Complaint Review: 1&1 Internet Inc. - Internet Internet

I decided to use 1&1 to host a website I was developing about a year ago.  I had no need for a subscription service at the time, because I was unsure how long the website would be live.  When I spoke to a representative at 1&1 to open my hosting account, I told them that I wanted a month-to-month plan - I was not interested in any other kind of plan.  They signed me up for a year subscription instead.

I had no knowledge of this until I needed to cancel my account with 1&1 (due to no longer having a need for it) after about 9 months.  Long story short, I argued with them that they had signed me up for the wrong plan without my knowledge or consent.  They sent the account to a collection service.  Ridiculous.  I called their billing department and spoke with their director, Damien Christopher.  Mr. Christopher was one of the rudest people I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with.  He blamed me for their error, claiming that I had full knowledge of this subscription that I had been entered into.

I contacted their complaints department by phone after that and was offered a deal by one of their representatives (whom I did not get a name for, unfortunately), that I would pay the full charges that they claimed I owed (including a late fee) to the collection agency, and they would refund the late fee upon receiving the funds from the agency.  Fine - I decided to go with it just to get this over with.

The company received the funds from the agency on September 17, on which date they sent me an invoice for the refund and said that it would be processed to my credit card that day.  I called that day to make sure they had the correct credit card information and confirmed that they did.

Two weeks later (on October 1), when I still did not have my refund, I called their complaints department to find out the status of my refund and found out that the refund processing apparently failed because the credit card information was incorrect.  They confirmed that I had called two weeks prior to update the credit card information, but had somehow lost my information.  (I am floored as to how that can happen, but that is a separate issue.)

I updated my credit card information with them (again) and then spoke to the director of the complaints department - Joseph Quinn.  Mr. Quinn promised that the refund would be processed and in my account in 2-3 days.  When the refund was still not in my account 1 week later, I contacted Mr. Quinn again to get a status update, at which time he stated that refunds take 2 weeks to process and denied his previous statement of the process taking 2-3 days.  (Mind you, I have an e-mail from him around that time confirming the 2-3 day time period.)

I contacted the complaints department yet again on October 21 to find out where my refund stood.  I got a relatively competent representative this time - Josh Taylor - who said that he would reprocess my refund that day and would follow up with me about its status.  I received an invoice from him on October 22, as well as an e-mail saying that their back-end administrators manually pushed the refund through their system so that it would be processed faster.

It is now October 27, and I still do not have my promised refund.  This time, I called my credit card company to ask if the refund was somehow stuck in some sort of not-yet-processed queue.  I spoke with a manager with my credit card company, who confirmed that there were no pending refunds scheduled to post to my account.  I have contacted 1&1 (yet again) and am still waiting for a reasonable answer from them.