there was nothing we could do and we bought a new domain name, but here is the thing, I don't want a "new" name. I am in danger of damage to my reputation and of extortion if I try to buy back the site. The only option I have is to pay Ionos's "partner" $70 initally to "negotiate" with the criminal element that bought my site. And then pay Sedo and the extortionist even more to get MY NAME back. It looks like Ionos as a partner with Sedo also profits from this scheme.

This is a common occurance. People and small business owners forget about expiring credit cards. If this happens to even a small percentage of people and Ionus realices their domain names and sells them through its partner, Sedo, that could be large profits that Ionus is making while damaging its customers. If that doesn't sound like something deserving class action, I don't what is!

The photo below is from the Ionos website and shows my option for getting back my name. You can see that they refer to Sedo as their partner.

They stole from my credit card and managed to LOSE not one, but two ecommerce sites - they failed (or didn't bother) to find the back-ups and they were lost forever.

Email addresses were hacked and used by spammers and I was blamed for issues of security!

They are well known for charging your credit card for 'services' you haven't ordered.

Note that I have had websites hosted by at least four other companies and no major problems.

This company gets a high score on the very dodgy 'review' site Trustpilot, because businesses who pay get easier access to removal of negative reviews, but please AVOID this company and don't be fooled by fake review sites either.

I have been with www.1and1.co.uk for sixteen years, hosting a couple of TLDs.
It recently dawned on me that they were billing me twice a year and their prices had gone through roof - about £150 per year - four times more than better hosting companies.
I tried to terminate the contract one day before it expired but then found that the process had to be completed by phone - and their lines were closed for the weekend.
I spoke to them and I was reassured that the billng would not go through then, lo, the invoice duly arrived.
I've spoken to them again and I've emailed them to get it sorted out, but no answer.
I think this is disgraceful and rather callous.
I would never recommend this company in a million years - keep
Their hands out of your bank account.

They ask you for your password when dealing with any enquiries and when you refuse to give it to them they hang up!