by Elliot Back from his Internet & Tech Blog

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1and1 Sucks: 1&1 Will Rip You Off

Posted in Blogging, Computers & Technology, Milestones by Elliott Back on March 22nd, 2006.

As you can imagine, I’ve been having some trouble with 1and1. They nixed by site by placing some kind of “lock” on it. When I get that straightened out, I should be able to recover my images. Until then, I have an old backup of the images. I’m slowing restoring my other sites. What’s weird, though, is that I can’t get SSH access to my account.
Please ignore the mess–a new theme is coming soon. This is just a stopover stopgap method.
Update
Here is the email they sent me three days after locking my Business Hosting account:

Recently we have noticed that your web site(s)is consuming a disproportionate amount of server resources. Due to this, we have had to move your account off of the shared hosting server to an auxilliary server host. We will now request that you consider purchasing a Managed or Dedicated Server in order to continue hosting services with 1&1 Internet.
Your account was moved based on a decision made by the system administrators in order to improve the quality of service to the rest of our clients on the shared hosting server you were previously hosted on. Your account’s resource needs
were exceeding the capacity of that server to capably host the other accounts, thus it had to be moved to mitigate the server load. Though we could move your site back to the original shared hosting server, it is not recommended. Your account activity has showed that it deserves its own server to better suite its performance needs.
Please visit 1and1.com to review the server products we offer. You will have one(1) month to make a decision and migrate your account over to 1&1 server or another host provider. You can choose to return your account back to the shared server systems if you wish, provided that you take steps to reduce the load generated by your websites. If the account has to be moved off the
shared server system again you will only have the option of purchasing a dedicated server account to continue hosting with 1&1 Internet.

As I have received over 44,000 hits on this single website today (there are others, although they are still down), it makes sense that I might be overloading their poor shared server. However, they should at least have called or emailed me before taking any action that would impact the state of my website! If I do get a dedicated server in the future, it won’t be their’s.
Update 2
OK, dreamhost says I’m using about 940 cpu minutes a day, which is about 20 times more than I should be. Looks like I’ll need dedicated hosting soon, unless WP-cache really does drop my CPU usage by the 53x it claims. Here’s a graph of traffic impact, for the bored:

Update 3
As I really want them to return my files, I’ve sent the following snarky email to the 1and1 admins:

Dear 1and1 admins,
This is the third email I’ve sent you regarding this issue, three days from your initial notification, which was sent to me at least two days late after you locked my 1and1 account. I need immediate access to all of my files via SSH. Traffic has been redirected via DNS to another hosting provider, so no 1and1 resources will continue to be consumed at their former prodigious rate. As you specified below:
> You can choose to return your account back to the shared server systems if you wish, provided that you take steps to reduce the load generated by your websites.
Now that I have taken those steps, you must immediately:
1) Restore access to my business hosting account for elliottback.com
2) Notify me in writing thereof
Your response time and attention to customer service issues is terrible. If you do not restore access to my account and files in a reasonable amount of time, I may have to pursue legal or other non-desirable actions for your business.

Update 4
I called them last night, and a guy said he’d give me an update before the end of his shift. Admins are apparently scarce on weekends. Guess what? No update.
Update 5
Somehow I’ve got access again. Once I rip all my files, I’m going to cancel. Images should start working again in another hour or so. I’ve got a lot (100s of mb) to transfer, so it will be just a bit more!
Here are some more resources for people considering 1and1:

• 1&1 Internet is the devil
• DRAMATIC ACTION WAS REQUIRED
• 1&1, oneandone, 1and1, one and one, sucks!
• Why 1and1.com sucks?
• When 1 & 1 makes 3

Read more here