Before the end of my contract, I opted out of it. I sent an email requesting a confirmation that my plan will not be renewed past my contract termination date. 1&1 internet accordingly sent me an email asking me to click on this termination link. The termination went smoothly and they even gave me back a refund of a few dollars for the remaining month of my contract. Up to this point, I am pretty impressed with 1&1 Internet's structure and efficiency to process my request.
But, here comes the problem, 1&1 seems to automatically renew your subscription without ever needing a response from you. Meaning if you don't say anything, they will continue to rack up the bills. This is where it went wrong for my cousins account. Of course I had to find out about this after the incident started to roll out.
At the time my cousin has returned to Taiwan after he has finished his college program. It wasn't until the end of August, 2007, a month after he has left Canada that I spotted a charge on my credit card, it was for the amount of $26.66 from 1&1 Internet Inc. The amount seems to be for another 6 months of subscription.
I immediately contacted 1&1 through an email explaining the situation on August 20th, 2007:
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Dear Representative,
I have just come across an unauthorized transaction on my master card on Aug 14, 2007. I had previously used my credit card to help my cousin setup his domain for as a 1 time basis. I believe his domain was (deleted).net.
However, as the card holder I was not informed about the re-occurring charges. I logged into my account under (deleted).com and saw no relating information. Please cancel this domain ((deleted).net) and refund the most recent transaction back to my credit card. As I, the cardholder, did not authorize this transaction.
I have attached the first invoice sent to me from my cousin.
Please let me know how this turns out.
Sincerely,
Kenneth Yu
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1&1 Internet replied on the next day, August 21st, 2007:
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Dear Kenneth Yu, (Cust:(deleted))
Thank you for contacting us.
If you wish to cancel your package please visit https://cancel.1and1.com and use your Customer ID and password to login.
At the end of the process you will need to activate your request. In order to do so, you will receive an e-mail message with a special link which you will need to click to complete the process.
If you do not receive the email with the confirmation link email within a few hours of completing the cancellation, please notify us ASAP.
Please note that if you do not receive this email and click on the link with in (7) seven days of the request, your cancellation request will not complete and your services will remain active.
Your refund will be based on our refund policy per the terms and conditions of your account and will be processed within 14 days of your cancellation requests effective date
If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely
Damien C********
Billing Department
1&1 Internet Inc.
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I suppose this is one of their pre-formatted email support response where you just paste and send. If the service representative had put in a little effort he would have seen that I had actually try to access it through my own account but with no success and that I had no access to my cousin's account. But I am sure he had a lot of emails to respond to, so I wrote him back with more details.
Continue Reading: 8/21/2007 --- No Access!